What's Waiting On You? Our Antidote to Stale Issues

When we first sketched out how DoneDone would work back in 2008, one thing was clear. We wanted an app that didn't leave issues hanging out to dry. With the many other issue trackers we surveyed, it was very easy to create issues that would get started but not resolved. Issues quickly sat in the middle with no one tending to them. Why? The issue tracker (whether it was email, or an Excel spreadsheet, or one of our competitors) didn't have a particular opinion about what needed to happen next. The issue tracker we wanted to build would have this opinion.

DoneDone solves this “what should happen next?” conundrum with a couple of popular issue filters called Issues Waiting On You and Issues You're Waiting On. While they are fairly self-explanatory, you may not know exactly what we’re doing behind-the-scenes.

What exactly do these mean?

Issues Waiting On You

When you select Issues Waiting On You, DoneDone takes every issue that you’re working on and filters them out based on their current status. What’s left are all issues where you need to take the next action. If any issue is in the following state, you’ll see them in this list:

• You’re the fixer, and the issue is Open
• You’re the fixer, and the issue is In Progress
• You’re the fixer, and the tester has been Pushed Back to you.
• You’re the fixer, and the tester marked the Fix Not Confirmed
• You’re the tester, and the fixer believes it is Not an Issue
• You’re the tester, and the fixer deems it Not Reproducible
• You’re the tester, and the fixer says it is Missing Information
• You’re the tester, and the fixer has marked it Ready for Retest

In all of the above cases, you would be the natural next person to act upon the issue. Once an issue is not in one of the states above, they’ll be instantly removed from your issues waiting on you.

Issues Waiting On Them

This filter is essentially the opposite of the Issues Waiting On You filter – all your assigned issues that are waiting on the other person.

• You’re the tester, and the issue is Open
• You’re the tester, and the issue is In Progress
• You’re the tester, and you’ve Pushed Back the issue to the fixer.
• You’re the tester and marked an issue as Fix Not Confirmed
• You’re the fixer and marked an issue as Not an Issue
• You’re the fixer and marked an issue as Not Reproducible
• You’re the fixer and marked an issue as Missing Information
• You’re the fixer and marked an issue as Ready for Retest

By using both these two filters, you can quickly scan issues that you need to tend to right now vs. issues that you’re waiting on someone else to tend to.

Other Default Filters

Additionally, DoneDone comes with a few other more general popular filters, All Issues, All Your Active Issues, Issues You're CC'd On, All Issues, All Active Issues, and All Closed and Fixed Issues. We hope these filters, combined with the first two, help you quickly find what you’re looking for.

As always, let us know how DoneDone is working for you and what we can do to make the experience better. Send us your feedback via email or Twitter (@getdonedone).