User marc moroz - FogBugz Knowledge Exchange

Bug: Cases matching filters are grayed out as "not matching search"

2010-02-10T04:53:26Z

In Outline view, perfectly legitimate subcases are greyed out and listed as "not matching search." It appears that this is because they are "on a different page" - even if I expand they grey text and actually show them on the current page.

Case FC1969920

Feature Request: Change how % time allocation works

2010-02-10T04:24:48Z

FogBugz gets a lot of stuff right:

It doesn't just accept my estimate. It looks at my history and gives me dates based on what I've done - not what I say.
It doesn't just accept the team's estimate for the hours in the burn down chart. It ingeniously brings probability into the mix there as well.

So why does it just accept my estimate for how much time I'm going to spend on a project? This just completely undoes all of the good stuff.

I guess there are some people that work exactly the listed percentages on each project but I've never seen that. I can't tell if a task is really going to take 2 hours, I certainly can't tell if I'm going to be working on projectx for 90% or 80% of my time this week - I can estimate, but I can't know.

There has to be a way for FB to look at my past and figure out the following:

How much time am I actually spending on projectx vs my estimated allocation?
How much time will I probably spend on projectx in the future vs my estimated allocation?

I think FB should never accept our estimates as-is.

To take this one step further, actual vs estimated time should be shown somewhere. Possibly in an existing report or in a new report. This is really important for project managers who need to understand what's happening on a project. It also helps people adjust when they're not working at the right allocations. They can either switch gears to focus on a different project, or work with their managers to change their allocations.

Also, it seems like this would tie in very naturally to how all of the other reports are working.

Case FC1303047

Feature Request: Group Cases for EBS

2010-02-10T05:34:22Z

Problem

I understand that the best way to use EBS is to always re-open your case whenever you find a bug or have to do rework, and continue putting time in against that original case until the task is finally and undeniably completed.

However, this doesn't work for us. We want to open and track bugs against the code we're writing. This provides a lot of value to us. - The problem is that new cases opened for these bugs don't count against the original estimate for EBS.

Scenario

Developer opens a task to "code foo" and puts in an estimate of 10 hours.
- Developer's estimation history is perfect. His variance from the estimate is 0%
Developer takes exactly 10 hours to "code foo", resolves and closes his case.
Tester tests foo and finds a bug. Tester opens a case for Developer to fix the bug (note that Developer could just open a new case, or any other method you could think of for generating a new case)
Developer estimates that the case to "fix foo" will take five hours.
Developer takes exactly 5 hours to "fix foo." He resolves and closes the case.
- Developer's estimation history is still perfect. His variance from his estimate is still 0%.
- The reality is that Developer was off by 50%! How do we show this without losing the value of opening a case for each bug found against the delivered code?

Proposal

My suggestion is to allow cases to be related to each other for the purposes of EBS. It could be the same level of user effort as entering a parent:

Have a field called something like "Original Case"
- This would have functionality like the parent/subcase fields where it would provide narrowed results while typing.
Have all of the elapsed time from those cases count against the original estimate of whatever is entered into the the "Original Case" field.
Have any case that points to an "Original Case" not count against EBS as the results may become skewed otherwise.

This allows us to capture valuable metrics such as how many bugs did we generate while writing each feature. Meanwhile, it also allows us to have really good EBS.

Case FC1856365

Feature Request: Hours Per Person Probability Report

2010-02-10T05:10:34Z

I looked to see if this was already asked. I found http://fogbugz.stackexchange.com/questions/1434/feature-request-include-user-estimated-time-remaining-in-the-burn-down-chart but wasn't quite what I wanted to ask and I didn't want to hijack that question.

We have probability of completion for each user on a project.
We have burn down charts that show the probability of the remaining hours on a project.

Can we get something that shows the probability of remaining hours per person on a project?

This would really help me. I'm already using the estimated time remaining of each user for various reasons, including forecasting the remaining cost of the project. It would be really valuable to use probability for this like we're doing for everything else with FB.

