The Trac Ticket System

As the central project management element of Trac, tickets can be used forproject tasks,feature requests,bug reports andsoftware support issues, among others.

As with theTracWiki, this subsystem has been designed to make user contribution and participation as simple as possible. Tickets can be edited, annotated, assigned, prioritized and discussed.

The default installation doesn't permit to non-authenticated users ("anonymous" users) to change anything, even to comment on an issue, for obvious spam prevention reasons. Check the local contributing policy, or contact your local Trac administrator.

Ticket Fields

A ticket contains the following information:

• Summary — Simple text withoutWikiFormatting.
• Description — The body of the ticket. AcceptsWikiFormatting.
• Reporter — The author of the ticket.
• Type — The default types aredefect,enhancement andtask.
• Component — The project module or subsystem that this ticket concerns.
• Version — Version of the project that this ticket pertains to.
• Keywords — Useful for searching and report generation.
• Priority — The default priorities aretrivial,minor,major,critical andblocker. A dropdown list when multiple priorities are defined.
• Severity — Similar to Priority, but the distinction may be useful for some projects. No severities are defined by default, therefore the field will be hidden from the ticket form.
• Milestone — Milestone in which the ticket will be resolved. A dropdown list.
• Assigned to/Owner — Principal person responsible for handling the issue.
• Cc — A comma-separated list of other users or email addresses to notify when changes are made to a ticket.
• Resolution — Reason why a ticket was closed. Default values arefixed,invalid,wontfix,duplicate,worksforme.
• Status — The statuses are defined in theticket workflow. For the default workflow the statuses arenew,assigned,accepted,closed andreopened.

Notes:

• The type,component,milestone, version, priority, severity fields and resolution can be managed usingtrac-admin or WebAdmin.

Changing and Commenting Tickets

With appropriate permissions, tickets can be commented and ticket properties changed. When viewing a ticket, the history of changes will appear below the ticket properties box.

By default an authenticated user can edit their own ticket comments. Users withTICKET_EDIT_COMMENT can edit any comment.

Comment editing is meant for making small corrections to comments, like fixing formatting or spelling errors. For major edits, you should be adding a new comment instead. Editing a comment will not produce a new entry ontimeline, while entering a new comment or other changes will do.

All edits (field changes, new comments, comment edits) update the "last changed" time of the ticket.

Note:

• TracLinks andWikiFormatting can be used in the ticket description and comments. UseTracLinks to refer to other issues, changesets and files.

• SeeTracNotification for how to configure email notifications on ticket changes.

• SeeTracWorkflow for information about the state transitions (ticket lifecycle), and customization of the workflow.

Hiding Fields

Many of the default ticket fields can be hidden from the ticket web interface by removing all the possible values through the WebAdmin or usingtrac-admin. This only applies to drop-down lists:type,priority,severity,component,version andmilestone.

Adding Custom Fields

Trac lets you add custom ticket fields. SeeTracTicketsCustomFields for more information.

Default Values for Drop-Down Fields

The option selected by default for the various drop-down fields can be set intrac.ini. Refer to the values prefixed withdefault_ in the[ticket] section. The default value of several fields can also be set through the WebAdmin.

If any of these options are omitted, the default value will either be the first in the list, or an empty value when allowed. Theallowed_empty_fields option determines which fields may have an empty value.

Assign-to as Drop-Down List

If the list of possible ticket owners is finite, you can change theassign-to ticket field from a text input to a drop-down list. This is done by setting therestrict_owner option of the[ticket] section intrac.ini totrue. In that case, Trac will populate the list with all users whohave an authenticated session and possess theTICKET_MODIFYpermissions.

An authenticated session will be created the first time a user authenticates with the project. You can manually add an authenticated session using thetrac-adminsession add command. The:1 suffix on the session id (i.e. username) is the key to creating an authenticated session:

trac-admin /path/to/projenv session add <sid>:1[name][email]

You may find the dropdown list isoverpopulated with users that are no longer active in the project. Revoking authentication privileges will not remove the session data that is used to populate the dropdown list. Thetrac-admin command can be used to list and remove sessions:

• List all sessions:

  trac-admin /path/to/projenv session list

• Remove a session:

  trac-admin /path/to/projenv session delete SID

Alternatively, you can just revokeTICKET_MODIFY from users that you don't want to be included in the list. However, that will not be possible if you've grantedTICKET_MODIFY to allanonymous orauthenticated users.

Notes:

• If you need more flexibility, then use subclassConfigurableTicketWorkflow and override theget_allowed_owners method (seeTrac ticket 12807).

• Activating this option may cause some performance degradation. Read more about this in theTrac performance page.

Preset Values for New Tickets

To create a link to the new-ticket form filled with preset values, you need to call the/newticket? URL withvariable=value separated by&. Possible variables are:

• type — The type droplist.
• reporter — Name or email of the reporter.
• summary — Summary line for the ticket.
• description — Long description of the ticket.
• component — The component dropdown list.
• version — The version dropdown list.
• severity — The severity dropdown list.
• keywords — The keywords or tags.
• priority — The priority dropdown list.
• milestone — The milestone dropdown list.
• cc — The list of emails for notifying about the ticket change.

Example:[/newticket?summary=Compile%20Error&version=1.0&component=gui]

To set the ticket owner the workflow action may also need to be selected. For thedefault workflow, thecreate and assign action can be selected withaction=create_and_assign and the owner specified by assigningaction_create_and_assign_reassign_owner. Alternatively, you could avoid needing to select the action by using thedefault attribute to makecreate and assign the default action.

For other custom workflow actions, determine the variable names by inspecting thename attribute of theaction radio button and theowner input or select element.

Deleting Tickets

Ticket delete and ticket change delete functions are enabled through an optional component. To enable the functionality edit the[components] section ofTracIni:

[components]tracopt.ticket.deleter.*=enabled

TheDelete buttons appears next to theReply buttons in the ticket description and ticket change areas.TICKET_ADMIN permission is required for deleting tickets and ticket changes.

Tickets and ticket changes can also be deleted using theTracAdminticket remove andticket remove_comment commands.

Cloning Tickets

The ticket clone function is enabled through an optional component. To enable the functionality edit the[components] section ofTracIni:

[components]tracopt.ticket.clone.*=enabled

TheClone buttons appears next to theReply buttons in the ticket description and ticket change areas. The ticket summary, description and properties are cloned, with minor modifications such as changing the ticket reporter to the currently authenticated user.

See also:TracTicketsCustomFields,TracNotification,TracReports,TracQuery,TracRepositoryAdmin#CommitTicketUpdater