Review: FogBugz On Demand

For years I’ve been using the Gemini Issue Tracker from Countersoft at work and as my personal tracker at home. At work we’re using the full version. At home I’ve been using the free version. I’ve been quite happy with it and would recommend it in a heartbeat. 

As I’ve been building my Magic Manager and Player programs, I’ve wanted to provide a way for users to submit bugs and request features. I’m lazy so figured it would be easiest to use my issue tracker as the mechanism for this. This is where I hit a problem. The free edition’s license doesn’t allow you to expose it publicly on the internet. No problem, Gemini has a rich web service API. I figure I can build a bug submission form in to the Player and submit it via the web services. Wrong, the web services are only licensed for testing and evaluation on the free version.

I couldn’t justify the expense to upgrade to the full version so started looking for a new issue tracker.

I’ve been reading Joel on Software for years, so knew about his company Fog Creek Software and their FogBugz product. I had even considered it a few years ago for my personal use, but rejected it due to the price. This isn’t to say it’s expensive. It seems to be in line with (or cheaper) than the other major issue trackers on the market.  However, if you’re just a single developer who wants to use it for recreational coding projects it’s a bit steep.

When looking for a Gemini replacement, I saw that they’d added a free “Student and Startup Edition”. This is a full version of FogBugz On Demand (Hosted) limited to two named users. At first glance it seemed to meet my needs.

• Free
• Allows anonymous submission
• Can check an email account
• Unlimited projects
• File attachments

I signed up for an account and have been using it for a few days. I haven’t touched many of the features and as a single developer there are features I probably never will. However, I’ve used it enough to know I prefer it to Gemini.

It has all the things you’d expect in a serious issue tracker such as robust filtering, ability to save filters, full history tracking, time tracking, etc.

What really makes me enjoy using it is how well they’ve refined everything. If it isn’t easy to enter and manage issues, then people don’t bother. Fog Creek knows this and have taken it to heart. They’ve done everything they can to make it easy.

Perhaps my favorite feature is adding new cases (issues). From the main issue listing there is a little Add Case link.

Rather than jump to a different data entry screen, it lets you add the case in-line.

I had about 30 cases I needed to load when I started using FogBugz. This in-line “Add Case” allowed me to enter them far faster than I could have done with Gemini.

When editing a case, it’s easy to access the most common functions. There is a little menu icon that appears when you mouse over a case. Clicking it will open a context menu.

Some of the other features I love include good parent and child case management, integration to Subversion, easy integration with an email account, built in discussion and wiki capabilities and a nice screenshot capturing tool.

The screenshot tool bears a bit more discussion. It’s what I used to capture the screenshots for this post. As mentioned before, FogBugz knew it had to be easy if people were going to bother submitting issues. They really outdid themselves with this tool.

The first thing you notice is the total lack of configuration required. When you download the screen capture tool, it’s preconfigured for your issue tracker. When you take a screen shot you are presented with a simple dialog which will allow you to crop  or highlight a section of the image. You can then submit it to an existing case, a new case, save it to a file or send it as an email all from the main screen. Unfortunately, it won’t take a screenshot of itself, so I couldn’t provide an image of it.

Their attention to detail even extends to the mascot.

What my screenshot doesn’t show is that it’s actually an animated image. It blinks it eyes on occasion. This seems minor, but it really gives it character. They even took the mascot a step further. I tend to lose track of the time and end up working late in to night. Fog Creek uses their mascot to subtly remind you just how late it is. Around midnight their mascot will go to sleep.

 

They allow you to replace their mascot with your own logo, but why would you want to?

What’s the catch?

So fare I’ve only found one thing that really annoyed me. You can’t customize the statuses. The status can be Active, Closed and  Resolved. Resolved has several sub-statuses such as SPAM, Won’t Respond, By Design, Implemented, Waiting For Info, etc.

While they covered the most common statuses, there isn’t one to indicate “In Progress” or “Developer Testing”. When implementing multiple simple features and/or bugs, I’ll often save time by implementing a bunch them, flagging them as “Needs Testing” then verifying the fixes in a batch.

According to FogBugz’s help, you can add custom statuses manually in the database when using the self-hosted version. They explicitly say they don’t recommend it, though. On the FogBugz forum other people who have this issue recommended repurposing one of the Priorities which are customizable.

While they may have included the most common statuses people will need, by no means have they covered every eventuality. This is the one place where Gemini outshines FogBugz. Gemini gives you very good control over the statuses and workflow.

Fortunately, FogBugz’s other features far outweigh this one annoyance.

Summary

If you have an issue tracker you like and have entrenched in your processes, it probably isn’t worth switching. However, if you don’t like your issue tracker or are looking to deploy one for any other reason, I can’t recommend FogBugz highly enough.