158205 - support for multiple bug activity log display

Status: NEW

(Bugzilla :: Bugzilla-General, enhancement)

Description

[Sidra M. S. Vitale]

This RFE is growing out of an request from one of my internal users of Bugzilla
at our company, who want to see multiple activity logs at once.  So, 'wouldn't
it be nice if'...show_activity.cgi could accept a list of bug ids and display
their concatenated activity logs, in the order of the ids as listed?

Comment 1

[Sidra M. S. Vitale]

Attachment: changes to DumpBugActivity to support use in mutiple bug dump scenario

return html string instead of printing to browser directly
include table 'header' indicating bug id and link to show_bug.cgi

Comment 2

[Sidra M. S. Vitale]

Attachment: rewrite show_activity.cgi to support multiple bug activity log display

accepts 3 input methods --

'id' field with single bug id;
'ids' field with colon-delimited list of bug ids, a la '1:2:3'.  Useful in an
encoded-URL scenario.
id_NNN field, one per id, where NNN is the bug id, and the value of
FORM{'id_NNN'} is not checked.	Useful in a hidden-form-variable scenario.

Runs ValidateBugID() on each bug id listed, which exits upon error.

Not directly dependent on the changes to DumpBugActivity in attachment 91873 [details] [diff] [review],
but certainly well-served by them.

Comment 3

[Sidra M. S. Vitale]

Attachment: process_bug.cgi calls to DumpBugActivity revised

the _other_ script that uses the function DumpBugActivity

Comment 4

[Sidra M. S. Vitale]

Attachment: show multiple bug activity logs [template]

substantial rewrite of template to support multiple bugs' activity logs, while
addressing cases where no bug id was provided, just 1, and some number N of
bugs.

Comment 5

[Sidra M. S. Vitale]

Attachment: show_activity.cgi rewrite to support display of activity logs for multiple bugs

requires new bug/activity/show.html.tmpl, see attachment 91898 [details] [diff] [review]

Assembles bug list from one or more of 3 different formats:
1.  use of one FORM{'id'} field-value pair.
2.  colon-delimited list of ids as value of FORM{'ids'} field.
3.  id_NNN fields in FORM where NNN is the bug id.
Note:  checks all three methods, so mix and match is permitted.

Comment 6

[Sidra M. S. Vitale]

Attachment: Providing bug id and show_bug.cgi link inside bug's activity log table

not required, but useful

Comment 7

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

I don't actually own this page - moving to Bugzilla-General. 

I'm not convinced that this large change makes the activity page any more
useful? Sidra - why does your user want this function?

Also, these patches are against 2.16? Or the current trunk?

Gerv

Comment 8

[Sidra M. S. Vitale]

Bugzilla version 2.14.1 for the first 3 attachments [currently in use internally
at our company] now marked as obsolete here, and current-from-CVS for the second
3 attachments (07/18/02 19:59, 20:05, 20:07).

In the long term, my users are asking me to extend BZ's reporting tools to
provide time window snapshots of all bugs regardless of status, with "some way"
to then view activity for specific groups of bugs [i.e., all the bugs marked
status 'NEW' in the past 7 days sorted by engineer, all marked 'ASSIGNED', all
'CLOSED'] *as that group* instead of individually.

Right now there's just summary information of all bugs, ever.  

Target:  project managers, higher level types who want an idea of what an
engineer did this past week, or the activity against a specific product this
past week.

So, multi-bug support for activity log display would play a part in supporting
the output of those reports.

Comment 9

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

Are you sure the bug activity tables are the right way to go about this? They
seem very fine-grained and detailed for a "summary report" of this nature.

If you want activity for an engineer in a week, try a query like this, which is
all the bugs I've fixed this month (not very many, sadly):
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/buglist.cgi?email1=gerv%40mozilla.org&emailtype1=substring&emailassigned_to1=1&chfield=resolution&chfieldfrom=2002-07-01&chfieldto=Now&chfieldvalue=FIXED&cmdtype=doit
Load the query up and edit it to see what I did. It's quite easy.

And for a product, you can do the same idea.

Gerv

Comment 10

[Sidra M. S. Vitale]

That is exactly what I recommended to my users, to which the response was,
basically, "I want a table like what reports.cgi gives me, only better".  This
is coming from managers, not day-to-day users, but people who want to see total
bugs processed and how quickly and do some metrics and write reports about it all.

'better' so far means

a) time sensitivity, so almost the same 3 tables currently output by
reports.cgi, but just for a specified time frame (i.e., "the last seven|10|14
days") instead of all open bugs.
b) the capability to 'at-a-glance' drill into some group of bugs summed up in a
total in one of those tables, by seeing all their activity logs bunched
together.  Not really wanting to know what the bugs themselves are about, but
wanting to know what happened to them.

These submitted changes to show_activity would support b) .  

I was waiting for more input from my users before broaching a roadmap suggestion
or RFE on Bugzilla's reporting functionality, to see if I could define the
general case(s), but maybe I should just go ahead and file something now?  

Comment 11

[Dave Miller [:justdave]]

Bugzilla 2.20 feature set is now frozen as of 15 Sept 2004.  Anything flagged
enhancement that hasn't already landed is being pushed out.  If this bug is
otherwise ready to land, we'll handle it on a case-by-case basis, please set the
blocking2.20 flag to '?' if you think it qualifies.

Comment 12

[Dave Miller [:justdave]]

Reassigning bugs that I'm not actively working on to the default component owner
in order to try to make some sanity out of my personal buglist.  This doesn't
mean the bug isn't being dealt with, just that I'm not the one doing it.  If you
are dealing with this bug, please assign it to yourself.

Comment 13

[Roland]

Isn't bug 554 the same thing?

Comment 14

[Sidra M. S. Vitale]

Terry's description of 

"No, "view bug activity" shows what has happened on a single bug.  I would like
(someday) to be able to say "show me everything that has happened to any bug
in this project in the last week".  Wouldn't that be cool?"

does sound very much like my comment below,

""I want a table like what reports.cgi gives me, only better".  This
is coming from managers, not day-to-day users, but people who want to see total
bugs processed and how quickly and do some metrics and write reports about it all. "

Comment 15

[Frédéric Buclin]

The trunk is now frozen to prepare Bugzilla 2.22. Only bug fixes are accepted, no enhancement bugs. As this bug has a pretty low activity (especially from the assignee), it's retargetted to ---. If you want to work on it and you think you can have it fixed for 2.24, please retarget it accordingly (to 2.24).

Comment 16

[Frédéric Buclin]

We are going to branch for Bugzilla 4.4 next week and this bug is either too invasive to be accepted for 4.4 at this point or shows no recent activity. The target milestone is reset and will be set again *only* when a patch is attached and approved.

I ask the assignee to reassign the bug to the default assignee if you don't plan to work on this bug in the near future, to make it clearer which bugs should be fixed by someone else.