Case FC2038277

Feature Request: Burn Down Forecasting

2010-02-10T03:44:33Z

It would be cool if the burn down chart predicted what the future burn down would look like.

It makes sense that the appearance of the lines should change after the current date so that it's clear they're only a forecast (maybe change color or use a dotted line).

It seems to me that you already have the data for this because you're estimating when the project will complete in other reports. I would think the 95% hours in the Burn Down chart correlate to the 95% probability point on the Completion Date (Probability Distribution).

Case FC1857012

Bug: Dates are inconsistent across reports

2010-02-09T20:08:34Z

Looking across the various reports, I notice the following...

Per User Completion Date: 95% User Completion Date for the user with the latest expected delivery is Nov 5.

Per User Timelines: The 95% probability for work completed date for the same user shows as Nov 13, Nov 14, and Nov 15.

Probability Distribution: 95% Probability date is Nov 22

The Problem

None of the sliders were changed between any of the reports - they're all looking at the same data.
The dates should be the same across all three reports.
The dates are nowhere close to each other.
Per User Timelines shouldn't be showing a range of dates for 95% complete (or any other %). Every other report gives the impression that the 95% (and every other) is a specific date. Inconsistency in the representation of the confidence points will leads our management to believe that FB is broken. (Alternatively, have all of the other reports show the same range - consistency is the thing!)
There may be a valid reason why the dates vary across each report. However, having them differ undermines the confidence people place in the tool. I can't tell our executive management to trust the tool but not to trust one report vs. the other.

Case FC1856379

Links on tag report page find tags that contain the text of the link. They should only find EXACT matches

2010-02-10T03:04:20Z

On the Tags page (get there from the Reports menu), you can see a list of all of the tags in your system. You also have the option of clicking the tag to bring up all of the cases using that tag.

However, when I click on the "IT_Maintenance" tag, I also get all of the cases with the "StabilityLab" tag. This is because both of them have "it" in them.

I've read http://fogbugz.stackexchange.com/questions/1136/how-do-i-search-for-an-exact-match and I get the reasoning for why searches behave this way. However, I think that the tag selection functionality should show you only the cases tagged with what was clicked. I don't think it makes sense for it to do anything other than that.

Is there a way have the tag link automatically use the index of the field as described by adambox in the link above?

Case FC1857509

Feature Request: Allocation Over Time

2010-02-10T04:05:19Z

FB currently has a limitation with regard to how accurate EBS is. This is because the % Time Allocation doesn't take changing allocations into account.

I might be on projectA 10% this month, but 75% the month after that. This kind of change can drastically effect the accuracy of the reports. And these kinds of changes happen frequently in companies with shared/matrixed-resource models.

Can we get the ability to adjust project allocations over time?

Caution: - Even if the coolness of allocations over time is implemented, allocations should not override reality for the reports.

Case FC1856202

Configurable Line Weights in EBS Reports

2010-02-10T03:26:16Z

We're very risk averse. We don't use the 50% lines in the Completion Date (Over Time) report or the Burn Down Charts.

It would be great if we could select which probability points draw the lines in those reports. This is sort of already asked for in http://fogbugz.stackexchange.com/questions/1889/feature-request-configurable-probability-points I'm bringing it up again to clarify it for this situation and to provide context.
It would also be great if we could choose which lines were the "thick" lines. Even if we don't get the ability to choose the probability points, it would really help if we could choose which lines showed most prominently on the reports. My management constantly keys in on the biggest lines and I have to explain to them that just because they're thicker, they're not more likely or important. We live by the 95% line over here and it would be nice if we could make that the most prominent line in the reports.

Case FC1857461

Feature Request: Configurable Probability Points

2010-02-10T03:16:48Z

In our business, we need to operate in the higher probability areas.

There isn't much value for us to see the 25%, 50%, 75% probability distribution points on the Per-User Completion Dates report.
There is less value for us to see the 50% line in the Completion Date (Over Time) report.
The 5% line adds value because it shows the "snowball's chance in hell." Basically, there is absolutely no chance of delivering before that date and very little chance delivering anywhere near that date.

