This forum has our pet peeves and rants and raves, please join in, but please be respectful.en-US(C) Copyright 2006-2026 Inflectra Corporation.support@inflectra.com/Computers/Software/Project_Management//Computers/Software/Quality_Assurance/KronoDesksupport@inflectra.comhttp://www.inflectra.com/kronodesk/forums120/Support/Forum/announcements/rants-raves/List.aspxthreadId=1600Victoria D (nino.diasamidze@inflectra.com)testing automation exploratory testing pet peeve WHY DO people try to make humans do a task that is better suited to computers... WHY DO people try to make computers do a job better suited to humans! Imagine you have a website that you have to test with 5 different web browsers, various logins and passwords. Now you have to do the same thing hundreds of times , every time you release a new version, every 2 weeks. Some people write test scripts and give them to their testers and make them carry them out step by step, click by click . It sounds like a modern-day assembly line, perhaps something out of Fritz-Lang's Metropolis . This is the job for a computer. Conversely, if you have to test a complex web site that is changing every 2 weeks, with lots of new screens, many areas to explore and requirements and specs that are still evolving , some people try and automate the testing of this application. They spend a week writing a test that would only take a human a few hours to test. They miss all of the important edge cases, dead-ends, usability issues and items that a computer cannot spot. This is the job for a skilled human tester. The moral of the story - automate the repetitive tasks so that your human testers are more efficient, don't try and turn your humans into machines or your machines into humans. Tue, 10 Jan 2017 15:55:08 -05002026-03-05T14:33:05-05:00/Support/Forum/announcements/rants-raves/1600.aspxthreadId=1619David J (adam.sandman+support@inflectra.com)refactoring agile database entity framework dot net So in 2010 as we worked on SpiraTeam v3.0 we started developing the new version using ASP.NET 4.0 and Visual Studio 2010. As we upgraded our environment, we realized that all of the old SpiraTeam code was using an obsolete technology for communicating with the database. Called ADO.NET Strongly Typed DataSets , it was a way for a web application using ASP.NET 1.1 to send data to/from the database using C# objects to hold the data and raw SQL queries to do the retrieves and writes to the database. We decided that we needed to refactor SpiraTeam , which would ensure that the architecture would be strong for the future. This was important for us since it was critical that SpiraTeam's foundation would sustain the expected growth over the years ahead. Using our agile approach to architecture, we realized quickly that this effort would take many man-years to accomplish due to the size of the application and the need to rewrite the entire back-end! So we put in place the following refactoring manifesto instead: All new functionality would use the new Microsoft Entity Framework EF4 instead of ADO.NET DataSets We would refactor 1-2 modules to use EF per release of the system Now we can fast forward to 2017, with the release of v5.2 in March we will have retired the last of the DataSet code. It has taken: over 1,000,000 lines of code to be rewritten approximately 4,500 cups of coffee 1,800 searches on Stack Overflow 1 copy of the great O'Reilly book on Entity Framework 250 merge conflicts in Subversion with the dratted .EDMX file 85 attempts to get round the composite key issue in Entity Framework 120 new stored procedures But at the end of it, we have a completely re-architected data access and business logic framework to SpiraTeam. Of course, now we want to move to ASP.NET 4.6 and Entity Framework 6.0... but that's a story for another day! Thu, 09 Feb 2017 02:49:59 -05002017-03-03T19:31:27-05:00/Support/Forum/announcements/rants-raves/1619.aspxthreadId=1626David J (adam.sandman+support@inflectra.com)help desk knowledge base pet peeve Often times we find it amusing to get help desk tickets from customers that are trying to do something (e.g. integrate SpiraTeam with product X) and to answer their question, all I have to do is search on Google or our companys website for the question they asked and up pops the answer!! Well now that we have upgraded to our help desk to KronoDesk 2.0, they will no longer have to wait for us to do the searching for them... KronoDesk searches our knowledge base automatically as they submit their ticket and takes care of business... less time waiting for help... more time to enjoy a cup of coffee :-) Thu, 23 Feb 2017 02:08:15 -05002024-08-16T14:54:05-04:00/Support/Forum/announcements/rants-raves/1626.aspxthreadId=1761David Bentham (david.bentham@se.consafelogistics.com)notifications Wouldnt it be nice to have a configurable system notification event? The event could be triggered by an administrator who could even edit the content. Great for spreading the word instead of having to make notifications via organisational web pages or emails. Perfect example is after an upgrade, let users know of the new version at logon and any actions they need to take like clearing cache along with informing of new or revised functions. Tue, 24 Oct 2017 06:24:32 -04002026-02-27T07:12:30-05:00/Support/Forum/announcements/rants-raves/1761.aspxthreadId=1602David J (adam.sandman+support@inflectra.com)roadmap Version 5.x of SpiraTest claimed to host a slew of new features and improvements.After about a month of playing with it, I haven't been able to find much of an upgrade from the 4.2 version. I'm sure there is "back-end" updates that may improve performance or stability... but there is definitely a lack of new capability or even a loss of capability in this "new" release. Maybe I'm missing something, but so far - the new Release has been a bust for our project. Actually considering rolling back to 4.2.x. I would suggest that if a "new" release is claimed, make sure that the feature list is the same if not better than the last by a good margin. And don't break or remove things that worked in the older versions. Wed, 11 Jan 2017 16:49:22 -05002024-09-11T12:35:59-04:00/Support/Forum/announcements/rants-raves/1602.aspxthreadId=1768Manuel Shaw (cooleyomar4@gmail.com) The article regarding the new importer for Excel 365 and Google Sheets states it is for requirements. Can it be used for other artifacts to import such as to import test cases stored on a SharePoint 365??? Wed, 15 Nov 2017 14:05:28 -05002026-02-26T07:17:16-05:00/Support/Forum/announcements/rants-raves/1768.aspxthreadId=2949Cher Nicastro (Cher.nicastro@ecifm.com)productivity Our developers need to see their assignments (incidents & tasks) for a specific release (or sprint). The current My Page (Current Product) shows all assignments for ALL TIME, which makes it impossible to identify the top priorities for the current sprint/release. The option to filter to a specific release is available on the Product Home, please do the same on My Page. This is one of the biggest complaints from our developers about Spira (I know I have asked for this before, but thought I would try again). Thu, 11 Jul 2024 19:17:44 -04002026-02-27T07:12:48-05:00/Support/Forum/announcements/rants-raves/2949.aspxthreadId=1704Charlie Downy (haint1098@gmail.com) Hi, I have just signed up for an account with SpiraTest. There are a few things that could be improved with regard to the SignUp process: 1) An explanation of the price On the Purchase Page, when you choose the one-user version of SpiraTest, you are shown the box inserted below: Now, call me unimaginative... but the arithmetic that I was taught does not treat 5.00 as equivalent to 5.99. In my world, those two numbers are different ... Now, probably the reason that $5.00 per user per month somehow ends up costing $5.99 per month has something to do with tax (although the fine print reckons that the prices exclude tax). So, could you please take me step-by-step through the calculation that converts a price of $5.00 per month into $5.99 per month. 2) The address fields When you sign up, you need to fill in an address. The delivery address for the office where I am located does not start with a number, it starts with a name. However, if I put something into the address field that does not start with a number, the webpage rejects this as an invalid address ....... Personally, I think that any attempt to apply simple validation rules like must start with a number to address entry fields is doomed to failure. The simple fact is that a lot of addresses in this world do not start with a number. You just need to have to let go of trying to validate addresses in this way. 3) The Name field for Credit Card details is fixed, and cannot be changed.. I was signing up the account in the name of one of my employees, but want to pay for it with my Credit card. So, I entered the employees name as the name in the account details. Then, when I came to enter the Credit Card details, the Name on Card field was already filled in with the the Employees name, with no option to edit it. Surely it is not that unusual for the name of the credit card used to pay for an account to be different the name of the account user? Often enough, the name on the Credit Card might be a company name, not an individual persons name... By all means, do be user-friendly by pre-populating the Name on Card field with the Account user name, that is fine. BUT, please do not make the field non-editable, thereby