path: root/docs/xml/using.xml

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<chapter id="using">
  <title>Using Bugzilla</title>

  <section id="using-intro">
    <title>Introduction</title>
    <para>This section contains information for end-users of Bugzilla.  There
    is a Bugzilla test installation, called
    <ulink url="http://landfill.bugzilla.org/">Landfill</ulink>, which you are
    welcome to play with (if it's up). However, not all of the Bugzilla
    installations there will necessarily have all Bugzilla features enabled,
    and different installations run different versions, so some things may not
    quite work as this document describes.</para>
  </section>
      
  <section id="myaccount">
    <title>Create a Bugzilla Account</title>

    <para>If you want to use Bugzilla, first you need to create an account.
    Consult with the administrator responsible for your installation of
    Bugzilla for the URL you should use to access it. If you're
    test-driving Bugzilla, use this URL: 
    <ulink url="&landfillbase;"/>.
    </para>

    <orderedlist>
      <listitem>
        <para>Click the 
        <quote>Open a new Bugzilla account</quote>

        link, enter your email address and, optionally, your name in the
        spaces provided, then click 
        <quote>Create Account</quote>

        .</para>
      </listitem>

      <listitem>
        <para>Within moments, you should receive an email to the address
        you provided, which contains your login name (generally the
        same as the email address), and a password. 
        This password is randomly generated, but can be
        changed to something more memorable.</para>
      </listitem>

      <listitem>
        <para>Click the 
        <quote>Log In</quote>
        link in the footer at the bottom of the page in your browser,
        enter your email address and password into the spaces provided, and
        click 
        <quote>Login</quote>.
        </para>

      </listitem>
    </orderedlist>

    <para>You are now logged in. Bugzilla uses cookies to remember you are
    logged in so, unless you have cookies disabled or your IP address changes, 
    you should not have to log in again.</para>
  </section>

  <section id="bug_page">
    <title>Anatomy of a Bug</title>

    <para>The core of Bugzilla is the screen which displays a particular
    bug. It's a good place to explain some Bugzilla concepts. 
    <ulink
    url="&landfillbase;show_bug.cgi?id=1">
    Bug 1 on Landfill</ulink>

    is a good example. Note that the labels for most fields are hyperlinks;
    clicking them will take you to context-sensitive help on that
    particular field. Fields marked * may not be present on every
    installation of Bugzilla.</para>

    <orderedlist>
      <listitem>
        <para>
        <emphasis>Product and Component</emphasis>: 
        Bugs are divided up by Product and Component, with a Product
        having one or more Components in it. For example,
        bugzilla.mozilla.org's "Bugzilla" Product is composed of several
        Components: 
        <simplelist>
        <member>
        <emphasis>Administration:</emphasis>
        Administration of a Bugzilla installation.</member>

        <member>
        <emphasis>Bugzilla-General:</emphasis>
        Anything that doesn't fit in the other components, or spans
        multiple components.</member>

        <member>
        <emphasis>Creating/Changing Bugs:</emphasis>
        Creating, changing, and viewing bugs.</member>

        <member>
        <emphasis>Documentation:</emphasis>
        The Bugzilla documentation, including The Bugzilla Guide.</member>

        <member>
        <emphasis>Email:</emphasis>
        Anything to do with email sent by Bugzilla.</member>

        <member>
        <emphasis>Installation:</emphasis>
        The installation process of Bugzilla.</member>

        <member>
        <emphasis>Query/Buglist:</emphasis>
        Anything to do with searching for bugs and viewing the
        buglists.</member>

        <member>
        <emphasis>Reporting/Charting:</emphasis>
        Getting reports from Bugzilla.</member>

        <member>
        <emphasis>User Accounts:</emphasis>
        Anything about managing a user account from the user's perspective.
        Saved queries, creating accounts, changing passwords, logging in,
        etc.</member>

        <member>
        <emphasis>User Interface:</emphasis>
        General issues having to do with the user interface cosmetics (not
        functionality) including cosmetic issues, HTML templates,
        etc.</member>
        </simplelist>
        </para>
      </listitem>