It would be great if we could choose what probability points we wanted to drive by and show in the reports. Some companies may actually want to bet on 50/50, others have legitimate needs for operating around the 90% area.

I know we don't have to use the lower probability points but they create noise on the reports that distracts from what we want to show. It would also be better to hone in on the probability levels that have value for us.

Case FC1857031

Search for count of tags

2010-02-16T08:32:45Z

Is there a way to find a case with a certain number of tags?

For instance:

Cases with no tags
Cases with 3 tags
Cases with 5 or more tags
Cases with less than 8 tags

I realize that we can search for multiple tags - but I don't know if we can search for just a count. I could see this helping some people if they had a process involving a specific number of tags and wanted to quickly find any cases that didn't fall in line with the process.

Case FC1857016

Making case parent of itself doesn't alert the user that nothing will happen

2010-03-12T19:39:29Z

I accidentally tried to make a case its own parent. FogBugz didn't let me do this and that's a good thing. So far everything is working fine.

Here's the problem:

When I tried to make the case its own parent, it just added an entry to the case that said I edited the case but with NO description of what changed (because nothing did).

I think one of two things should happen instead:

Put something in the edit history that says I tried to make the case a parent of itself but that I'm not allowed to do that (because it's stupid).
- This isn't a great solution because it kind of goes against the way the edit history works. If the case information didn't change, then the only action that really occurred was the "edit" action.
- This is probably the easiest to implement, though.
Since FB knows that I tried to make a case a parent of itself, it shouldn't let the edit go through. Instead, provide an error message letting me know of the problem and require the number to change or be removed before allowing the edit to be accepted.
- I think this is the best option with regard to user experience but it will probably take more work.

Case FC1865281

Answer by Marc Moroz for Which estimates are used by EBS?

2010-02-10T01:19:20Z

Actually, it depends. FB will use the "Original Estimate" and this can actually change from the "first estimate". I'll elaborate:

PM enters an estimate of 10 days. (No one has put ANY time against the case yet)
PM assigns to Dev. (No one has put ANY time against the case yet)
Dev changes estimate to 5 days. (No one has put ANY time against the case yet)
Dev puts elapsed time into the case directly into the elapsed time field or via "Working On" function. 5 days becomes the Original Estimate.

FB doesn't count something as the Original Estimate until work is done against the case.
Once work is done against the case, the existing estimate becomes the Original Estimate (even if it's not the first estimate)
Whoever entered the estimate that existed at the time work started, will have the case go against their EBS and history.
- This means that if the Dev hadn't changed the estimate from 10 days, EBS would be based off of the PM. Also, the developers delivery of the case (estimate vs. elapsed) would go into the PM's history, not the developer's. (This is an important distinction if you want to use EBS)
If you have a true outlier estimate which was way off due to a typo, you can remove the data point from your history

To make sure that the developer's history is used, make sure everyone change the estimate before they start work on a case (Note this only works the first time. You can't change the estimate, start work, change the estimate again, and restart.).

To be safe, I never put in estimates before giving the case to someone. If you have to, then follow the rules above.

Bug: Time Sheet Entries Don't Count As Edits

2010-03-19T00:45:18Z

If I use "Edit Timesheet" to put time against a case, it doesn't show up as a case edit for search purposes.

If I have a filter of updated:yesterday updatedby:me it won't catch that I used "Edit Timesheet" to show that I put two more hours against casex yesterday.

Filters like these come in handy from a project management perspective because they help to see what was done yesterday to help drive daily stand-up / scrum meetings.

Since these kinds of edits get missed, we sometimes miss bringing them up. It would be great to have them included so we could ask "What did you do for the two hours you worked on casex yesterday? I don't see any comments."

I think would be as easy as having the same (or similar) case edit information as if the elapsed time was manually updated.

(I thought to enter this as I was giving my answer in Historical Data and explaining this behavior.)

Answer by Marc Moroz for Historical Data

2010-03-19T00:32:20Z

editedby:me

That will give you exactly what you asked for. As Justine points out, you can limit results by adding other axes as you like but the results may no longer give every case you have ever touched.