preventing the changing of this name in the case where the credit card happens not to be in the same name as the account user... Thu, 06 Jul 2017 01:11:49 -04002025-08-22T10:25:00-04:00/Support/Forum/announcements/rants-raves/1704.aspxthreadId=2031David J (adam.sandman+support@inflectra.com)server linux Spira products can only run on Windows + MS SQL :( ..ok, rant over But seriously, any plans to get onto Linux? Probably a long term deal breaker for us Thu, 23 May 2019 17:38:22 -04002025-05-07T09:40:08-04:00/Support/Forum/announcements/rants-raves/2031.aspxthreadId=2172Robert C Woodward (shosioness123q@hotmail.com)product home charts negative count Test Case Cummulative Progress Chart shows negative No Run count Fri, 22 May 2020 14:34:20 -04002025-03-20T10:03:49-04:00/Support/Forum/announcements/rants-raves/2172.aspxthreadId=2547zhenglong zl (czhenglong451@gmail.com)test case automation workflow customisation customization feature request My client is finally preparing to take steps into Test Automation for the significant number regression tests they have across quite a number of their end clients. I would really like to be able to set up a Test Case Workflow to take test cases through a process to mature and validate them, but the steps available within the workflow are rather limiting and cannot (at least not of Spira 6.14) be amended or added to. Please can I request a feature update to the Test Case Workflow and other Workflows, to bring them up to the excellent standard of workflows available for Incidents. The ability to rename steps would give 70% of this value immediately, and the ability to add new steps would give 85%. If it can be done per Template, you would be pretty much there! Tue, 21 Dec 2021 11:00:36 -05002026-02-09T04:42:25-05:00/Support/Forum/announcements/rants-raves/2547.aspxthreadId=2772David J (adam.sandman+support@inflectra.com) Hi, I would like to request a minor change to the screen shown when an individual test set is selected - the screen that shows a summary at the top and the test cases lower down. A number of times, I have had testers attempt to re-run a small number of tests within a set (ones that had failed but have since been remediated), but they have got it wrong by clicking the wrong button. At the moment, if I select NO test cases and click the Execute Tests button (that is immediately above the test cases, I get a message telling me I need to select some. However, if I select a number of test cases and then erroneously click the Execute button at the TOP of the screen (typically because the lower button has scrolled out of view), I end up running all tests. I would like to request that if the TOP Execute button is clicked when one or more individual test cases are selected, a suitable warning / error is shown - maybe along the lines of You cannot execute the complete test set whilst individual test cases are selected. Thanks, Colin Wed, 22 Mar 2023 14:59:16 -04002024-08-16T17:48:42-04:00/Support/Forum/announcements/rants-raves/2772.aspxthreadId=2912David J (adam.sandman+support@inflectra.com) In my clients organisation there are hundreds of projects in Spira. Several people are portfolio managers and have access to several dozen of these at a time. Finding the relevant project can be cumbersome (partly because of a bizarre naming convention!) but we tend to work on only 2 or 3 projects at a time. The ability to pin a project (or program or portfolio) to the top of the drop-down list - or to be able to manually sort them somehow - would be vey useful at times. Wed, 24 Apr 2024 09:01:36 -04002024-09-13T13:16:14-04:00/Support/Forum/announcements/rants-raves/2912.aspxthreadId=2952Ilia Poliakov (ilya.polyakov@edetek.com) My client has a couple of multi-year projects with a large number of defects (thousands). I have just added some custom fields to help with analysis and populated them with the respective values (via the Bulk Edit capability). Some of the defects have not been touched in a significant time, but unfortunately, adding the analysis values has set the Last Updated field to yesterday (when I applied the field). I would like a way of updating records in a way that does not update the Last Updated field, or to reset it after I have made the change. This could be, for example, by adding an attribute to custom fields to indicate that they are not to update Last Updated (they fall into a non-core category, perhaps). Wed, 17 Jul 2024 12:57:04 -04002026-03-11T07:34:23-04:00/Support/Forum/announcements/rants-raves/2952.aspxthreadId=2975salim nl (mental.egret.eueo@letterhaven.net) Hi, Now that we have the ability to create and add people to Teams, it would be great if the user type in custom fields could also allow the user to be restricted