      <listitem>
        <para>
        <emphasis>Status and Resolution:</emphasis>

        These define exactly what state the bug is in - from not even
        being confirmed as a bug, through to being fixed and the fix
        confirmed by Quality Assurance. The different possible values for
        Status and Resolution on your installation should be documented in the
        context-sensitive help for those items.</para>
      </listitem>

      <listitem>
        <para>
        <emphasis>Assigned To:</emphasis>
        The person responsible for fixing the bug.</para>
      </listitem>

      <listitem>
        <para>
        <emphasis>*URL:</emphasis>
        A URL associated with the bug, if any.</para>
      </listitem>

      <listitem>
        <para>
        <emphasis>Summary:</emphasis>
        A one-sentence summary of the problem.</para>
      </listitem>

      <listitem>
        <para>
        <emphasis>*Status Whiteboard:</emphasis>
        (a.k.a. Whiteboard) A free-form text area for adding short notes
        and tags to a bug.</para>
      </listitem>

      <listitem>
        <para>
        <emphasis>*Keywords:</emphasis>
        The administrator can define keywords which you can use to tag and
        categorise bugs - e.g. The Mozilla Project has keywords like crash
        and regression.</para>
      </listitem>

      <listitem>
        <para>
        <emphasis>Platform and OS:</emphasis>
        These indicate the computing environment where the bug was
        found.</para>
      </listitem>

      <listitem>
        <para>
        <emphasis>Version:</emphasis>
        The "Version" field is usually used for versions of a product which
        have been released, and is set to indicate which versions of a
        Component have the particular problem the bug report is
        about.</para>
      </listitem>

      <listitem>
        <para>
        <emphasis>Priority:</emphasis>
        The bug assignee uses this field to prioritise his or her bugs.
        It's a good idea not to change this on other people's bugs.</para>
      </listitem>

      <listitem>
        <para>
        <emphasis>Severity:</emphasis>
        This indicates how severe the problem is - from blocker
        ("application unusable") to trivial ("minor cosmetic issue"). You
        can also use this field to indicate whether a bug is an enhancement
        request.</para>
      </listitem>

      <listitem>
        <para>
        <emphasis>*Target:</emphasis>
        (a.k.a. Target Milestone) A future version by which the bug is to
        be fixed. e.g. The Bugzilla Project's milestones for future
        Bugzilla versions are 2.18, 2.20, 3.0, etc. Milestones are not
        restricted to numbers, thought - you can use any text strings, such
        as dates.</para>
      </listitem>

      <listitem>
        <para>
        <emphasis>Reporter:</emphasis>
        The person who filed the bug.</para>
      </listitem>

      <listitem>
        <para>
        <emphasis>CC list:</emphasis>
        A list of people who get mail when the bug changes.</para>
      </listitem>

      <listitem>
        <para>
        <emphasis>Attachments:</emphasis>
        You can attach files (e.g. testcases or patches) to bugs. If there
        are any attachments, they are listed in this section.</para>
      </listitem>

      <listitem>
        <para>
        <emphasis>*Dependencies:</emphasis>
        If this bug cannot be fixed unless other bugs are fixed (depends
        on), or this bug stops other bugs being fixed (blocks), their
        numbers are recorded here.</para>
      </listitem>

      <listitem>
        <para>
        <emphasis>*Votes:</emphasis>
        Whether this bug has any votes.</para>
      </listitem>

      <listitem>
        <para>
        <emphasis>Additional Comments:</emphasis>
        You can add your two cents to the bug discussion here, if you have
        something worthwhile to say.</para>
      </listitem>
    </orderedlist>
  </section>