Something to keep in mind is that time sheet entries don't show up as case edits. So if for some reason you put time against a case by using the "Edit Timesheet" functionality, but never directly edited the case, your search wouldn't catch it.

EBS reports across multiple projects (with a slider) for program / portfolio management

2010-02-07T20:34:25Z

I love the functionality provided to look at projects. The way the sliders on the reports allow you to analyze multiple milestones across a single project is really ingenious.

Can we extend this to allow the same functionality to be used across projects? I'm managing several projects and it would be great to essentially swap out "milestones" for "projects" in the reports.

Including project via slider (like milestones) allows me to see the overall health of a program/portfolio - the same as I can use multiple milestones per project. It would be great to include projects via slider to see when I can expect each to complete (a la developer ship date), etc.

I'm sure you guys could come up with really cool features to allow management at this level.

Case FC1857033

Answer by Marc Moroz for Making Release Notes available to the public

2010-03-14T09:19:45Z

Use the URL trigger plugin to send out an email or update a website when the release notes in a project are updated.

You can set it up to send out all of the release notes or just the update. This provides you with options like keeping up-to-date, comprehensive release notes on website via HTTP, etc. or sending out little updates to email lists. You can basically customize the message and the medium to fit your needs.

It's not that much work and it will get the information to your users now - vs waiting for a feature to be added.

Answer by Marc Moroz for Can I create custom categories that only apply to certain projects?

2010-03-13T22:51:33Z

The problem with custom categories per project is that it gets complicated when moving cases between projects.

You may have categoryx in one project but not any other.

Currently, FogBugz can't handle moving a case of categoryx out of the project and into a project that doesn't have categoryx - it doesn't know what category to make it.

One solution may be to have a default category marked for any incoming case with an unsupported category. However, it's probably more complicated than that.

I do agree it would be nice to have if it doesn't make FB more complicated.

Answer by Marc Moroz for Feature Request: Add ability to store release procedures

2010-03-06T02:20:39Z

Run schema_change.sql and data load.sql and don't forget to chage web.config sound like tasks themselves. I would make cases for them - maybe even make them subcases to make sure you don't lose them.

Otherwise, if you don't think they deserve a case of their own, they should probably just be notes in the case.

Answer by Marc Moroz for Plugin Ideas Forum (What are your top plugin ideas and requests?)

2010-03-02T21:41:11Z

Mimic External Contributor

Description

Sometimes, components of our project are performed by people outside of our immediate team (other groups, vendors, etc). Using EBS to help predict when they'll be done (based on their past performance) would really help.

Problem

Currently, I have three options to deal with this:

Set a milestone based on delivery from the external contributor
- Adds a LOT of complexity to figure out what work really can't start until after delivery from the external contributor
- Doesn't match the way it seems FB should be used. This essentially just creates the equivalent of task dependencies that we've argued we don't want to have in FB.
Guess at EBS - Try to extrapolate how the external contributor will impact our timelines based on their past performance.
- Undermines confidence in the tool. (Trust EBS except in this scenario - then trust me)
- What's the point of EBS if we still wind up using our gut to guess?
Get everyone in the system
- Some groups are still just warming up to the idea of FB. Forcing them in because I need them to be in there isn't going to win anyone over.
  - Trying to force someone in would just entrench them in their current viewpoint and build barriers for wider adoption.
  - If anything, this would be percieved as a weakness in the application.
- We would never be able to get vendors into our intranet to update/manage cases.

Suggestion

Allow someone to create a vu (virtual user) or a licensed user if vu would break pricing model.
Have a mechanism where that person could enter Estimate/Elapsed data on behalf of the vu.
- This would cover vendors who give granular estimates (2 hours) or broad estimates/durations (2 months). EBS adjusts for this kind of stuff very nicely.

Feature Request: Nick Name Use

2010-02-18T00:42:11Z

Problem

Some of our user names are just ridiculous. It's also something that I can't change.

