Issue Tracker provides a mechanism, called workflow, which allows you to create project stages and corresponding transitions, add and modify issues, and forward them from one user to another, notifying him/her each time an issue is received. Workflow helps you automate your business process: you can track issues from start to completion and access issue history at anytime. Custom diagrams are available to visualize the corresponding workflow from beginning to end.

This kind of workflow automation can be helpful in a project of any scale: it may be as simple as writing and publishing a marketing article, or as complicated as managing an engineering project involving various levels of details.

Creating a workflow
Below is an article writing example, presented as a “Marketing Flyer” task within a “Marketing Project” run by “ABC Company”. There are three employees involved in the task: John specifies the assignments and assignees and prepares the workflow, Ann is the author and Jeff is the publisher. The task can be split into 2 main stages: writing a flyer (Authoring stage) and publishing it (Publishing stage).
These stages are shown on the picture below:

Adding details to the workflow
The stages would not be descriptive enough without allowing transitions from one stage to another. The simplest stage transition is Authoring -> Publishing; i.e. John “issues” the assignment and forwards it to Ann. Ann writes an article, and when it is ready, Jeff publishes it. In reality, article writing process involves more transitions. For example, Ann writes the draft and sends it to Jeff. Before publishing, Jeff may read the draft over and send it back to Ann with his notes and revisions. When the final draft is ready, it is sent back to Jeff for publishing. The picture of the diagram below depicts stages, all the possible transitions, and the “Complete” stage, indicating that the task is finished.

Adding issues, assignees and other details
Once there is a diagram ready, John can follow it create and add issues; i.e. specify assignment which should be done at each stage of the task and assign individuals involved. The sample below shows the possible list of issues with all necessary details:

Viewing issue history
At any time you can also access an issue history. In the picture below you can see that the issue “Write the draft” was issued by John and assigned to Ann, including attached file “Flyer description”. When Ann finished writing a draft she forwarded the issue to Jeff with her comments and attached draft. Jeff will be notified immediately:

Customizing workflow for additional complexity
Depending upon the complexity of a project and number of people involved, workflow can include more details. To extend the article writing example, imagine the situation where article writing and publishing goes thru the following stages: Authoring -> Approval -> Publishing -> Testing. The author writes an article and forwards it for approval. Publishing is done only after the final draft is approved. Once an article is published it enters the testing stage. Only after successful test results is a task complete. The picture below shows the workflow diagram that was built on our marketing flyer workflow diagram (it was saved as a template) to include all necessary details for the “Writing and publishing white paper” task:

Try using workflow to create, customize, and track projects of any size and complexity with Issue Tracker. Learn more: http://www.webasyst.net/issue-tracking.htm