  <section id="lifecycle">
    <title>Life Cycle of a Bug</title>

    <para>
      The life cycle, also known as work flow, of a bug is currently hardcoded
      into Bugzilla. <xref linkend="lifecycle-image"/> contains a graphical
      repsentation of this life cycle. If you wish to customize this image for
      your site, the <ulink url="../images/bzLifecycle.xml">diagram file</ulink>
      is available in <ulink url="http://www.gnome.org/projects/dia">Dia's</ulink>
      native XML format.
    </para>

    <figure id="lifecycle-image">
      <title>Lifecycle of a Bugzilla Bug</title>
      <mediaobject>
        <imageobject>
          <imagedata fileref="../images/bzLifecycle.png" scale="66" />
        </imageobject>
      </mediaobject>
    </figure>
  </section>

  <section id="query">
    <title>Searching for Bugs</title>

    <para>The Bugzilla Search page is is the interface where you can find
    any bug report, comment, or patch currently in the Bugzilla system. You
    can play with it here: 
    <ulink url="&landfillbase;query.cgi"/>.</para>

    <para>The Search page has controls for selecting different possible
    values for all of the fields in a bug, as described above. For some
    fields, multiple values can be selected. In those cases, Bugzilla
    returns bugs where the content of the field matches any one of the selected
    values. If none is selected, then the field can take any value.</para>

    <para>Once you've run a search, you can save it as a Saved Search, which 
    appears in the page footer.</para>

    <para>Highly advanced querying is done using Boolean Charts. See the
    Boolean Charts help link on the Search page for more information.</para>
  </section>

  <section id="list">
    <title>Bug Lists</title>

    <para>If you run a search, a list of matching bugs will be returned.
    </para>

    <para>The format of the list is configurable. For example, it can be
    sorted by clicking the column headings. Other useful features can be
    accessed using the links at the bottom of the list: 
    <simplelist>
      <member>
      <emphasis>Long Format:</emphasis>

      this gives you a large page with a non-editable summary of the fields
      of each bug.</member>

      <member>
      <emphasis>CSV:</emphasis>

      get the buglist as comma-separated values, for import into e.g.
      a spreadsheet.</member>
      
      <member>
      <emphasis>Change Columns:</emphasis>

      change the bug attributes which appear in the list.</member>

      <member>
      <emphasis>Change several bugs at once:</emphasis>

      If your account is sufficiently empowered, you can make the same
      change to all the bugs in the list - for example, changing their
      owner.</member>

      <member>
      <emphasis>Send mail to bug owners:</emphasis>

      Sends mail to the owners of all bugs on the list.</member>

      <member>
      <emphasis>Edit Search:</emphasis>

      If you didn't get exactly the results you were looking for, you can
      return to the Query page through this link and make small revisions
      to the query you just made so you get more accurate results.</member>
      
      <member>
      <emphasis>Remember Search As:</emphasis>

      You can give a search a name and remember it; a link will appear
      in your page footer giving you quick access to run it again later.
      </member>
    </simplelist>
    </para>
  </section>

  <section id="bugreports">
    <title>Filing Bugs</title>

    <para>Years of bug writing experience has been distilled for your
    reading pleasure into the 
    <ulink
    url="&landfillbase;page.cgi?id=bug-writing.html">
    Bug Writing Guidelines</ulink>. 
    While some of the advice is Mozilla-specific, the basic principles of
    reporting Reproducible, Specific bugs, isolating the Product you are
    using, the Version of the Product, the Component which failed, the
    Hardware Platform, and Operating System you were using at the time of
    the failure go a long way toward ensuring accurate, responsible fixes
    for the bug that bit you.</para>

    <para>The procedure for filing a test bug is as follows:</para>

    <orderedlist>
      <listitem>
        <para>Go to 
        <ulink url="&landfillbase;">
        Landfill</ulink>
        in your browser and click 
        <ulink
        url="&landfillbase;enter_bug.cgi">
        Enter a new bug report</ulink>.
        </para>
      </listitem>

      <listitem>
        <para>Select a product - any one will do.</para>
      </listitem>

      <listitem>
        <para>Fill in the fields. Bugzilla should have made reasonable
        guesses, based upon your browser, for the "Platform" and "OS"
        drop-down boxes. If they are wrong, change them.</para>
      </listitem>