to a selected team. For example, on Requirements, I have a custom fields called Test Manager Assigned and Project Manager Assigned, but its possible to select any user; restricting it to the Test Management and Project Management teams respectively, would be vey useful. Fri, 11 Oct 2024 17:23:22 -04002025-12-27T09:20:05-05:00/Support/Forum/announcements/rants-raves/2975.aspxthreadId=2986Freddy Jason (milanbyan329@gmail.com) My client has a relatively large number of custom fields on their requirements, and would like to be able to add notifications that are currently not possible. One of the fields is Business Analyst (BA), with type user. Whenever that field is updated, they need the BA whose name is in the field to be notified. This would need two changes that I can see: Allow notifications to be triggered when a custom field is changed (today, the list of triggering fields is limited to standard fields only). Allow the recipients to be selected based on the content of the fields, rather than people in a specific role (or subscribed followers). Many thanks, Colin Fri, 22 Nov 2024 09:21:47 -05002025-07-31T07:20:23-04:00/Support/Forum/announcements/rants-raves/2986.aspxthreadId=3175Gloria Darby (Gloria.Darby@nttdata.com) PLEASE add folder changes (creation, movement, deletion, etc.) the Product History Changes log. Even if they cannot be undone, someone is moving things around and I cannot tell who. There are well over a hundred users with access to my product so finding out who is messing things up is not trivial. I need this for Test Cases and Test Sets mainly. Mon, 02 Mar 2026 09:41:29 -05002026-03-04T11:32:20-05:00/Support/Forum/announcements/rants-raves/3175.aspxthreadId=2714Elsa Mercury (elsafrommercury@gmail.com)rest Why are so many Endpoints missing in the REST API (v6.0). I would like to have the PUT endpoint in so many resources. Specialy for the Test Run Artifact. I am try to make a migration script for my test runs because of changes in the template (custom properties). But now i have to do it manually! Fri, 18 Nov 2022 10:49:00 -05002025-05-09T20:47:33-04:00/Support/Forum/announcements/rants-raves/2714.aspxthreadId=2977diot toi (drivingdirectionsonline@gmail.com)time tracking Hello, Inflectra team, Many thanks for implementing worklogs feature in Spira in Version 8.4. That is what I was waiting for! Some thoughts what to improve ranked by its priority (the most needed features are at the top): Edit and delete worklogs Delete incident/task from worklogs screen list Some widget on an incident/task screen to track time directly there, not to switch to worklogs screen. A button on an incident/task screen to add to worklogs screen and see if it is already there. Ability to disable changing actual effort not from worklogs page Ability to disable reporting time (worklogs) on some special status (one more radio button at Edit Workflow Step Details screen). Ability to use worklogs for custom reports and APIs (all worklogs for a specific incident/task, all worklogs for specific user through all projects, all worklogs at this project, all worklogs at any project). Ability to see monthly reports (not weekly) Ability to allow or disable worklog for future dates. Sometimes it is needed if we have vacation task, where team members are planning their vacations. Approve and decline worklogs (easy feature to add a dedicated field supervisor for any Spira user, and that person and any persons above are responsible to approve or decline worklog - not very hard to implement). Mon, 14 Oct 2024 10:10:58 -04002025-12-12T09:22:41-05:00/Support/Forum/announcements/rants-raves/2977.aspxthreadId=2979Chester Coffey (betterwound@gmail.com)project_id is_deleted reports Hello, According to Available Report Tables - SpiraDocs (inflectra.com) PROJECT_ID is missing in many tables. Examples: R_Comments R_HistoryDetails And it requires more merges. Will it be a big database degradation to add it to those tables? For example, for comments it is really many merges to see comments for some particular project. It is as I need to do union all for entities (tasks, requirements, etc.) after inner join. And if the impact to database is low, lets try to have PROJECT_ID almost everywhere. More or less the same situation is with IS_DELETED flag. To get information that comment belongs to an entity that was deleted - many merges needed. But this request has lower priority. Thu, 17 Oct 2024 09:37:32 -04002026-02-26T07:17:47-05:00/Support/Forum/announcements/rants-raves/2979.aspxthreadId=2488Lynn Davenport (growthstarboard@gmail.com) Is there a forum for spiraPlan new enhancement requests and votes? Tue, 31 Aug 2021 17:35:37 -04002025-05-07T11:25:13-04:00/Support/Forum/announcements/rants-raves/2488.aspxthreadId=2416David