How should bug tracking and help tickets integrate?

Question

I have a little experience with bug tracking systems such as FogBugz where help tickets are issues are (or can be) bugs, and I have some experience using a bug tracking system internally completely separate from a help center system.

My question is, in a company with an existing (home-grown) help center system where replacing it is not an option, how should a bug tracking system (probably Mantis) be integrated into the process?

Right now help tickets get put in for issues, questions, etc and they get assigned to the appropriate person (PC Tech, Help Desk staff, or if it's an application issue they can't solve in the help desk it gets assigned to a developer). A user can put a request for small modifications or fixes to an application in a help ticket and the developer it gets assigned to will make the change at some point, apply their time to that ticket, and then close the ticket when it goes to production.

We don't currently have a bug tracking system, so I'm looking into the best way to integrate one. Should we just take the help tickets and put it into the bug tracking system if it's a bug (or issue or feature request) and then close the ticket if it's not an emergency fix? We probably don't want to expose the bug tracking system to anyone else as they wouldn't know what to put in the help center system and what to put in the bug tracker... right?

Any thoughts? Suggestions? Tips? Advice? To-dos? Not to-dos? etc...

Answer 1

Have a promote to bug button on the help desk system, that publish the ticket on the bug tracker, with the appropiate reference info.

Answer 2

Is this for a production system with end users reporting bugs, or for issue resolution during QA?

If it is the former, some live person should triage the help desk tickets and only log as a bug what really is one.

If it is the latter, you should not integrate at all.

Answer 3

Well, it's a tradeoff.

We use separate systems for help desk tickets and for bugs.

Pros:

• Workflows & requirements will probably different between devs and help desk, you can choose a system for each that fits requirements (e.g. fields that are only relevant for dev or for help desk, different kinds of email integration).
• Clear responsibilities: Help desk handles tickets, devs handle Bugs.

Cons:

• Integration will not be quite seamless (you need either automatic integration, which does not always exist, or manual back-forth links, which people may forget).

So far, we're quite happy with two products. It is occasionally annoying to have to paste links or close a ticket and a bug, but usually tickets and bugs are handled by different people anyway, so it's not a big deal.

One product might also work well, if you can find one which fits everyone's workflow.