      <listitem>
        <para>Select "Commit" and send in your bug report.</para>
      </listitem>
    </orderedlist>
    
      <para>Try to make sure that everything said in the summary is also 
      said in the first comment. Summaries are often updated and this will
      ensure your original information is easily accessible.
      </para>
      
      <para>
      You do not need to put "any" or similar strings in the URL field.
      If there is no specific URL associated with the bug, leave this 
      field blank.
      </para> 

      <para>If you feel a bug you filed was incorrectly marked as a
      DUPLICATE of another, please question it in your bug, not      
      the bug it was duped to. Feel free to CC the person who duped it 
      if they are not already CCed.
      </para>
      
  </section>

  <section id="patchviewer">
    <title>Patch Viewer</title>

    <para>Viewing and reviewing patches in Bugzilla is often difficult due to
    lack of context, improper format and the inherent readability issues that
    raw patches present.  Patch Viewer is an enhancement to Bugzilla designed
    to fix that by offering increased context, linking to sections, and
    integrating with Bonsai, LXR and CVS.</para>

    <para>Patch viewer allows you to:</para>

    <simplelist>
      <member>View patches in color, with side-by-side view rather than trying
      to interpret the contents of the patch.</member>
      <member>See the difference between two patches.</member>
      <member>Get more context in a patch.</member>
      <member>Collapse and expand sections of a patch for easy
      reading.</member>
      <member>Link to a particular section of a patch for discussion or
      review</member>
      <member>Go to Bonsai or LXR to see more context, blame, and
      cross-references for the part of the patch you are looking at</member>
      <member>Create a rawtext unified format diff out of any patch, no
      matter what format it came from</member>
    </simplelist>

    <section id="patchviewer_view">
      <title>Viewing Patches in Patch Viewer</title>
      <para>The main way to view a patch in patch viewer is to click on the
      "Diff" link next to a patch in the Attachments list on a bug. You may
      also do this within the edit window by clicking the "View Attachment As
      Diff" button in the Edit Attachment screen.</para>
    </section>

    <section id="patchviewer_diff">
      <title>Seeing the Difference Between Two Patches</title>
      <para>To see the difference between two patches, you must first view the
      newer patch in Patch Viewer.  Then select the older patch from the
      dropdown at the top of the page ("Differences between [dropdown] and
      this patch") and click the "Diff" button. This will show you what
      is new or changed in the newer patch.</para>
    </section>

    <section id="patchviewer_context">
      <title>Getting More Context in a Patch</title>
      <para>To get more context in a patch, you put a number in the textbox at
      the top of Patch Viewer ("Patch / File / [textbox]") and hit enter.
      This will give you that many lines of context before and after each
      change. Alternatively, you can click on the "File" link there and it
      will show each change in the full context of the file. This feature only
      works against files that were diffed using "cvs diff".</para>
    </section>

    <section id="patchviewer_collapse">
      <title>Collapsing and Expanding Sections of a Patch</title>
      <para>To view only a certain set of files in a patch (for example, if a
      patch is absolutely huge and you want to only review part of it at a
      time), you can click the "(+)" and "(-)" links next to each file (to
      expand it or collapse it). If you want to collapse all files or expand
      all files, you can click the "Collapse All" and "Expand All" links at the
      top of the page.</para>
    </section>

    <section id="patchviewer_link">
      <title>Linking to a Section of a Patch</title>
      <para>To link to a section of a patch (for example, if you want to be
      able to give someone a URL to show them which part you are talking
      about) you simply click the "Link Here" link on the section header. The
      resulting URL can be copied and used in discussion. (Copy Link
      Location in Mozilla works as well.)</para>
    </section>

    <section id="patchviewer_bonsai_lxr">
      <title>Going to Bonsai and LXR</title>
      <para>To go to Bonsai to get blame for the lines you are interested in,
      you can click the "Lines XX-YY" link on the section header you are
      interested in. This works even if the patch is against an old
      version of the file, since Bonsai stores all versions of the file.</para>

