Mantis Bug Tracker
Introduction to Mantis Bug Tracker
Mantis is an open source web based bug tracking application. Mantis application
helps in the defect / bug maintenance throughout the STLC (Software testing life
cycle). Mantis is easy to install on any platform and developed using PHP programming
language and Mysql database. There are many open source or paid bug trackers are
available in the market like jira, bugzilla, quality center (QC) and mantis etc..
Mantis is one of most popular, reliable, open source and easy to use bug tracking
application. To understand the mantis bug tracker in full details then let us understand
the following concepts:
What is a Bug/Defect?
Software defect (also known as bugs, incident, fault) is a variation in the expected
and actual behavior of test results during test case execution. Different companies/
organization use different naming conventions to describe these variations like
bug, defect, problem, issues, incidents and faults etc. Well, every incident reported
by testing team may not be a defect or bug. Some incidents may be a cause of lack
of tester’s understanding of the expected or actual behaviors of the application
or requirements.
Bug/Defect Management
Finding defects and correcting those defects in a software is one of the most expensive
activity in software development life cycle. It is not possible to find and fix
all defects in any software but project team can do their best to minimize the number
of defects and reduce their impact on the client’s business. Each and every defect
in a software has its own importance but considering the time, budget and resource
availability in the project, it is necessary to prioritize the defects importance
as per project present situation. Defect management process and tool help project
team in:
- Easy reporting of all software/ application defects in the database.
- Prioritizing the defects as per their importance and impact on the client’s business.
- Updating the defects status time to time.
- Maintaining defects in throughout the SDLC/ STLC (software development life cycle/
software testing life cycle)
- Searching or filtering any defects in the database.
- Generating defect reports which can help project stakeholders in decision making.
Main Features/Benefits of mantis bug tracker
- Mantis is an open source web application. It can be hosted internally within the
organization.
- It supports many platforms like Windows, Mac, Solaries, Linux. Mantis is available
in 68 different localized languages.
- It support multiple project handling on a single installation. Each project has
its own database for defects. It also supports projects, sub-projects and categories.
There is no limit on number of projects, users and defects.
- It support role based security. New users can be easily created and assigned with
different access rights. Access rights can be assigned project specific as well.
- Mantis support change logs. It means that users can see a history of all changes
made to the defects.
- It support full text search, simple and advanced filter options, and shared filters
across projects.
- Mantis provides many defect reports and graphs to represent the project defect status.
- Admin or any authorized user can add/delete customized fields in defect reporting
form.
- It support email notification configurations. You can configure email notifications
for each defect update, status change, defect comments etc..
- It support defect export to csv, excel and ms-word files.
- It support Public/ Private Projects and Issues. Public project accessible to all
users, private are only accessible to those explicitly added. Private issues are
accessible to users with a specific access level to the relevant project.
- It support time tracking for each defect. The developer / tester can track time
spent in testing or fixing any specific defect.
- It support attachments for each defect. You can attach screen shot, videos and log
files to any defect.
- It allows user to update the status of multiple defects on single click. The user
just needs to select the multiple defects to update their status.
- User can assign multiple defects to a technician/ developer on single click.
- Mantis provides simple and advanced defect views.
- Two defects can be interrelated with each other by just creating a simple relation
between 2 defects.
- Defects from one project can be moved easily to another project.
- User can create a copy of the defect. This presents the user with a new issue reporting
form with all of the information in the current issue filled in.
The main element of a defect:
Following are some important elements of a defect. Each element has its meaning,
a good defect should have all following details
Defect ID
It is a unique identification number assigned to each defect. Mantis assigns a unique
number to each defect automatically.
Defect Severity
Severity describes the impact of the defect in the application. The defect severity
could be tweak, minor, major, critical, crash and show stopper.
Defect Priority
Priority describes the importance of the defect to fix. Defect priority could be
low, medium, high, top etc.
Build Version
Application build version in which specific defect was found.
Assigned To
A list of users who is going to fix the specific defect.
Priority
Importance of defect from client’s business point of view.
Severity
Impact of defect on application. For example if there is just a spelling mistake
on page then its severity is “Minor”. But if page is breaking on a click then it
has “Major” severity.
Summary
High level details of problem in 15-20 words.
Description
A description should have full defect details like, steps to reproduce, environment
details (like browser, operating system details), actual defect and expected behavior.
Attachment
Tester should attach log files, screenshot, video and any other supporting files
which can help the development team while fixing the defect. These additional documents
also help testers during fix verifications.
Reported Date
Mantis automatically captures the current date as date reported.
Updated Date
Whenever there is a change in defect, mantis automatically set date updated.
At Training-Specialists we are teaching Mantis Bug Tracker under
QA Training.
Student Testimonial
“They helped me learn so much and in so little time. Classes are only for 4 weeks, but till the end of it, I was able to complete an entire project including Use Case Narratives, Activity Diagrams, Wire Frames and FRD.”
By Student,
Jan 2017