Perforce/TeamTrack Integration GUI Review Meeting, 2000-09-15

1. Introduction

This is the record of a meeting between Richard Brooksby of Ravenbrook Limited and Larry Fish of TeamShare, at which Larry showed Richard the GUI changes he'd made to TeamTrack for the Perforce Defect Tracking Integration project, and Richard reviewed them.

This is not the final TeamTrack GUI for P4DTI.

The intended readership of this document is Larry, but it could be read by anyone interested in the project.

This document is not confidential.

2. Meeting Notes

Larry has implemented GUI changes to TeamTrack as planned [RB 2000-08-24]. Currently, the controls have no effect on the data. Richard studied the GUI and made a list of issues.

1. Changes to filespec associations and fixes need to be "update" transitions in TeamTrack.
2. In all windows, changelists don't have a "last modified" time or "last modifier" or "last modified on client", just a time when they were submitted, who submitted them, and the client on which they were submitted. The labels on these fields should just be "Date", "User", and "Client" in line with the Perforce Windows GUI.
3. In the fix edit pop-up window (see figure 2), the word "Status" is a bit confusing. This is the status that the case was transitioned to by the change. We need a better word for this -- perhaps "effect".
4. In the fix edit pop-up window (see figure 2), the possible "statuses" need to be made available in a drop-down menu. This means that the replicator must communicate them to the GUI through the database somehow.
5. The Perforce convention for users is "user@client" where client is the clientspec name. But this might not make sense if the users are translated to a TeamTrack user.
6. In the case window (see figure 1), we could try consolidating the "fixes" and "changelist" tables in the case into a single table, like this:

   Change	Effect	Fix			Change			Description
   		Time	User	Client	Time	User	Client
   3872	analysed	2000-08-29 07:07	Joe	joe-larch	2000-08-29 07:07	Joe	joe-larch	Prototype solution for the problem with the exploding ducks.
   3942	developed	2000-08-30 16:12	Mike	mike-larch	2000-08-30 17:33	Joe	joe-larch	Tidied up Joe's prototype and used it to patch version 3.1.
   4023	tested	2000-09-23 11:42	Sue	sue-qa-stage-4	2000-09-23 11:42	Sue	sue-qa-stage-4	Adding test report for release 3.1.2.

7. In the case window (see figure 1), there needs to be an easy way to add fixes or filespecs. I suggest an "add" button or icon.
8. Non-Perforce licensed users shouldn't be able to make changes to the Perforce data, as this has to be replicated back to Perforce. The group of people with permission to make changes could be the set of Perforce users. This could be maintained by the replicator.
9. The word "Perforce" should appear more often, to make it clear to the user that this is Perforce integrated data. For example, when it's not in context, the interface should say "Perforce client" or "Perforce changelist" or similar. The section in the case window should say "Perforce fixes" and "Associated Perforce filespecs" or similar.
10. We need to decide what goes into the "client" field when things are changed in TeamTrack. Perhaps there should be a dummy client for this purpose, or perhaps blank is OK, or a string identifying the TeamTrack server.
11. If the user doens't have permission to change the fixes or filespecs, and the pencil or bin icons are greyed out, they should link to text which explains why. It's one of those situations which could really puzzle users.

Figure 1. The case window, showing the version control section

Figure 2. The fix editing pop-up window

Figure 3. The filespec editing pop-up window

3. Conclusions

Larry has made good progress implementing the GUI changes. What's currently there is good enough for an alpha release, so it's more important to get the database update working than alter the appearance.

A. References

B. Document History

Copyright © 2000 Ravenbrook Limited. This document is provided "as is", without any express or implied warranty. In no event will the authors be held liable for any damages arising from the use of this document. You may make and distribute verbatim copies of this document provided that you do not charge a fee for this document or for its distribution.