      <para>To go to LXR, you click on the filename on the file header
      (unfortunately, since LXR only does the most recent version, line
      numbers are likely to rot).</para>
    </section>

    <section id="patchviewer_unified_diff">
      <title>Creating a Unified Diff</title>
      <para>If the patch is not in a format that you like, you can turn it
      into a unified diff format by clicking the "Raw Unified" link at the top
      of the page.</para>
    </section>

  </section>

  <section id="hintsandtips">
    <title>Hints and Tips</title>
    
    <para>This section distills some Bugzilla tips and best practices
    that have been developed.</para>

    <section>
      <title>Autolinkification</title>
      <para>Bugzilla comments are plain text - so typing &lt;U&gt; will
      produce less-than, U, greater-than rather than underlined text.
      However, Bugzilla will automatically make hyperlinks out of certain
      sorts of text in comments. For example, the text 
      "http://www.bugzilla.org" will be turned into a link:
      <ulink url="http://www.bugzilla.org"/>.
      Other strings which get linkified in the obvious manner are:
      <simplelist>
        <member>bug 12345</member>
        <member>comment 7</member>
        <member>bug 23456, comment 53</member>
        <member>attachment 4321</member>
        <member>mailto:george@example.com</member>
        <member>george@example.com</member>
        <member>ftp://ftp.mozilla.org</member>
        <member>Most other sorts of URL</member>
      </simplelist>
      </para>
      
      <para>A corollary here is that if you type a bug number in a comment,
      you should put the word "bug" before it, so it gets autolinkified
      for the convenience of others.
      </para>
    </section>

    <section id="quicksearch">
      <title>Quicksearch</title>

      <para>Quicksearch is a single-text-box query tool which uses
      metacharacters to indicate what is to be searched. For example, typing
      "<filename>foo|bar</filename>" 
      into Quicksearch would search for "foo" or "bar" in the 
      summary and status whiteboard of a bug; adding 
      "<filename>:BazProduct</filename>" would
      search only in that product.
      </para>

      <para>You'll find the Quicksearch box on Bugzilla's
      front page, along with a 
      <ulink url="../../quicksearch.html">Help</ulink> 
      link which details how to use it.</para>
    </section>
    
    <section id="commenting">
      <title>Comments</title>

      <para>If you are changing the fields on a bug, only comment if
      either you have something pertinent to say, or Bugzilla requires it.
      Otherwise, you may spam people unnecessarily with bug mail.
      To take an example: a user can set up their account to filter out messages
      where someone just adds themselves to the CC field of a bug
      (which happens a lot.) If you come along, add yourself to the CC field,
      and add a comment saying "Adding self to CC", then that person
      gets a pointless piece of mail they would otherwise have avoided.
      </para>
      
      <para>
      Don't use sigs in comments. Signing your name ("Bill") is acceptable,
      if you do it out of habit, but full mail/news-style
      four line ASCII art creations are not.
      </para>      
    </section>
    
    <section id="attachments">
      <title>Attachments</title>
      
      <para>
      Use attachments, rather than comments, for large chunks of ASCII data,
      such as trace, debugging output files, or log files. That way, it doesn't
      bloat the bug for everyone who wants to read it, and cause people to
      receive fat, useless mails.
      </para>      

      <para>Trim screenshots. There's no need to show the whole screen if
      you are pointing out a single-pixel problem.
      </para>
      
      <para>Don't attach simple test cases (e.g. one HTML file, one 
      CSS file and an image) as a ZIP file. Instead, upload them in 
      reverse order and edit the referring file so that they point to the
      attached files. This way, the test case works immediately 
      out of the bug.
      </para>
      <para>Bugzilla stores and uses a Content-Type for each attachment 
      (e.g. text/html). To download an attachment as a different 
      Content-Type (e.g. application/xhtml+xml), you can override this 
      using a 'content-type' parameter on the URL, e.g.
      <filename>&amp;content-type=text/plain</filename>.
      </para>     
    </section>
  </section>
  
