How do you use JIRA for bugfixes workflow?

[Panos Georgiadis]

In my team we have the following workflow:

* Bugs are reported to Bugzilla

* Mngt board is at JIRA with no integration to bugzilla, so have to copy-paste manually and try to keep them in sync.

* The code working on the bugfixes is at Github. We do not have any integration

* The code is building in another tool, again with no integration

In the end, we end-up spending a lot of time trying to synchronize all of those and we fail miserably. My first question would be to give me some best practices on how JIRA can be used in a similar way for a team of ~10 people, working only on fixing bugs.

Secondly, I would like to describe you how I have it in my mind, and please let me know if the following workflow is something that JIRA can do:

1. Bug gets reported to Bugzilla

2. Automatically this creates a card in JIRA including data such as (component, priority, sevirity into the card).

3. The cards in this column can be sorted based on the priority (taken from bugzilla).

4. A developer assigns himself to the card

5. JIRA informs Bugzilla and puts the developers username as the assignee and also marks the bug as "in progress" in bugzilla.

6. The card in JIRA gets automatically moved from the Backlog column to the "In Progress" column.

7. As soon as there's a PR in github related to this card then JIRA moves the card automatically to the QA swimlane at the backlog column.

8. When a QA engineer assign himself to the card, the card moves to the In Progress column for the QA swimlane.

9. When QA finishes and PR gets approved, then JIRA includes the link of the PR as a comment in Bugzilla.

Notice: if there are more PRs related to the same card, the card should not move until all of them are approved.

10 It also closes the bug in Bugzilla, as RESOLVED

11. Moves the JIRA card to Release swimlane at the column backlog (automatically)

12. When a release engineer starts working on those, the card moves automatically to the in progress column of the release swimlane.

13. When the bugfix gets released, the card moves to the 'DONE" column

Notice:

Other features:

If someone adds the label: 'help', then no new cards for the Dev swimlane should be able to be assigned or at least not to move to "In Progress", until someone assign himself (as a second person) to the one that asks for help. When this happens, JIRA should auto-update this label with "pairing".

If something fails during either QA or relesase, there must be way to return the card back to the developers swimlane, to the "Blocked" column automatically.

Any ideas are mostly welcome,

Greetings

[Ismael Jimoh]

Hi @Panos Georgiadis 

Would it be possible to move your tooling to one server? Is this an option as what you are suggesting would lead to redundant work aince JIRA can also serve as your bug tracker?

If not then you would need to look into how you can map your events in Bugzilla to trigger Rest API calls to JIRA.

Use the create when issue is originally created.

Use the update method when the change is just on the values of the UI.

Use the transition method when the status of the issue changes in Bugzilla.

You will need to ensure you parse the exact values from Bugzilla to Jira and the user who performs the various actions in the rest API must have the appropriate JIRA project permission.

[Ismael Jimoh]

Find the Jira rest API documentation here: https://docs.atlassian.com/software/jira/docs/api/REST/7.12.0/

[Panos Georgiadis]

Thank you @Ismael Jimoh for your reply. Unfortunately moving everything into one server is not gonna happen any time soon. So from what I understood, the integration between Bugzilla and Jira can happen by using Jira's rest API.

There are another two questions:

* Integration Jira with Bugzilla

* Automation of movement of Jira cards to the appropriate place

Any ideas are most welcome :)

[Ismael Jimoh]

With the other 2 questions:

* Integration Jira with Bugzilla

I assume you mean having changes made in JIRA reflected Bugzilla.

I am unsure of this but I do know that a good place to start would be looking at JIRAs webhook. You would need to capture what is returned in the webhook and find a way to parse this to bugzilla.

The problem is I am unfamiliar with Bugzilla and it's APIs.

If you meant the other way round, the key here would be finding a way to trigger a Rest call from bugzilla that would pass the values JIRA requires.

* Automation of Movement of JIRA cards to the Appropriate place:

This means transition if I am guessing correctly. If yes then the rest api already provides a transition call. This is the call you need to use when this event is performed in Bugzilla. In JIRA make sure your boards map correctly to statuses.

To note:

1. You would need a way to capture the data from Bugzilla.
2. Compare the data returned from the various actions in Bugzilla to what JIRA expects.
3. Find a way to format any data is different using mappings of some sort.
4. Extensive scripting would be required here and  a lot of testing.

I hope this helps to get you started.