Question

Hi There,

I have just started evaluating FogBugz as a Project Management tool. For added fun we are already well into a running project and I would like to model that project, both what has been done and what remains to do.

I have been collecting data on how much time was spent on what task to date, so I do have a lot of timesheet history by developer, although not to the level of accuracy that FogBugz would capture it (but it's better than nothing). Is there any way of bulk entering all this data for my developers?

Thanks,

Danny

Answer 1

Devshed's FogBugz case importer handles importing and updating FB cases using Excel

http://devshed.us/Products/FogBugzCaseImporter.aspx

(please up vote this answer if you found it useful)

Answer 2

The primary mode of importing data into FogBugz is the XML API. You can construct a script which will make calls to the API to open cases, set the estimates, etc to populate your historical data.

Use the ixPersonEditedBy parameter in your calls to have the edits performed by the correct users. Set the hrsCurrEst and hrsElapsedExtra to the amount of time spent on the case and close the case.

Note that you will want to be careful not to give EBS bogus information about your users' ability to estimate accurately. If you enter 100 cases as user "Meghan" and have the estimates and actual time spent match, EBS will erroneously think that Meghan's estimates are always perfect, so future predictions for her cases will likely be wrong.

To prevent this, you need to go into the database and set the ixPersonEstimator to 0. This way EBS will not add the estimate and actual to any user's estimation history.