Introduction on Mantis Bug Tracker
In any SDLC, Testing plays an important role. In order to file a bug and keeping track of each and every bug is very important. For this purpose, an easy, efficient and reliable bug tracking and filing tool is required. Mantis is one of them. It is an open-source bug tracking tool available in the market to track bugs for any software product in the testing phase. It is developed in Php and supports various browsers like Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, IE, Opera, etc. It provides the facility to customize the bugs according to the requirements and grant users different access according to the project. Mantis has a special feature of sending the email notifications if any updates/changes are made to the bug reported by any tester/ developer. In this article, we will discuss Mantis Bug Tracker in detail.
How to Use Mantis Bug Tracker?
Mantis is very easy and user-friendly to use. Let’s understand the step by step procedure of working on Mantis bug tracker as a beginner:
1. How to Add Project in Mantis Bug Tracker?
The first and foremost task to do after logging in to the Mantis Bug Tracker is to add a project in it. There are 3 simple steps that need to be followed to add a project in Mantis:
Step 1: Navigate to the Manage Projects sections by clicking on the Manage tab present on the left panel of the screen.
Step 2: Add the Project details by clicking on the Create project button. In the Project details, fill the following fields:
– Project Name.
– Status of the project which can be development, release, stable, Obsolete.
– View Status which can be Public or Private.
– Project Description.
Step 3: After entering all the project details, click on the Add Project button present at the bottom to complete the project creation. We can see the above newly added project under Manage -> Manage Projects section. 
2. How to Manage Users in Mantis Bug Tracker?
For an administrator, it is important to manage the various users working in a project. Following steps need to be followed in order to Manage different users in Mantis:
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Step 1: Navigate to the Manage Users sections by clicking on the Manage tab present on the left panel of the screen.
Step 2: After all the users are displayed in the Manage Users section, various filters can be applied to it in order to manage users in different ways:
- Filtering the users by typing the username, real name or email in the search box.
- Filtering the disabled and Inactive users by checking the ‘Show Disabled’ and ‘Hide Inactive’ checkbox.
- Filtering the users by on the basis of ‘Date Created’ in ascending or descending order by clicking on the ‘Date Created’ heading.
- Filtering the users on the basis of ‘Last Visit’ in ascending or descending order by clicking on the ‘Last Visit’ heading.
Step 3: The administrator can also make any changes in any user by clicking on the Username of the user. Admin is redirected to the ‘Edit User’ profile of the respective user and can make any changes required.
3. How to Report an Issue in Mantis Bug Tracker?
The main task for which mantis is used for reporting and tracking of the bugs. As the bug template differs from one project to another, we can modify that by adding the Custom Fields in the bug template according to the requirements. Logging a bug in Mantis is very easy as it is very user friendly. All the fields or the tasks which needs to be done are shown clearly on every web page. Lets understand the step by step procedure of reporting a bug in mantis bug tracker:
Step 1: First and foremost step before logging any bug or doing anything in mantis is to login using the valid credentials.
Step 2:In order to log the big, click on the ‘Report Issue’ icon present on the left corner of the Home page of Mantis.
Step 3: ‘Enter Issue details’ page is displayed to the user and user can enter the details of the bug with the following fields:
- Category which can be deployment, development or General. We can also add the values of Category under Manage tab according to the project requirements. In case of an e-commerce application, Category values can also be webUI, database, etc.
- Severity: Values can be major, minor, trivial, block, crash, etc depending on the Severity of the bug reported.
- Priority: Values of this can be normal, high, urgent, immediate. Defining the Priority of bug is very important while logging it.
- Assign: To have the list of people who can be assigned to task actions for the logged bug
- Summary: Short and descriptive summary of the bug
- Bug Description: Enhanced description including steps to reproduce to describe the bug.
- Tags: Tags helps to easily identify the bugs. We can create custom tags according to the project requirements by navigating to Manage -> Manage Tags section.
- Files to be attached: Any screenshots, recording, pdf needs to be attached related to the bug.
- View Status
Click on the ‘Submit Issue’ button present at the bottom of the web page in order to submit the above bug with the details provided.
This bug template may differ from one project to project. In case your template is different there is no need to worry, Check for the Custom Fields from Manage -> Manage Custom Fields in order to add/delete the custom fields.
Step 4: After submitting the issue with all the details provided, user is redirected to the ‘View Issue Details’ page in which the user can view all the details related to the above issue.
Step 5: Now more details can be added to the above created issue like changing the status. Consider a case, in which tester mistakenly reported an issue which is duplicate of the already present issue, he/she can mark Close or Delete whatever they feel like according to the situation.