Let's take Miles Davis, for example:

His user name is MDavis. That's not bad at all.
Seeing a report with MDavis let's me know that Miles is on the project pretty reasonably.
Assigning a case to Miles isn't that hard either, as long as I remember that his last name is Davis.

Now let's look at John Coltrane:

John's user name is X15439c03
Seeing a report with X15439c03 doesn't really help me know who's working on it. Especially compared to X154*4*9c03.
Assigning a case to X15439c03 is frustrating.
- First of all, even if I have the exact nonsensical string memorized, there's still a good chance I'll mistype it without even realizing it.
- Second of all, this makes it a real pain to assign it someone out of your normal circle.

Request

Can we get some kind of nick name field or firstname and lastname fields for users?
Can we use the nick name or first+last in the Assigned To field and reports?

Case FC1858827

Answer by Marc Moroz for Root Cause Analysis

2010-02-18T00:19:27Z

We do something like this. I can think of two options:

Hierarchy

Based on what you explained above, you would record each incident. (Separate cases for each incident)
At some point, create a parent case:
- Turn the first incident into the parent of all other incidents.
- Or create a new parent and make all of the incidents a subcase of it.
When root cause is corrected, close the parent - you'll get an option to close all of the subcases, too.

Benefits of this approach:

It very closely matches the process you explained.
It allows you to close all of the cases the way you envision.
It allows you to easily see how many incidents were reported for each root cause:
- Just use root: or parent: based on what you want to see. You can see more about those commands here.

Resolve as Duplicate

Identify one case as the "root cause" case. This can be the first incident or a case created for the fix.
As additional incidents come in, resolve them as duplicate of the "root cause" case. (You could also wait until the "root cause" case is closed.)
Once you're ready to close all of them, you could have a filter that finds all of the based on tag, area, etc. and then do a select all and close all of them at the same time.

I don't think this matches your process as well but it's an option in case the first doesn't work for you for some reason.

Answer by Marc Moroz for Plugin Ideas Forum (What are your top plugin ideas and requests?)

2010-02-16T18:03:48Z

RSS Anonymous Subscription Service

It would be great if there was a way for people to have an ability to get a feed without actually needing a FB account.

For security reasons, we time-out inactive sessions after 15 minutes. Because of this, RSS feeds only come through for about 15 minutes before you have to log in again.
We also can't embed our username and password in the url - again, for security reasons.
There are scenarios where it makes sense to allow users to subscribe to a "news feed" though they don't want to log into FB or have an account.

The creation of the feed should probably be done by someone with an account that builds a filter which only contains the kinds of cases that the team feels should go out to an anonymous group.

Answer by Marc Moroz for How can we track the state of clients support contracts?

2010-02-16T08:24:53Z

We'll take the three examples you gave above (active/3 month/lapsed) and use them to explain this idea. Obviously, you can have different categories or as many as you like...

Area

Use area if you only want one of those states to apply to a case.
By using area, you force that either Active, 3 Month, or Lapsed is selected and only one of those.
This information shows up in the case and it has a searchable axis.
You have the ability to assign a default contact for each of those. Maybe you want someone different to look at the case if it's active vs. lapsed.
On the downside, you've probably already found something useful to do with area so this might not work for you.

Answer by Marc Moroz for Showing selected cases in a new filter

2010-02-13T17:25:14Z

Starring the case is a quick way to get what you want. You don't have to edit the case and can do it directly from the filter.

When you see a case with a title you find interesting, just star it. (You can select the Star column under "Select Columns")
After you've gone through your first pass and have stars on the cases you have chosen, it's time to get rid of the clutter... To do this, use the same filter but add starredby:me to your search. This will bring up your refined list.

Answer by Marc Moroz for Reactivated subcase still has "Closed" styling on Outline view

2010-02-13T17:10:35Z

Check this post out. Could it be the same thing? http://fogbugz.stackexchange.com/questions/1895/bug-cases-matching-filters-are-grayed-out-as-not-matching-search

Answer by Marc Moroz for Cases Open last 3 months: All inquiries in SAGE Help Inbox opened in the last 3 months

2010-02-12T22:42:19Z

"3 months ago" can be read a few ways. I'll give you a few of them and let me know if they're not close enough...

