If you’ve ever worked on a web development project, no doubt you’ve had to have dealt with bug and issue tracking at some point. Whether this has been through the traditional email process where it’s hard to keep track of them or through a dedicated web app, it’s hard to find the perfect way to handle these. The dedicated apps can often be a bit cluttered and email can also be a pain to organise.
Luckily, DoneDone is here to help. It offers a clean and intuitive interface for teams of developers to easily manage and track bugs so read on to find out more!
Overview
DoneDone is a web app dedicated to making the lives of active developers on projects that extra bit easier by providing a tool that can be used to add, assign and track issues within that project. It supports integration with popular code hosting websites and these bridge the gap between the actual coding and the bug-fixing process – areas that often are separated with this particular type of development method. It also supports a clean and stunning interface that makes the process both functional and visually-pleasing.
Overview
Getting Started
After you’ve registered an account with DoneDone, you’ll find that you’ll be able to immediately dive in and begin adding your existing companies and projects to the app. If, for example, you’re working on several projects with developers from several companies, DoneDone facilitates this and provides the ability to create multiple companies and projects within the app to easily separate the issues for working on later.
Dashboard
The whole process of adding users within DoneDone is incredibly simple and they can be invited to the projects simply by providing some basic contact details or, if you’d like, they can also be imported from existing projects within the Basecamp app. For companies that already complete a lot of their management using the system, it can help to make the process of adding active team members to DoneDone that extra bit smoother.
Adding Users
Creating Issues
Your app or website is live, now what?
You can now begin using DoneDone to track issues. These can be added through the incredibly straightforward issue creation form within the app. Everything’s explained in simple terms in the right hand side and the descriptions of each section make sure that the issues, when added within the app, describe everything accurately for the developers assigned to work on the issue without having to prolong the process by requesting more information.
Adding an Issue
The issues themselves consist of a title and a description, both self-explanatory, and the description can be formatted with the Markdown syntax. Personally, I’m a lover of Markdown and I love it when an app provides the option of using Markdown to format the content and in this respect, thumbs up from me already. It also provides easy formatting tips so developers that aren’t particularly fluent with the syntax have an easy reference.
As with most other issue management apps (and task management, for that matter), there is support for two main sections that can make using the app a lot simpler: tagging and priority. The former allows certain tags to be assigned to issues to make them more searchable afterwards and the latter provides those assigning the issues with an easy way of conveying how important each one is. Appropriate levels of priority can be chosen and popular tags are also displayed to allow those creating the issues to assign them in a single click. These just make the process simpler for those developers that are searching for which tasks require their attention next.
Priority and Tagging
Reviewing Issues
When inserting the issues into the app, issue creators are given the option of designating a fixer and a verifier for each issue. These can be assigned to the same individual if required but the inclusion of this information means that the fixing of the issue and the reviewing can be completed by separate individuals, ensuring that the status of an issue can be identified by the user that may not be a developer but simply delegated with the task of ensuring that the issue is actually fixed.
From the project dashboard, filters can be applied to the issues to allow users to select only the issues they want to be listed, with a default also chosen.
Filters
In addition to the various filters that the app provides as standard, users with more specific needs can also create their own filters. By including this, DoneDone is giving users a degree of flexibility regarding the ways in which they view their required issues and it allows users to identify the more important ones based on the project’s needs.
Creating Custom Filters
When it comes to viewing each individual issue, DoneDone certainly doesn’t hold back. In addition to providing a comprehensive detailing of each of the issue’s individual settings and assets, it also provides users with a very interesting activity feed underneath the issue’s description. This contains information regarding the status of the issue and how it’s changed over time, making it incredibly easy for those that are viewing a perhaps older issue for the first time to see just how it’s progressed.
Viewing Issues
A comments feature also allows those involved with a particular issue to converse with others should they have problems or queries when attempting to fix or reproduce the error. DoneDone also provides an array of statuses for each issue that are – more-so than what other similar apps provide – realistic and descriptive, giving those involved a more specific idea of what exactly the problem is than simply “open” and “closed”.
Commenting on Issues
Final Thoughts
I’ve reviewed several issue tracking apps in the past and most have a single flaw: they were built for the needs of the team behind the app itself. I’ve found this to be a real problem with apps of most categories, actually, and it comes to a point where a lot of these apps are rendered useless for certain teams because they’re built for a particular way of working or a project in particular, and not all teams function in the same way. DoneDone understands that all projects and teams are different and certainly makes a significant effort to facilitate each.
I couldn’t find a single fault with the app: it’s well-designed, functional and has been developed with a core understanding of how developers work and the best ways in which they can complete the often painstaking process of managing issues. A perfect example of a web app that knows exactly what it needs to provide and does so effortlessly.