Your primary goal is that of keeping the bug-tracking list efficient
and clean. There are three fundamental issues you have to address:
Respond to user questions
Classification of solved problems
Thread maintenance
Checking for new user questions and responding to them
NOTE: most of the operations on the bugs web page which are not just
reading messages require you to check in as an administrator, going
through this
link (you should have registered as an "administrator" during
your
first day of shift
).
User questions are posted on the
cdf_software_help
mailing list, and reach the
cdf-bugs Jitter Bug Tracking System in parallel.
First of all become familiar with the Jitter interface, connecting
to it as a guest with the above link.
Basically you will see a list of folders, each with its own
link. Each folder contains messages organized by topic
(or "thread") that is, each message comes automatically
with all the replies/followups appended.
As an exercise try picking a particular folder and click on a message
Id:you will be shown a new page which contains the original
message, the list of replies and followups.
The typical operations you might want to do here are:
Read the message and the followups (just scroll down)
Send a reply (from the Compose Reply link)
Attach a note to the message (write in the Notes box and click "submit changes")
A good fraction of the messages is sent to cdf_software_help but also
cc'd to some expert. Make sure that to the best of your knowledge the expert
invoked is the right one, or otherwise forward the message to the proper expert.
If the message is not cc'd to some expert, or however if the question is still
open you should follow the sequence:
See if you can answer yourself
If the question is not clear due to the lack of fundamental information
(e.g. software release or similar) ask for clarifications
Check on the jitter web site for previous discussions on similar topics
Ask the proper expert to address the issue
(
here
is the list of cdf2 experts you should refer to.
)
Classification of solved problems
The main message folder you are concerned about is the one
called "incoming"
(
here).
You have to go through the messages in this folder, see
which ones still have no response and which ones need to be
moved to other folders (using the rightmost field in the folder
page, in the column "Move To"). Move the ones which have a
complete thread to the appropriate sub folder, according to
the nature of the problem discussed.
Thread maintenance
When the reply or followup to the problem is not submitted
through jitter itself (this happens often) the reply to the
message is not automatically classified by jitter in the same
thread. Your job is then that of grouping these under the same
thread.
First of all log on cdfsga as cdf-bugs using the cdfopr kerberos
ticket. (Remember that you have to go through the merry-go-round
local terminal - cdfopr/fcdflnx3 - cdf-bugs/cdfsga)
Then cd to bug_tracking/incoming.
This directory contains a bunch of files,
each one of which is a different message or reply to it.
The message id, as listed in the first column of the table in the
jitter folder web page, identifies the thread and is common
to the message and all the replies and follow ups.
For example, the message with Id 4347 is stored as the
file
bug_tracking/incoming/4347
The first reply will be stored in:
bug_tracking/incoming/4347.reply.1
The second as:
bug_tracking/incoming/4347.reply.2
and so on... Followups are similarly stored as:
bug_tracking/incoming/4347.followup.1
So, if you realize that message 4387 is a followup to
message 4347, you have to:
log on cdfsga as cdf-bugs
go to bug_tracking/incoming
figure out what is the last existent followup for message 4347
move message 4387 to 4347.followup.n where n is the last followup's
index incremented by one
Refresh your bugs web page to check that everything worked fine:
message 4387 must have disappeared as a new entry in the incoming folder
and you should find it appended as the last entry in the followups
for message 4347.