Run Reports in FogBugz
Are there reports in FogBugz?
You'll find that many of the kinds of reports you really need can be done by setting up an appropriate filter in FogBugz. For example, "what are all the bugs assigned to me that need to be fixed for the next release, grouped by area and listed in order of priority?" This is not really a generic reporting capability but it's almost always good enough.
There are also summary reports automatically generated by FogBugz:
- After running a filter or clicking List, there is a summary at the bottom of the page entitled "Cases on this page". So, if you use the gazillion filter options on the Filter page to narrow things down, this summary gives you the total count of cases returned by that filter, the total estimated time for those cases, and the number of cases that don't have a time estimate.
- If you are in List View (as opposed to Grid View), you will also see a series of reports down the left hand side, such as "Open cases by project", "Open cases by release", etc.
Evidence Based Scheduling
FogBugz 6.0 comes with reports for each project which will help you figure out when your project will be completed. Based on the release you select, FogBugz will show you a probability distribution (using your developer's estimates) of when your software is going to ship. You can also see your ship dates over time to see if your project is slipping. Then you can drill down to each developer to see if anyone is overloaded.
Exporting Data and the API
FogBugz allows you to do a whole host of things using the FogBugz 6.0 API. You can create cases, view cases, look at timesheets, discussion topics, subscribe to cases and more. But for someone who just wants to export data into excel, the API can be really useful. It's only three steps.
- Go to http://yourfogbugz.com/api.asp?cmd=logon&email=youremail&password=yourpassword in a browser, and you should see a token string given back. Copy this string -- the data between <token> and </token>
- Go to http://yourfogbugz.com/api.asp?token=tokenfrombefore&cmd=search
&q=yourquery&cols=yourcols . See the API documentation for more info about the q (ie. query string) and cols (ie. columns) parameter. But a typical one to get all case data including events, and the title of the case from the Frogger project but just active cases would be ...cmd=search&q=project:frogger%20status:active&cols=sTitle,events - Once you get the url right in step 2 and you see your XML data, just copy and paste the url and go to excel and select file->open, but paste in the url. Excel will download the XML for you.
Well, that's just not good enough!
CaseDetective for FogBugz produced by imij software and DBxtra for FogBugz are two programs produced by 3rd party software companies that will slice and dice your data however you want! See their sites for more info, screenshots and pricing.
As another alternative, Tableau Software has a demonstration of how they have used their software to create Visual Analytics for FogBugz.
You can also use Microsoft Access, Microsoft Excel, or something like Crystal Reports to create custom reports using the raw FogBugz data. The FogBugz database is Access or SQL Server and all the major reporting software packages will be able to create custom reports based on FogBugz.
To make this relatively painless for you, we provide the following step-by-step guides with screenshots:
