Table of Contents

BugHerd Admin Usage Processes

Jason Carroll Updated by Jason Carroll

Overview

BugHerd is a communication tool that allows guests and members to access a sidebar in their internet browser to post notes on a webpage. The notes are stored in projects at bugherd.com. The projects are created and managed by the eCornell ITG & development teams in the form of kanban boards. 

Instructional Designers, testers, and programmers use BugHerd to collaborate by pinning and tracking course development feedback in submitted "bugs" (or tickets.) Bugs may include typos, errors in tech course coding assignments, suggestions for course improvement, and much more!

This article is intended for ITG members who may need to manage the BugHerd tool, provide support, and set up new projects. A BugHerd manager should feel comfortable communicating BugHerd tasks in Wrike, constructing swimlanes on a kanban board, maintaining the BugHerd member list, and navigating through the review phases of eCornell course development. 

Set up a BugHerd project

The process begins in Wrike, in the Codio Units milestone -> 0. Create BugHerd Project task. 

The assigned Technical Lead (or ITG member) is prompted to create the BugHerd project for the associated course in development. 

Create a new BugHerd project

  1. In BugHerd, navigate to the Dashboard and click the MY PROJECTS tab. 
  2. Click the blue plus button to add a new project
  3. Enter the course code in the Project Name field. 
To make BugHerd appear on a Canvas course, you need to tell BugHerd which URLs your site uses. You can add multiple URLs to your project. Let’s start with one URL. Visit the BugHerd Knowledge Base article Guide to setting up website URLs for your BugHerd projects to learn more about how connecting BugHerd to a course.
  1. Copy and paste the Canvas course website home page URL into the Website URL field.
Ensure that you are on the Home page so that BugHerd will appear on *all* course pages. The URL should end in the Canvas GUID and a backslash.
Optional: Toggle the option to Allow guests on this project to see feedback from other guests. You may need to have a conversation with the Instructional Designer to determine the status of this option. Keep reading this article for more information on Guests vs Members. Also visit the following knowledge base articles to learn the differences between Guests and Members: BugHerd Basics - Members, BugHerd Basics - Guests. 
  1. Verify that the BugHerd browser extension is added to the course. Another place you can check is in the upper right corner of the Google Chrome browser. Look for a small BH logo with a green checkmark.
    1. If you click the BH logo, you get a modal which displays name of the attached BugHerd project and a link to go directly to the Task Board:
  2. Refresh the browser and check for the flyout button located in the lower right corner of the webpage.

Clicking the button will open a new tools panel. This is the interface that members and guests will use to report bugs or issues. 

Set up the Task Board

Now that the project is created, you can customize the task board. The task board allows you to:

  • Collect and track feedback and bugs
  • Invite others to give or solve feedback and bugs
  • Modify BugHerd to fit with your workflows.

The main window is comprised of swimlane columns that can contain custom header titles.

The left navigation menu bar column offers the following options:

Deliverables - Collect and manage feedback on Figma designs, images and PDFs.

Feedback - All feedback from Guests appears in the Feedback tab.

Task Board tab - Feedback from project Members are collected in the Task Board. Each task is categorized into a swimlane. (ie Backlog, ToDo, Doing, etc.)

Archive tab - Contains archived tasks that are finished. 

Swimlane setup

Using the kanban board project management model, BugHerd allows you to customize the default swimlanes to fit the workflow of a particular project. The swimlanes you create in the initial project will depend on the course in development. 

To add swimlanes:

  1. Click the "..." icon next to one the existing swimlanes.
  2. Click Add column, Rename column, or Delete column to customize.
  3. Add and rename columns as needed.
You can reorder columns in the horizontal row by clicking and dragging a column left or right.
It is suggested you speak with the ID to determine any custom swimlane columns that may be needed for a particular course.
Initial setup example
Adjusting Swimlanes

Swimlanes will need to be adjusted at various points in the project timeline. The bugherd project may need different columns when course development moves into a new review phase.

Suggestions for swimlane setup at various project points

Review phase

Left column label

Initial setup

Backlog

Tech QA

Tech QA

Alpha

Alpha Review

It is recommended to rename or re-position the leftmost lane for each project phase based on the focus of the current review phase. The leftmost swimlane in the Task Board is where new items will appear by default when logged by a Guest or Member (if the logger doesn't manually select a different one in the bug-creation dialog.)

Please review the following examples. Note the phase that each course is in:

Faculty review example
Alpha review example
Setting up a "Hold Off" and/ "Nice to Have" swimlanes

"Hold off" and "Nice to Have" swimlanes apply to all phases but are especially important during the Alpha test. The BugHerd projects are an official part of the Product team's Course Review/Maintenance process. They check the existing BH project for issues in the Hold Off or Nice-to-Have columns to see if they should be added or addressed during the update cycle.

General tips for setting up Swimlanes
  • Don’t include too many swimlanes. Maintaining a reasonable number of swimlanes will prevent the need to scroll horizontally in the BugHerd project window.
  • Include a Verify column at the far right for for tasks which have been completed, but which need to be verified before being moved off the Task Board to the Archive. 
  • Roughly assign columns based on categories, either broad "ID Issues" or more targeted "MATLAB Issues+", depending on the needs of the project. Examples include:
    • ID Issues
    • Canvas Issues
    • Codio Issues
    • MATLAB Issues+

Add members and guests

BugHerd is a feedback tool that relies on visual issue tracking across different teams and individuals. Two primary categories of users exist: Members and Guests. What's the difference between a guest and a member?

Members:

  • Your core team (Devs, QA, CE, ID, etc.)
  • Can do almost anything except create new projects, manager user access, or edit account settings.

Guests:

  • A way for you to invite outside testers (ex. student testers) & stakeholders (such as faculty) to give feedback on your Project. The Guest role allows outside individuals to create tasks & engage with your members while still limiting their access (and, importantly, not counting against eCornell's licensed user limit in BugHerd; an unlimited amount of new Guests can be given access to BugHerd).
  • You can only invite Guests on a project-by-project basis.
  • Guests can...
    • Create new tasks.
    • View tasks they created.
    • View tasks created by other guests (if enabled).
    • Get notified by email on updates to tasks they created
    • Add comments and attachments to tasks.
    • Be @mentioned in comments on tasks they've reported.
    • Mark their tasks as closed or re-open them.
  • Guests can't...
    • Access your project Kanban board.
    • See tasks created by other Members/Guests.
    • Be assigned to Tasks.
Visit the following knowledge base articles to learn the differences between Guests and Members: BugHerd Basics - Members, BugHerd Basics - Guests. 
How to add members and guests
  1. Click edit next to Members or Guests.
  2. In the Share Project pop-up menu, search for an existing user or enter an email address of a new use to be invited to the project.
  3. Click the dropdown to the right of the search field to choose Member or Guest.
  4. Click Invite.

Reviews and QA

Each review phase in the eCornell development timeline will necessitate adjustments to a BugHerd project. Refer to the sections below when moving to a new review phase.

Faculty review

Faculty members play a crucial role in the course review process. For STEM/tech projects, they are typically invited to record issues via the BugHerd browser extension as either a guest or a member.

This raises the question: Should faculty be added as a member, or as a guest? It may depend on whether the ID feels comfortable with the faculty person gaining visibility to the entire set of project bugs/issues, and others' recorded feedback. The ITG member setting up the project should have a discussion with the ID to determine if the faculty member should be added as a guest, or as a member.

  • If choosing Guest: Guest comments will show up in the Feedback section, and will need to be moved to the Task Board.
  • Is there a need for the faculty member to reply to bug comments? Then add as member.
  • If choosing Member, check the total BugHerd users. BugHerd allows a total of 100 members.
    • Click Team in the top menu bar.
    • Click the Team tab on the Settings page.
    You must be a Manager in BugHerd to check the total team number.

Tech QA review

A technical review is performed by eCornell staff members to assess the completeness and accuracy of a course. Read the article Conduct Technical Review of Course (STEM-only) for more information.

Important notes and tips for BugHerd project managers:

  • Tech QA reviewers log all issues in BugHerd using the browser extension attached to the URL of the course.
  • Tech QA reviewers can be internal and/or external to eCornell. External reviewers may include course facilitators, contractors, TA's, to name a few. Determine if any
  • The BugHerd admin for a project may need to to identify the reviewers in advance of the review phase so the person can be added to the project as a member. Check the Wrike task 7. Conduct Technical Review of Course (STEM-only) in the associated Wrike project to review notes and gain insight into any special circumstances for a particular course.

Internal QA/CE review

Internal QA and Copy Edits (CE) take place after the faculty and tech/QA reviews finish.

  1. Check with the ITG tech lead, and the Wrike project, to verify which QA/copy editors need to be added to the BugHerd project.
  2. In the BugHerd Task Board, add a swimlane column for CE/internal QA use.

Alpha Setup and Review

The Alpha process is different from QA or our review phase in development. It is the first opportunity to get the course in front of users rather than our internal reviewers. The Alpha process typically happens before the course goes to QA, after being reviewed and approved by faculty and IDDs; However, it can also occur after QA has been completed, depending on the project schedule.

Read the Alpha Review Process article for more information.

The Alpha review process as seen in a Wrike course project:

Connect Alpha Section to BugHerd Project

In the Wrike task 1. Prepare/Conduct Alpha the assigned ITG member is tasked to connect the Alpha section of the course to the BugHerd project.

  1. Navigate to the BugHerd project.
  2. Click the menu button in the upper left corner of the project interface (double arrow icon).
  3. Click Settings
  4. Click Add another URL and paste in the URL from the alpha version of the Canvas course.
  5. Click Save
Adjust Swimlanes

Adjust the swimlanes to reflect the specific alpha review needs for a particular course. As stated earlier in the article, it is recommended to add an Alpha column to the BugHerd project.

Add testers & facilitators

Add testers and facilitators as needed. Work with the ID to determine who should be Members vs. Guests; for some Alpha reviews, many of the testers can be Guests, but in other cases we will want them to be full Members so they can be assigned bugs, view the Task Board so as to participate more easily in review meetings, etc.

How did we do?

BugHerd Basics - Members

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