If you want to see all of the inquiries opened in November, use this:

opened:"November 2009" category:inquiry

If you want to see all of the inquiries opened from three months ago until today, use this:

opened:"11-1-2009..today" category:inquiry

If you want cases opened exactly three months ago today, use this:

opened:"11-12-2009" category:inquiry

If you want to add "area" to the query, add it on like so (I'll just grab one of the other queries as an example)...

opened:"11-12-2009" category:inquiry area:"name of area you want to see"

If you don't want closed cases returned, don't forget to add:

status:open

I don't know any way of querying based on what was exported to Excel unless you've tagged it with something or entered something into the case.

If I don't seem to understand your question, let me know what I'm missing and I'll do my best to get you what you're looking for.

Answer by Marc Moroz for What's a Schedule Item?

2010-02-12T21:53:03Z

FogBugz FAQ, you've answered most of the question already. Bug, feature, and inquiry are pretty self-explanatory. Schedule Item is everything else (anything not a bug, feature, or inquiry).

This can be something like "Review pricing structure with marketing" or "Give that guy a call about the thing from the other day."

We use them for all kinds of things.

Answer by Marc Moroz for Updating Time Remaining / Best Practices for Reporting

2010-02-12T03:21:21Z

Best practice is to always update the estimate to be what you think the truth is.

FB was designed with exactly this idea in mind.

EBS uses Original Estimate. People shouldn't really care about the Original Estimate.
People should care about the Current Estimate. This is based off of the best information the developer has now. As a team member, you're going to want to know that the developer's 2 hours task is looking more like a 6 hour task.

With regard to how much of a change in the estimate requires an update; that's really up for the team to establish.

Right now, the decision to open a new case depends on your environment:

Opening a new case gives you better metrics, clearer detail of the work, more control of the project overall. However, this undermines EBS because EBS doesn't know that the new task is really part of the old task.
If you want really good EBS, you should continue to use the original case. Of course, fixing a "bug" on a "feature" case will be incredibly hard to see, etc. Basically, you'll lose a lot of the visibility of the work but you'll have great EBS.

The PM should work with the team to find the best balance. Hopefully, we'll have a way of grouping cases together in the future so EBS can see that Bug2 and Feature1 were really part of the same initial task/estimate so we can see things clearly and EBS can forecast accurately.

Answer by Marc Moroz for Bug: Dates are inconsistent across reports

2010-02-11T02:54:49Z

OK. I spoke with Brett. Here's the deal:

There is a bug with the inconsistency between the Per User Completion Date and the Per User Timelines reports. Going back to the example above, the Timelines report can legitimately show 95% probability over the dates of Nov 13 - Nov 15. However, the 95% from the Completion report should be one of those dates. It shouldn't be off by 8 days.

Brett has noted this and opened a bug.

Now for the discrepancy between the "User" reports and the Probability Distribution report...

The difference between the 95% completion date of the Probability Distribution vs. the other charts requires a bit more understanding of how things work. It's simple once explained so here we go:

You look at the Per User Completion Date report and notice the "long pole" or person with the furthest out 95% completion probability is Nov 5 (as in the question)
You draw the conclusion that the 95% probability of the Probability Distribution chart should be the same. You're wrong.
The easiest way to why is to look at the Per User Timelines report.
- If there are other users with trails extending beyond the 95% probability of your "long pole" on the Completion Date report, it will impact the date of the 95% probability of your Probability Distribution report.
- The probabilities are determined by running a series of simulations. By looking at the Timelines report, you can see that there is a user with a tail extending beyond the 95% of your "long pole" (for this example). Well, this essentially affects the simulations for the overall team figured for the 95% probability on the Probability distribution chart.
- If this doesn't read clearly, post a comment and I'll do my best to clarify.