J (adam.sandman+support@inflectra.com)migration Microsoft Test Manager is essentially EOL and after evaluating over a dozen test case management tools we settled on SpiraTest, especially since the migration tool looked promising. It does a lot of stuff, but there are some limitations. Did anyone overcome these problems? Here is what I ran into so far - tool created test case parameters, but did not copy any of the values....we got the source code and Inflectra fixed that. - Spiras test case parameter values cannot be longer than 255 characters. On migration the test case gets created, but only those parameters are added until one exceeds the 255 character limit for its value. If that happens none of the test steps are added. - Spira does not really allow for multiple test case parameter values. I know there is a way, but that should be an option in the Test Parameter dialog. For each set of values the test is run multiple times. Test Manager calls that iterations. A HUGE help when needing to test with the same steps but different predefined values. Alas, the migration tool can only bring over one value (and that because we fixed it) requiring us to flatten out all test cases in Test Manager before migration - Migration tool has no concept of Test Managers referenced test cases. in Test Manager one test case can be added to various folders. Test runs are tracked separately. So during migration the references are ignored. Should instead just go ahead and create a new test case in Spira. At least it gets logged so that it can be fixed manually. - Migration is slow. I have over 70k test cases to move over and have to do that in chunks running the migration tool on multiple VMs - Small issue, the log is incomplete. Once the migration is done the last bit of log is never written to file. - Migration tool does not import users when the user name contains a comma. So Last, First causes migration to fail right away. Workaround was to not import the users. - Tool does not bring over any custom fields except for Area and Status. I had our automation engineer write a script that stuffs the values into Spira, but that is really something a migration tool should do. The migration tool is works and brings a lot of things over nicely, but whoever crafted the requirements for this tool had not much knowledge of how Test Manager works. Test Manager isnt a popular tool, so changes will come after we migrated. Thu, 15 Jul 2021 19:46:04 -04002025-05-07T09:42:18-04:00/Support/Forum/announcements/rants-raves/2416.aspxthreadId=2555rick rode (rickrode37@gmail.com) software testing software testing classes in pune software testing training in pune What is advantages and disadvantages of automation testing? Automated testing reduces the dependability of testing on the availability of the test engineers. Automated testing provides round the clock coverage as automated tests can be run all time in 24*7 environment. Automated testing takes far less resources in execution as compared to manual testing. Sat, 08 Jan 2022 11:13:42 -05002025-07-21T11:57:27-04:00/Support/Forum/announcements/rants-raves/2555.aspxthreadId=2868Tom Woods (sayebi3988@dlbazi.com) Ive been chasing down a Jira to Spira sync issue now for weeks, months even. In the last week I have spent at least three full days work on it. Most of that time is wasted time caused by Spiras event logs failing to provide the crucial information required to identify the EXACT nature of the problem AND communicate it clearly to Spira support. Its wasting all our time...not just mine. Ive been in the IT game since the early 1980s and I am still surprised by how poorly exception handling and logging is done most of the time. As mentioned the problem I am having is that the Spira to Jira BUG/ISSUE sync is not working. Ive got a long way do the path. Most things are happening but I am still getting two errors in the log every time something changes (I will include details later). These arent trivial issues for me. Data is being clobbered and as a result I cant trust the process AT ALL at the moment. Details aside, for Spira to be getting an error on a synchronisation, I would expect it to be comparing one or more things/fields to in fact even know theres an error? So why not tell us, exactly, what they are? Because the event log simply DOESNT tell us which FIELD and WHAT data (on either side of the sync) is causing the error. Why not? Laziness is my guess. Some programmer has said This will never happen. Lets just dump it to the log...and here we are. Im not asking for help or answers to my problem here. This post is about getting better event log messages. So with that in mind below is just one of the errors I get that is a) enormous and b) almost completely