  <section id="userpreferences">
    <title>User Preferences</title>

    <para>Once you have logged in, you can customise various aspects of 
    Bugzilla via the "Edit prefs" link in the page footer.
    The preferences are split into three tabs:</para>

    <section id="accountsettings" xreflabel="Account Settings">
      <title>Account Settings</title>

      <para>On this tab, you can change your basic account information,
      including your password, email address and real name. For security
      reasons, in order to change anything on this page you must type your 
      <emphasis>current</emphasis>
      password into the 
      <quote>Password</quote>
      field at the top of the page. 
      If you attempt to change your email address, a confirmation
      email is sent to both the old and new addresses, with a link to use to
      confirm the change. This helps to prevent account hijacking.</para>
    </section>

    <section id="emailsettings">
      <title>Email Settings</title>

      <para>
        This tab controls the amount of email Bugzilla sends you.
      </para>

      <para>
        The first item on this page is marked <quote>Users to watch</quote>.
        When you enter one or more comma-delineated user accounts (usually email
        addresses) into the text entry box, you will receive a copy of all the
        bugmail those users are sent (security settings permitting).
        This powerful functionality enables seamless transitions as developers
        change projects or users go on holiday.
      </para>

      <note>
        <para>
          The ability to watch other users may not be available in all
          Bugzilla installations. If you don't see this feature, and feel
          that you need it, speak to your administrator.
        </para>
      </note>

      <para>
        In general, users have almost complete control over how much (or
        how little) email Bugzilla sends them. If you want to receive the
        maximum amount of email possible, click the <quote>Enable All 
        Mail</quote> button. If you don't want to receive any email from
        Bugzilla at all, click the <quote>Disable All Mail</quote> button.
      </para>

      <note>
        <para>
          Your Bugzilla administrator can stop a user from receiving
          bugmail by adding the user's name to the 
          <filename>data/nomail</filename> file. This is a drastic step
          best taken only for disabled accounts, as it overrides the 
          the user's individual mail preferences.
        </para>
      </note>
  
      <para>
        If you'd like to set your bugmail to something besides
        'Completely ON' and 'Completely OFF', the
        <quote>Field/recipient specific options</quote> table
        allows you to do just that. The rows of the table
        define events that can happen to a bug -- things like
        attachments being added, new comments being made, the
        priority changing, etc. The columns in the table define
        your relationship with the bug:
      </para>

      <itemizedlist spacing="compact">
        <listitem>
          <para>
            Reporter - Where you are the person who initially
            reported the bug. Your name/account appears in the
            <quote>Reporter:</quote> field.
          </para>
        </listitem>
        <listitem>
          <para>
            Assignee - Where you are the person who has been
            designated as the one responsible for the bug. Your
            name/account appears in the <quote>Assigned To:</quote>
            field of the bug.
          </para>
        </listitem>
        <listitem>
          <para>
            QA Contact - You are one of the designated
            QA Contacts for the bug. Your account appears in the 
            <quote>QA Contact:</quote> text-box of the bug.
          </para>
        </listitem>
        <listitem>
          <para>
            CC - You are on the list CC List for the bug.
            Your account appears in the <quote>CC:</quote> text box
            of the bug.
          </para>
        </listitem>
        <listitem>
          <para>
            Voter - You have placed one or more votes for the bug.
            Your account appears only if someone clicks on the 
            <quote>Show votes for this bug</quote> link on the bug.
          </para>
        </listitem>
      </itemizedlist>


      <note>
        <para>
          Some columns may not be visible for your installation, depending
          on your site's configuration.
        </para>
      </note>

