UI for editing workflow

[Benton, Kevin]

Gerv - nice job on a significant process improvement with providing a
way to manage status transitions from the UI.

I think that taking it a bit further might be even better.  Offering
users the ability to configure which statuses are possible versus those
that are not really helps.  I think that we're missing the ability to
configure which statuses are open versus those that are closed.  I
wonder if it wouldn't make sense to have a way to configure that list
from this page as well.  Maybe by adding a column on the left that
allows users to select Open/Closed would be intuitive like...

            | State Type | UNCONFIRMED | NEEDINFO | NEW ...
{Start}     |            |             |          |
UNCONFIRMED | [ Open |v] |             |     O    |   O
   NEEDINFO | [ Open |v] |      O      |          |   x
        NEW | [ Open |v] |      O      |     x    |
   ASSIGNED | [ Open |v] |      O      |     x    |   x
   REOPENED | [ Open |v] |      O      |     x    |   O
   RESOLVED | [Closed|v] |      O      |     O    |   O
   VERIFIED | [Closed|v] |      O      |     O    |   O
     CLOSED | [Closed|v] |      O      |     O    |   O
     BURIED | [Closed|v] |      O      |     O    |   O

For 3.2, I think we ought to rename Resolution to Sub_Status or Reason,
then add a substatus table that includes the list of statuses and
possible sub-statuses.  This is critical when processes allow a DEFERRED
or PENDING status of sorts.  For process management, it's important to
know why something is deferred, not just that it's deferred.  The same
can be said about DISCARDED - why was an issue discarded?  Then, when a
sub-status is available, for a given status, one of the sub statuses can
be required.

Kevin Benton
Senior Software Developer
MSS Silicon Design Engineering
Advanced Micro Devices
 
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> -----Original Message-----
> From: developers-owner at bugzilla.org
[mailto:developers-owner at bugzilla.org]
> On Behalf Of Gervase Markham
> Sent: Thursday, April 12, 2007 10:34 AM
> To: developers at bugzilla.org
> Subject: UI for editing workflow
> 
> LpSolit is working on custom statuses and editable workflow. I've
mocked
> up a UI for configuring what transitions are permitted.
> 
> What we are basically doing here is configuring permitted and
forbidden
> transitions in a state machine. This particular application cries out
> for a matrix where you mark a transition as yes/no at each
intersection.
> 
> http://landfill.bugzilla.org/qa30pg/page.cgi?id=editworkflow.html
> 
> [When you define a new status, you say whether it's an open status or
a
> closed one, and that drives the colour (and other things like whether
a
> resolution is required).]
> 
> Note click behaviour and tooltips. I think this UI is good because you
> can visually pick out patterns in the workflow, e.g.:
> 
> * The big blue block in the top left shows you can move from any
opened
>    state (apart from UNCO) to any other one - except you can't do
>    REOPENED -> NEW.
> 
> * The vertical line of three in the middle shows that you can REOPEN
>    from any closed state apart from BURIED.
> 
> * The diagonal line in the bottom right shows that RESOLVED ->
VERIFIED
>    -> CLOSED -> BURIED is a progression.
> 
> * The nearly-empty vertical line on the left shows there's no way back
>    to UNCONFIRMED.
> 
> Other features:
> 
> * Impossible or meaningless transitions are clearly marked by the lack
>    of a checkbox.
> 
> * It easily answers the obvious questions in *both* directions - i.e.
>    "Where can I go from UNCONFIRMED", and "How can I get to VERIFIED".
A
>    list-based system would only answer one of those easily.
> 
> What do you think?
> 
> Gerv