Comment by Marc Moroz

2010-03-19T21:50:06Z

I voted for this. However, I'd actually prefer uni-directional integration. I think it's safer to do everything in FB and dump to MS Project to hand out to people who want to see an MS Project schedule. MSP is more of a report for me now than an actual management tool.

Comment by Marc Moroz

2010-03-15T01:45:33Z

Just a note for anyone interested in this topic. I called FB HQ and we replicated this over the phone. The idea to fix this is to use the tag id when selecting the tag from the tag list. However, using the "tag" axis when searching from the filter would still stem just like everything else does.

Comment by Marc Moroz

2010-03-13T00:36:58Z

I was torn between bug and feature. I can see it either way but either way, I'd like some functionality to fix it. I was really trying to make it a child of a different case but entered the wrong number because I was distracted. I saw the case receive the "edit" action but it didn't have a parent. I repeated the exact steps and it came back a second time with an "edit" but no parent and that's when I realized I was using the wrong number.

Comment by Marc Moroz

2010-02-26T21:51:12Z

We have around 200 active projects across 5-10 portfolios (don't really know the portfolio count). Some projects have more than 2,000 cases and rely on area to help keep things organized. On top of that, different organizations are particular on how area is used in their projects.

Comment by Marc Moroz

2010-02-25T22:33:37Z

It just seems counter to me that it wouldn't go back to the search results I was looking at before selected a case. If I really want to keep my filter, I just open a new tab in my browser. If this doesn't get any traction, I'll just continue opening cases in new tabs to force the behavior - I'm flexible.

Comment by Marc Moroz

2010-02-24T17:35:41Z

Let me explain why this functionality would be a problem for us. The ability to change part of a case creates a problematic CFR 21 Part 11 situation based on the spirit of the law. A better solution for us would be the ability to collapse certain parts of a case without actually modifying them. This way, old information could be removed from view but in an obvious way (drop down arrow). and the case clutter wouldn't distract from the important stuff.

Comment by Marc Moroz

2010-02-20T18:06:33Z

That's a pretty good idea. I think it's better than using Area or Tags.

Comment by Marc Moroz

2010-02-19T22:25:02Z

We can't edit the fullname field for LDAP reasons. We need the LDAP info to be consistent throughout all of our apps so the goofy usernames have to stay. If we could get some kind of alias functionality, it would really help. Maybe a float-over showing the alias or the ability to use alias instead of username for assignedto and reports. Would it be easier to talk this out on the phone?

Comment by Marc Moroz

2010-02-18T22:32:04Z

If something like this is implemented, please make it an option. I think editable case history would make FB unusable for us due to CFR 21 Part 11 requirements.

Comment by Marc Moroz

2010-02-18T20:20:54Z

Responded. If you need more clarity, give me a call.

Comment by Marc Moroz

2010-02-18T19:24:40Z

We have almost 10,000 employees. There are entire sites that came over from acquisitions. While we've incorporated them, they often retain some part of the their pre-acquisition heritage. User names sometimes don't change from how they were before the company was acquired. Some of our departments have usernames based on firstinitial+lastname, others use lastname+firstinitial+middleinitial. Others are based in some insanity I can't even begin to speculate upon. In any case, I have no control over it. I've worked at other large companies that with vague user names so this might be common

Comment by Marc Moroz

2010-02-15T22:48:49Z

Agreed. We have a few hundred users in FB and we're still growing. We've had to disallow shared filters because the natural volume would spam everyone in teams that didn't care about 99% of them.

Comment by Marc Moroz

2010-02-15T18:05:57Z

I think notification is perfect. I don't look to FB to manage my projects for me. I look for it to help me find trouble-spots that I need to manage as the PM. A notification like you mention allows me to start looking into the right areas, have conversations with that user, etc. Perfect.

Comment by Marc Moroz

2010-02-12T21:49:05Z

Just to be clear - this also addresses your concern regarding the Reports section and "Project" dropdown box. "Deleted" projects won't show up there.

Comment by Marc Moroz

2010-02-10T22:46:18Z

Thanks, Dan. This is the problem I was encountering.