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Workboards should support view filtering (closed tasks, assigned to user, etc)
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Description

Hi,

We've switched to Phabricator and lived in it for a few weeks. As part of our sprint process, we needed a way to track what tasks go on a sprint, so we've tried both creating a "Sprint X" project as well as using Workboards and creating a "Sprint X" column (I'm not clear on which is better - it looks like there are open tasks for further supporting "milestones" using both approaches).

Nevertheless, aside from the auto-re-prioritization-on-drag-and-drop bug, the latter works mostly fine, with one exception: testing/verification. Specifically, once we finish a sprint and push everything to our staging environment, we need to have QA go through the list of completed tasks for that sprint to verify them. To do this, we need at least one of the following:
(1) [probably most approprate] a way to view closed bugs on a workboard (right now they just disappear from the workboard which makes it impossible to view completed items on a given milestone).
(2) a way to search for bugs, open or closed, in a given workboard column (this is more annoying but it's a fine stop-gap solution).
(3) if all else fails, a new status called "Testing" that we can mark things as instead of "Resolved", so that when a developer finished, they mark it as "Testing", then when the tester validates, it can be marked as "Resolved". Not my ideal choice but it would do the job and I know other companies do this (and in fact Pivotal's additional statuses do this sort of thing).

In the meantime, if you know of any hack or workaround we can use to meet the above use case using workboards, let us know.

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I believe we're planning to do (1), other users have some similar use cases (broadly, changing filtering or ordering for tasks displayed on boards).

We're less likely to pursue (2), at least at the moment, because it would have technical and UI issues for large numbers of projects (the "Testing" columns across different boards don't have anything which unifies them, and we can't query this efficiently).

(3) is written and out for review (see T1812) and should land shortly.

Although it's probably some ways off, we also have some plans to let columns have logic, like "when a task is dropped into this column, change its status to 'Needs Verification'". I assume your preference against (3) is because it's more cumbersome than just dragging the task? If so, I think this should solve that -- although I'm not sure how quickly we'll get to building it. Or are there other reasons you don't like this approach?

Thanks for the quick reply.

Ok, (1) would be ideal, just as simple filters on the page; I can't use workboards at all without this, as I'm stuck using projects for each sprint as a (very hacky) workaround. Any ETA on this?

(3) would work if (and only if) it's possible to search on this custom "testing" status, but again without (1) we'd still be stuck with the hacky workaround of creating projects for each sprint.

Regarding your question, I've been on teams that use (3) - my last startup, in fact. I know some folks don't rely on this approach because it's arguably less intuitive / more error prone due to the not-so-uncommon mistake that developers (or non-developers that happen to have a task assigned to them) finish something and then think to close it so move it to "resolved" instead of into "testing" as intended, because that's what's most intuitive. We've had some bugs out there in the world fall through the cracks this way.

chad renamed this task from viewing closed tasks in a milestone to Workboards should have an option to show recent (and infinite) closed tasks.Mar 26 2014, 7:04 PM
chad triaged this task as Normal priority.

We'll probably add the ability to show tasks with states other than "Open" on boards. It gets a little fuzzy if there are a bajillion tasks that are closed, and we'd stick them on whatever panel they were closed on. I think a "Closed" panel that is magical like the "Backlog" panel is likely also a possibility, and one we'd want to start with.

If there's a "Closed" panel instead of being able to view the specifically closed items on a given board/milestone, this doesn't solve the original use case I filed this task for, namely to be able to tell which tasks have been closed on the given milestone for testing purposes so each closed item can be verified by QA.

I didn't say instead, just that it is something we'll build as a start (it was already planned).

epriestley renamed this task from Workboards should have an option to show recent (and infinite) closed tasks to Workboards should support view filtering (closed tasks, assigned to user, etc).May 18 2014, 6:24 PM
epriestley claimed this task.

This seems to be in a pretty reasonable state.