      <para>
        To fine-tune your bugmail, decide the events for which you want
        to receive bugmail; then decide if you want to receive it all
        the time (enable the checkbox for every column), or only when
        you have a certain relationship with a bug (enable the checkbox
        only for those columns). For example: if you didn't want to
        receive mail when someone added themselves to the CC list, you
        could uncheck all the boxes in the <quote>CC Field Changes</quote>
        line. As another example, if you never wanted to receive email
        on bugs you reported unless the bug was resolved, you would
        un-check all boxes in the <quote>Reporter</quote> column
        except for the one on the <quote>The bug is resolved or
        verified</quote> row.
      </para>

      <note>
        <para>
          Bugzilla adds the <quote>X-Bugzilla-Reason</quote> header to
          all bugmail it sends, describing the recipient's relationship
          (AssignedTo, Reporter, QAContact, CC, or Voter) to the bug.
          This header can be used to do further client-side filtering.
        </para>
      </note>

      <para>
        Two items not in the table (<quote>Email me when someone
        asks me to set a flag</quote> and <quote>Email me when someone
        sets a flag I asked for</quote>) define how you want to
        receive bugmail with regards to flags. Their use is quite
        straightforward; enable the checkboxes if you want Bugzilla to
        send you mail under either of the above conditions.
      </para>

      <para>
        By default, Bugzilla sends out email regardless of who made the
        change... even if you were the one responsible for generating
        the email in the first place. If you don't care to receive bugmail
        from your own changes, check the box marked <quote>Only email me
        reports of changes made by other people</quote>.
      </para>

    </section>

    <section id="permissionsettings">
      <title>Permissions</title>
      
      <para>This is a purely informative page which outlines your current
      permissions on this installation of Bugzilla - what product groups you
      are in, and whether you can edit bugs or perform various administration
      functions.</para>
    </section>
  </section>
  
  
  <section id="reporting">
    <title>Reports and Charts</title>
    
    <para>As well as the standard buglist, Bugzilla has two more ways of
    viewing sets of bugs. These are the reports (which give different
    views of the current state of the database) and charts (which plot
    the changes in particular sets of bugs over time.)</para>
    
    <section id="reports">
      <title>Reports</title>
      
      <para>
        A report is a view of the current state of the bug database.
      </para>
      
      <para>
        You can run either an HTML-table-based report, or a graphical
        line/pie/bar-chart-based one. The two have different pages to
        define them, but are close cousins - once you've defined and
        viewed a report, you can switch between any of the different
        views of the data at will.
      </para>
      
      <para>
        Both report types are based on the idea of defining a set of bugs
        using the standard search interface, and then choosing some
        aspect of that set to plot on the horizontal and/or vertical axes.
        You can also get a form of 3-dimensional report by choosing to have
        multiple images or tables.
      </para>
      
      <para>
        So, for example, you could use the search form to choose "all
        bugs in the WorldControl product", and then plot their severity
        against their component to see which component had had the largest
        number of bad bugs reported against it. 
      </para>
      
      <para>
        Once you've defined your parameters and hit "Generate Report",
        you can switch between HTML, CSV, Bar, Line and Pie. (Note: Pie
        is only available if you didn't define a vertical axis, as pie
        charts don't have one.) The other controls are fairly self-explanatory;
        you can change the size of the image if you find text is overwriting
        other text, or the bars are too thin to see.
      </para>
      
    </section>
    
    <section id="charts">
      <title>Charts</title>
      
      <para>
        A chart is a view of the state of the bug database over time.
      </para>
      
      <para>
        Bugzilla currently has two charting systems - Old Charts and New 
        Charts. Old Charts have been part of Bugzilla for a long time; they
        chart each status and resolution for each product, and that's all.
        They are deprecated, and going away soon - we won't say any more 
        about them.
        New Charts are the future - they allow you to chart anything you
        can define as a search.
      </para>
      
      <note>
        <para>
          Both charting forms require the administrator to set up the
          data-gathering script. If you can't see any charts, ask them whether
          they have done so.
        </para>
      </note>
      
