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Webinar Recording: Making YouTrack Follow Your Process

The recording of our June 4th webinar with Dmitri Nesteruk, Making YouTrack Follow Your Process, is now available on JetBrains YouTube Channel.

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In this webinar, we demonstrated the ways YouTrack allows the issue tracking process to be customized so as to follow a defined process. We also discussed the ways in process automation is supported out of the box as well as the ways in which users can define their own custom process scenarios.

http://youtu.be/YAzV8xYF0nY

Thanks everyone who attended, hope you enjoyed the show an learned something new. We did our best to cover all the questions during the webinar and would like to share our Questions & Answers session, providing more details and useful materials.

Making YouTrack Follow Your Process Q&A Session

Q: Is it possible to pause the timer in the workTimer workflow?
A: Yes, it’s possible, you need to edit the ‘Stop timer rule’ in the following way: when State.becomes({Fixed}) || State.becomes({Paused})

Q: Is the time logged in case of changing state to any other state (e.g., Opened)?
A: Not in this particular workflow, but it can be edited to track any transitions.

Q: Will there be a language reference available for workflows in the near future?
A: Here is the Workflow Guide and here is the Workflow Language Reference Reference. You may also want to take a look at our Workflow Repository.

Q: Is there a way to have tickets flag up an email warning if they haven’t been updated after ‘x’ amount of time?
A: Yes, we have a Schedule rule for this purpose. You can even send email notification about overdue issues. We have this kind of workflow in our repository, please check: Due Date Management workflow.

Q: I would love to see a message box poping up allowing users to enter a message
A: Yes, that’s a good thing. We have this feature in our plans.

Q: What about changing the states to “won’t fix” from the combo-box of states
A: The warning message will appear on attempt to change the value from the combo-box in a same way it appears when applying the command.

Q: About the timer, does it only record time during work day hours?
A: Not this one, here is the example of the workflow rule you need:

var seconds = duration.millis / 1000;
var minutes = seconds / 60;
var hours = minutes / 60;
hours = hours – 16 * ((hours + 8) / 24);
var days = hours / 8;

minutes = minutes % 60;
hours = hours % 8;

if (days != 0) {
message(l10n ( Work time:  {days}  day(s)  {hours}  hour(s)  {minutes}  minute(s). ));
} else if (hours != 0) {
message(l10n ( Work time:  {hours}  hour(s)  {minutes}  minute(s). ));
} else {
message(l10n ( Work time:  {minutes}  minute(s). ));
}
issue.applyCommand(“add work Brief Client Review Today ” + days + “d” + hours + “h” + minutes + “m” + ” Brief Client Review Time Automagically Logged”);

Q: Is it possible to attach a state machine to a specific type of ticket, for example to use different state machines for bugs and normal tasks?
A: Nope, unfortunately not at the moment. However, we have this feature in our plans.

Q: I would like to know how to “unarchive” an archived sprint.
A: Sprint = Version (Fix version by default) in YouTrack. Please navigate to Administration->Projects->Project_Name->Fields-> choose the Version field that you have chosen to be used for Sprints on the Agile board. Open its Value Bundle, enable showing archived versions, and hit ‘Undo Archive’ for the version you need.

Q: Does YouTrack keep track of a “rank” or order in which to complete the tasks?
A:  Yes, YouTrack keeps the tasks order in several ways:
1. You can use ‘depends on’ link between issues to keep the order you need.
2. You can keep custom order in the backlog by dragging your tasks around.
3.You can also keep the order on the Agile board.

Q: In the Agile boards, how can I sort work in the backlog in the order that I want the work done?
A: You can sort the tasks in the backlog by dragging them around. The order will be kept on the Agile board and on the Issues list.

Q: How would I create a report which shows me current state (time estimated/time spent) of each project in the current sprint?
A: We’ll add this type of  Time Report to YouTrack Harmony, thanks!

Q: In the Agile board, sometimes it shows me the remaining time in the header, sometimes not. What are the conditions, that the remaining times are shown?
A: You need to enable Time Tracking for the projects added to the Agile board.

Q: Is it possible to add custom fields to a project, not a ticket? We use project leader and project owner and would like to store them in the project.
A: It’s not possible, but there is a workaround: creating a meta project with issues = roles in the project.  Please contact us for the details.

Q: Is it possible to show the priority & the estimated time for the tasks in the backlog?
A: On the issues list only. Here is the feature request, please vote.

Q: Is it possible to show the estimated time and the spent time in the structured ticket view?
A: Nope, it’s not possible at the moment. Here is the feature request, please vote and comment.

Q: Hmm, not working with JDK 1.8.
A:  JDK 1.8 is supported starting from YouTrack 5.1.3. Please check the Supported Environments for more details.

About the Presenter:

Dmitri NesterukDmitri Nesteruk is a developer, speaker, podcaster and a technical evangelist for JetBrains. His interests lie in software development and integration practices in the areas of computation, quantitative finance and algorithmic trading. His technological interests include C#, F# and C++ programming as well high-performance computing using technologies such as CUDA. Dmitiri has been a C# MVP since 2009.

Thanks everyone who joined us, hope you enjoyed the show an learned something new.  Follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about the upcoming webinars and events!