Summary of Custom Fields

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peetervois
Posts: 7
Joined: 14 Feb 2017, 19:05

Summary of Custom Fields

Post by peetervois »

Hello,

I have been using Mantis for keeping list of tasks and managing whatever I do in agile way. I think that Mantis is very good on getting overall picture of the current status based on number of tasks. Number of tasks is although not satisfactory metric on handling time-line critical projects. One task is more complex and another task is less complex. Those who know about Scrum will already think on the "Story-points" instead of the Mantis count of the issues.

There is similar old topic in this forum: https://www.mantisbt.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=21027

I use two approaches:

1. I try to split the stories so that they all can be counted as 1 story point each. This is not always effective way of working BUT will give me Mantis summary and issue trend chart that help to visualize timeline.

2. I define a floating point custom field and name it "Points". Then I need to export my project list of tasks into CSV file, open it with LibreOffice and use the spreadsheet functionality to count the points in different stages. Then I copy paste the results as numeric values into another sheet where I build the timeline sprint-by-sprint. I have some not so complex trend and noise estimations to figure out the possible ready date. I also produce the burn-down chart, which is pretty much like the issue trend chart made by Mantis.

I see that when the custom field Points would be shown on the Summary as SUM of the field of the issues in different stages, then that would already save me from exporting CSV and doing the calculations. AND when on the issue trend chart I would be able to select what would be used for the basis of the chart: Points or Count of Issues.

Sample of Summary table:

Code: Select all

SUM of Custom  |  open   |  resolved  |  closed  |  total  |   resolved ratio  |  ratio  |
Points         |   12.5  |     0.5    |   23     |   36    |  ....
Another        | .....

From technology point of view, I think that when the data type of the custom field is numeric like float or numeric, then those might be shown as a row in the SUM of Custom table, and could also be selectable for the basis of issue trend charts. Another possibility would to add for the custom field a property that tells how to show it on the Summary, like : "DoNotShow", "SUM", "Histogram", ... (Histogram is just an low priority idea for me and would be of count of issues having specific value and would be usable for strings for example).

What you think, how difficult would it be to add this into MantisBT ? If somebody wants to make it as a job then I have some charity funds for it.
cas
Posts: 1586
Joined: 11 Mar 2006, 16:08
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Re: Summary of Custom Fields

Post by cas »

The way forward on this is development of a plugin to handle this. That way all can be handled within Mantis including reporting.
When a proper definition of requirements is made, this cannot be a very difficult thing :mrgreen:
peetervois
Posts: 7
Joined: 14 Feb 2017, 19:05

Re: Summary of Custom Fields

Post by peetervois »

I am happy about your answer. I will let to settle some time the idea of defining stories/requirements for the plugin.
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