Step 6: ‘Add Note’ section is also displayed to the user if the reporter or the assigned person wants to add something regarding the above issue.
Step 7: ‘Issue History’ section is displayed in order to check the history of the above issue. It shows every single detail of the task which is done by any of the people on the issue.
Step 8: All the created issue by a particular user is displayed on the timeline of the user with all the details, User can view the timeline by clicking on the ‘My View’ tab.
Otherwise, if logged in via administrator, having permission to view all the issues reported by all users. Issues are displayed under the ‘View Issues’ tab. Users can even download the issues in various formats like CSV, Excel, etc.
Step 9: Clicking on the Issue_Id attached automatically with the above-created issue, is displayed as a link and clicking on which opens the issue and shows all the details related to the above issue.
Step 10: In order to view the status of the bugs reported or the summary of the project, a detailed summary is displayed by clicking on the ‘Summary’ tab present on the left panel of the webpage.
The Summary tab shows each an every detail related to the project like:
- Number of bugs on the basis of various categories
- Status of the various bugs.
4. How to Create a New User in Mantis Bug Tracker?
It is very important to create users in the MANTIS which will be working on the software. These users can be developers, testers or the product owner having different permission according to their roles. Below mentioned steps need to be followed in order to create a new user in mantis:
Step 1: Navigate to the Manage Users sections by clicking on the Manage tab present on the left panel of the screen. Click on ‘Create New Account’ button present on the page.
Step 2: After clicking on the button of ‘Create New Account’, a new web page is displayed asking the user to enter the details of the new user. The details include:
- Username
- Realname
- Email Address
- Access Level which can be a Reporter, updater, developer, manager or administrator.
- Enabled
- Protected
After filling all the details of the new user click on the ‘Create User’ button present at the bottom.
Step 3: A user is created with the basic details provided above. Now the ‘Edit User’ screen is displayed in order to complete the advanced details of the above-created user. ‘Add User to Project’ panel is displayed asking for which projects available, you want to add the user to. Select the desired project for which we want to add the user and click on the ‘Add User’ button present.
Step 4: In the ‘Account Preferences’ box, choose the preferences for the user like Default Project, Refresh Delay, Redirect Delay, Email on various statuses of a bug, etc. After updating all the preferences, click on the ‘Update Prefs’ button present at the bottom of the panel.
Step 5: Email is sent to the added user with the username and the link to set the password. User can click on the link and set the password he/ she wants and can start accessing the mantis bug tracker.
Step 6: The Newly added user is reflected in the Manager User screen of the administrator who has permission to view and manage all the users.
5. How to Create a Custom Field in Mantis Bug Tracker?
Adding a new custom field in the bug means adding any filed extra in the default bug template in order to have the enhanced details of bug. Every organization, infact for every project there is a different template of bug according to the requirements of the project. This template is initially decided by all the team members before the testing and bug logging procedure. Suppose in an Agile project we want a bug reporter either tester or developer needs to mention the release or Sprint number in the bug as a mandatory field. For this purpose, we will add a custom field in the Bug layout and make it mandatory so that whosoever will be filing the bug requires to enter that field.
Below given steps are followed in order to add a custom field in the Mantis bug tracker:
Step 1: Navigate to the Manage Custom Fields sections by clicking on the Manage tab present on the left panel of the screen.
Step 2: Enter the name of the Custom field you want to add in the text box given and click on the ‘New Custom Field’ button.
Step 3: ‘Edit Custom Field’ screen is displayed to the user in which the user needs to enter the details of the custom fields like Field Type, max length, minimum length, and the checkboxes when that particular field should be displayed. After entering all the details of the Custom Field according to the requirements, click on the ‘Update Custom Field’ button present at the bottom.
Step 4: After entering all the values of the Custom Field according to the requirements, the next important step is to link the Custom Field with the project. Linking the field with the project means in which the project’s bug template we want that field to be added. Because as mentioned earlier fields are specific to the projects and not necessarily all the projects would need the above added Custom Field.
Not only we can define the project of the Custom Field, but we can also enter the sequence in which we want that field to appear in our bug template. Click on the ‘Link Custom Field’ button in order to complete the linking process.
Step 5: We can see that the above created Custom Field is displayed in the Custom Field Section under Manage tab.
Step 6: Above created Custom Field will be clearly visible in the bug template when we report the bug by clicking on the ‘Report Issue’ tab.
Conclusion
There are various actions that can be performed in the Mantis Bug Tracker in order for the smooth access and working of a Bug tracking system. Apart from the above actions mentioned there are many options available to customize the view, reporting and creating a template of bug.
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