unhelpful. Heres one of the errors: ErrorData SynchronizationError Updating SpiraTeam Incident to JIRA: Web Exception Error calling JIRA REST API: The remote server returned an error: (400) Bad Request. Details: {errorMessages:[],errors:{rankBeforeIssue:expected Object,rankAfterIssue:expected Object}} ...and heres its details... Error Updating SpiraTeam Incident to JIRA: Web Exception Error calling JIRA REST API: The remote server returned an error: (400) Bad Request. Details: {errorMessages:[],errors:{rankBeforeIssue:expected Object,rankAfterIssue:expected Object}} Error Updating SpiraTeam Incident to JIRA: Web Exception Error calling JIRA REST API: The remote server returned an error: (400) Bad Request. Details: {errorMessages:[],errors:{rankBeforeIssue:expected Object,rankAfterIssue:expected Object}}at Inflectra.SpiraTest.PlugIns.JiraCloudDataSync.JiraClient.JiraManager.RunQuery(JiraResource resource, String argument, String data, String method)at Inflectra.SpiraTest.PlugIns.JiraCloudDataSync.JiraClient.JiraManager.SaveIssue(JiraIssue jiraIssue, Boolean statusChanged)at Inflectra.SpiraTest.PlugIns.JiraCloudDataSync.DataSync.ProcessUpdatedIncident(Int32 projectId, SoapServiceClient spiraImportExport, RemoteIncident remoteIncident, List`1 newReleaseMappings, Dictionary`2 customPropertyMappingList, Dictionary`2 customPropertyValueMappingList, RemoteCustomProperty[] incidentCustomProperties, RemoteDataMapping[] incidentMappings, JiraProject jiraProject, JiraManager jiraManager, String productName, RemoteDataMapping[] severityMappings, RemoteDataMapping[] priorityMappings, RemoteDataMapping[] statusMappings, RemoteDataMapping[] typeMappings, RemoteDataMapping[] userMappings, RemoteDataMapping[] releaseMappings, RemoteDataMapping[] incidentComponentMappings, List`1 recentlyUpdatedFromJira)at Inflectra.SpiraTest.PlugIns.JiraCloudDataSync.DataSync.Execute(Nullable`1 lastSyncDate, DateTime serverDateTime) Ive looked at hundreds of messages like this, in Spira, for this problem. Other people, including Spira support, have looked at these messages...a lot. So I have reasonable confidence that this isnt just me. No-one can point me in the right direction. Ive been going around and around. So, in the Event logs, Why cant we see: 1) A date and time stamp in the details (because when you view the details among this many events it is hard to tell which one you are looking at) 2) The field names that caused the error? Ive looked and looked. I cant see that information. There are things named, but they seem irrelevant. 3) The actual data that caused the error? Really? Just why-the-hell-not? If I could enter unique and identifiable data in bug fields I could see which one was at fault but... 4) Why not report an IDs of the records, or BUGS/Incidents etc. The data must be there at the syncs fingertips to be able to know theres a problem. Just fricken tell us!! 5) Which direction the data was trying to go? With the lag in the sync process itself and the subsequent logs it is quite annoying to not be able to just see in the log which directions was at fault. Ive had to derive this information from hours of changing one thing and waiting for at least three minutes to see what happens...and even then things get logged a few minutes after I expect them to be. These are just 5 things off the top of my head that would make Spiras event logs not just better, but actually useful. Heres another idea to make event logs better... perhaps make the amount of detailed displayed in the log adjustable - less for everyday, more for when troubleshooting. I realise that when dealing with third party products things can be out of Spiras and my control. My issue may well come down to something I cant change in Jira. These logs, and many of the things Spira USERS are required to do to make this Sync work, fail to realise that many of us live within the constraints of IT departments with access policies of their own. They deny us what Spira tells us we need AND are slow, unresponsive and intractable in themselves. Information is power. If Spira and Spira support think it isnt their fault, then show us the information. Give us event logs that log useful information...for US, the USERS/victims of all this. Tue, 14 Nov 2023 01:40:58 -05002026-02-26T07:17:10-05:00/Support/Forum/announcements/rants-raves/2868.aspxthreadId=3089Victoria D (nino.diasamidze@inflectra.com) Hey everyone, Ive been using Spira for a while, and after the most recent update, Ive noticed some slowdowns when loading larger projects. Is anyone else experiencing this? Could it be something on my end, or is this a general issue with the new release? Sat, 06 Sep 2025 08:49:52 -04002025-10-29T06:44:32-04:00/Support/Forum/announcements/rants-raves/3089.aspx