How Streak uses Streak to track bugs!

As a start-up or established organization, every product development process has bugs which can be detrimental to your business if not tracked and managed. Here at Streak, we track and manage our bugs using Streak itself.

Let’s talk about current bug tracking solutions. They are really good at storing structured information about bugs (priority, who it’s assigned to, what component, etc.) and letting you query it. But, it’s usually a pain to discuss the bug with colleagues and customers. So, people revert down to email when triaging, discussing solutions and during the implementation phase. All of a sudden you have a bunch of bugs in your bug tracking system and bunch of emails that discuss them and no central place where all the data lives.

We track our bugs in Streak because:

• We only need to use one application — Yes, that’s right. We no longer need to switch between email conversations about bugs, and a different bug tracking system. All the emails relating to the bug and all the structured info about the bugs are both inside Gmail.
• We file bugs so easily — You can file a bug by sending a simple email (don’t believe us? try it!)
• Our team is always coordinated on the status of each bug — You can share a pipeline of bugs, assign owners, and create customized saved views that indicate which bugs haven’t been worked on. Also, you can stop worrying about cc’ing the right folks on emails — everyone has access to email conversations specific to each bug.

Here’s how we do it: Every time we find a bug, we send an email to our entire team describing the bug. While sending the email, Streak lets us file the email as a bug and put it into the Bug Tracking pipeline (see below). Now, every email conversation about the bug shows the structured metadata about the bug — who it’s assigned to, its stage, and other associated emails! All in one place and without installing a new application.

Here is how you can get your team tracking bugs effectively in Streak in under 2 minutes! If anything is unclear, just shoot us an email (support@streak.com) or chat with us live — we’re always happy to help.

Step 1: Setting up the pipeline

To create a bug tracking pipeline, hit “Create New Pipeline”

Hit “Bug Tracking”

Now, you’ll have a pipeline with some built in columns. You can add more and customize them as you wish based on your company’s process.

Step 2: Share your bug pipeline with all those who you want to view and edit the bugs

Click on the “Share” button, and enter in email addresses that can have access to your newly created pipeline. You’d typically share your pipeline with the entire dev team so everyone can see it.

Now, you can add email addresses you’d like to share the pipeline with, or add your entire organization. Then, hit the “Add” button.

Step 3: Create bug boxes to track your bugs

In streak, everything is a box. In the case where you are using Streak for bug tracking, a box = a bug. This corresponds to a row in the table below.

There are two ways to do this:

1. Create boxes when you have a new bug within the “Bug tracking” pipeline

From the pipeline view, create a new box

We put notes on the bug, how to reproduce it, and most importantly, we always assign it to an owner! Now it’s a box in your shared Bug tracking pipeline.

2. Another way to file bugs is to do what our dev team does — send an email to their team identifying the bug and tag it to the “Bug tracking” pipeline

We create an email and create a new box, giving it a new name or a suggested name

We put the new box inside of our “Bugs Tracking” pipeline

We put in notes on the bug and assign it to an owner and hit send!

Power User Tip #1: Easily manage bugs that are assigned to you

Our dev team always wants to stay on-top of bugs that are assigned to them. To do that, they create saved view filters that show only bugs that they are responsible for.

To do this, click on the pipeline name from where you want a customized view — in this case, open Bug Tracking

Now, let’s filter for a view that you want — in our case, we want to filter for all bugs that are assigned to someone on our dev team, Nikola. Click on “Create Saved View”.

Nikola would add a filter for bugs that are assigned to her, and sort them in order of priority.

Hit apply. Now, Nikola will only see bugs that are assigned to to her, in order of priority. Hit Save as View.

Set the name of the new view (ie. “My Bugs”) and hit “Done”. Now, this is a constant view, which can be found in the left sidebar under “Bugs Tracking” pipeline.

Power User Tip #2: Creating automated saved views pop ups in your inbox

Our dev team creates saved views (Power User Tip #1 above) right in their inbox. No need to filter through your pipeline or check another pipeline. Create a saved view, and then tick “Show in Inbox”

Now, all bugs assigned to Nikola will show in her inbox, so she’s knows exactly what to start working on when she opens her inbox.

We also have a dedicated post on how to used saved views.

Power User Tip #3: Follow Boxes and receive notifications

Often, our dev team works jointly to fix bugs. So, they want to know the status of bugs, and sometimes want to notify others when any changes are made to the bug.

To do this, open the box view and click “Follow Box”.

That’s it! Now you’ll receive notifications when edits are made to this box.

To customize the notifications you receive, go to your Gmail settings (can be found in by clicking on the gear button). You’ll see an icon for “Streak Settings”.

Change the settings around to fit your preferences. This feature allows our dev team to stay up to date on particular bugs and ensures that other’s at Streak can check the status of bugs themselves!

Step 4: Move bugs across your pipeline, until they are completed

For our dev team to manage the multiple bugs they are working on, they indicate when they have moved the bug from the “Reported” stage to the “Working” stage.

Now, those who the pipeline is shared with will see the new status of the bug. If a user is “following” the box, they’ll receive a notification which can be customized through Streak Setting (see Power User Tip #3).

Give Streak a try to manage your bugs. Remember, you can always shoot us an email (support@streak.com) or chat with us live if you need some help!