Question

We use Fogbugz to manage all tasks related to a project. So each task is a case and this works well. Each case is made a subcase of the project case, which in turn is a subcase of a case representing the customer. In this way I can see all projects and all tasks for a given customer, and use fogbugz to search them.

However, as well as task related emails for a project (such as install the widget, deliver the training, etc) there are plenty of other emails such as meeting minutes, meeting planning, etc. These don't seem suitable to make cases and the emails are not handled by Fogbugz, they end up in an Outlook folder.

My problem is that I end up with half of my emails for a project in FB, and half in an Outlook folder. This is a problem when I want to search through emails, I need to search in 2 places, this is obviously not good.

I was wondering if anyone has solved this problem. 2 solutions I can think of are: 1. Make everything a case, even meeting minutes etc. This way all email is in FB. This seems kind of tiresome, but I was wondering if anyone does this and could offer an opinion. 2. Make sure that all FB emails are cc'd so that they end up in the Outlook email folder. Problem here is getting that to happen in an automatic way. Has anyone done this?

Thanks

Answer 1

This first part isn't something you directly asked, but I thought I might suggest it as an alternative to consider:

Instead of using a case to represent a customer, and subcases to represent projects and tasks, have you considered using Projects and Areas instead? This way, each customer could be a project, and each area within the customer's project could represent one of the projects you've been working on for them.

E.g.

• Customer A (Project)
  • Project Alpha (Area within project)
    • Task 1 (case with project and area set appropriately)

This configuration might give you more flexibility when searching through your cases. For example, to see all the tasks left to complete for Customer A's Project Alpha, you could search for project:"Customer A" area:"Project Alpha" status:active

As for dealing with non-task emails, this is potentially a little trickier. Your best bet (from the perspective of keeping everything in FogBugz) is to just generate the original email from within FogBugz. This way, when anyone replies to it, the replies will also be stored in FogBugz and associated with the appropriate case.

It might also make sense to add an additional area for each of your customer projects to store these types of messages. E.g. Project: Customer A, Area: Meeting Minutes (or something similar).