      <para>
        An individual line on a chart is called a data set.
        All data sets are organised into categories and subcategories. The 
        data sets that Bugzilla defines automatically use the Product name 
        as a Category and Component names as Subcategories, but there is no 
        need for you to follow that naming scheme with your own charts if 
        you don't want to.
      </para>
      
      <para>
        Data sets may be public or private. Everyone sees public data sets in
        the list, but only their creator sees private data sets. Only 
        administrators can make data sets public.
        No two data sets, even two private ones, can have the same set of 
        category, subcategory and name. So if you are creating private data 
        sets, one idea is to have the Category be your username.
      </para>
      
      <section>
        <title>Creating Charts</title>
        
        <para>
          You create a chart by selecting a number of data sets from the
          list, and pressing Add To List for each. In the List Of Data Sets
          To Plot, you can define the label that data set will have in the
          chart's legend, and also ask Bugzilla to Sum a number of data sets 
          (e.g. you could Sum data sets representing RESOLVED, VERIFIED and 
          CLOSED in a particular product to get a data set representing all 
          the resolved bugs in that product.)
        </para>

        <para>
          If you've erroneously added a data set to the list, select it
          using the checkbox and click Remove. Once you add more than one 
          data set, a "Grand Total" line
          automatically appears at the bottom of the list. If you don't want
          this, simply remove it as you would remove any other line.
        </para>
        
        <para>
          You may also choose to plot only over a certain date range, and
          to cumulate the results - that is, to plot each one using the 
          previous one as a baseline, so the top line gives a sum of all 
          the data sets. It's easier to try than to explain :-)
        </para>

        <para>
          Once a data set is in the list, one can also perform certain 
          actions on it. For example, one can edit the
          data set's parameters (name, frequency etc.) if it's one you
          created or if you are an administrator.
        </para>

        <para>
           Once you are happy, click Chart This List to see the chart.
        </para>

      </section>
      
      <section>
        <title>Creating New Data Sets</title>
        
        <para>
          You may also create new data sets of your own. To do this,
          click the "create a new data set" link on the Create Chart page.
          This takes you to a search-like interface where you can define
          the search that Bugzilla will plot. At the bottom of the page,
          you choose the category, sub-category and name of your new
          data set. 
        </para>

        <para>
          If you have sufficient permissions, you can make the data set public,
          and reduce the frequency of data collection to less than the default
          seven days.
        </para>
      </section>
      
    </section>
    
  </section>
  
  <section id="flags">
    <title>Flags</title>
    
    <para>
      A flag is a kind of status that can be set on bugs or attachments
      to indicate that the bugs/attachments are in a certain state.
      Each installation can define its own set of flags that can be set
      on bugs or attachments.
    </para>
    
    <para>
      If your installation has defined a flag, you can set or unset that flag,
      and if your administrator has enabled requesting of flags, you can submit
      a request for another user to set the flag.
    </para>
    
    <para>
      To set a flag, select either "+" or "-" from the drop-down menu next to
      the name of the flag in the "Flags" list.  The meaning of these values are
      flag-specific and thus cannot be described in this documentation,
      but by way of example, setting a flag named "review" to "+" may indicate
      that the bug/attachment has passed review, while setting it to "-"
      may indicate that the bug/attachment has failed review.
    </para>
    
    <para>
      To unset a flag, click its drop-down menu and select the blank value.
    </para>
    
    <para>
      If your administrator has enabled requests for a flag, request a flag
      by selecting "?" from the drop-down menu and then entering the username
      of the user you want to set the flag in the text field next to the menu.
    </para>
    
    <para>
      A set flag appears in bug reports and on "edit attachment" pages with the
      abbreviated username of the user who set the flag prepended to the
      flag name. For example, if Jack sets a "review" flag to "+", it appears
      as Jack: review [ + ]
    </para>
  
    <para>
      A requested flag appears with the user who requested the flag prepended
      to the flag name and the user who has been requested to set the flag
      appended to the flag name within parentheses.  For example, if Jack
      asks Jill for review, it appears as Jack: review [ ? ] (Jill).
    </para>
  </section>

</chapter>

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