Issue Tracking System must have at least one product / product category defined in order to function properly. Use theITSSetup.exe program to add, edit or remove  products / product categories .

Products / products categories Setup Dialog will be displayed by ITSSetup.exe program during initial Issues Tracking System (ITS)installation. Later you can access this dialog through Windows Start Menu from Start->Programs->Issue Tracking System menu group.

To Add new product use the 'Add' button located on the ITS products / products categories Setup Dialog. To edit or delete a product / product category , select the product / product category first and then use 'Edit' or 'Delete' buttons to edit or remove the product.

Product / product category properties

These are properties of an Issue Tracking System product / product category:

• Product / Product category name
  - short name of the product / product category (recommended to be not longer than 40 characters)
   
• Reply e-mail address
  - e-mail address which will be used by ITS as reply e-mail address for notifications about issue status changes for the product / product cetegory. Since SMTP or destination e-mail server can reject e-mail if domain name part of the e-mail address is not valid, we recommend to at least use valid domain part of the e-main address.
    
• Login is required to access all pages
  - if set (checked) then an ITS user must first log in in order to access any Issue Tracking System page for this product / product category, including Issues Summary page.
   
• Everybody can update all product issues
  - if set (checked) then any ITS user including not-logged-in users can update any Issue Tracking System issue of this product / product category.
   
• Everybody can see all user profiles
  - if set (checked) then any ITS user including not-logged-in users can see user profiles of all users of this ITS product / product category.
   
• Everybody can add new end-user profile
  - if set (checked) then not-logged-in ITS users will be able to create their ITS user profiles (end-user profiles only) themselves.
    
• Maximum number of items in Web Browser's drop-down list for ITS pages
  - this will be maximum number of items which ITS will load into drop down list on ITS pages for this product / product category. For example if there is many users using a product / product category then you might want to limit number of items loaded into drop down list of users.
   
• Maximum issue/user records on an Summary Page
  - this will be maximum number of records displayed on ITS Issues or Users Summary Pages. If there are more actual records to display then ITS will offer to display them on next pages.
   

Since version 1.1 ITS allows customization of the 'Status' and 'Importance' fields. These fields are part of every issue record and an user can choose one of field values offered by ITS while filing or updating an issue record. In ITS Setup you can specify which field values user can choose. ITS Setup also allows to customize these field names, for example you can choose to have 'Category' field name displayed on ITS pages instead of original field name 'Importance'.

You can customize 'Status' and 'Importance' fields differently for each Product / Product Category.

You can customize the fields using ITS Setup program when adding or editing new Product / Product Category. To go to the fields customization dialog click on the 'Customize Field' tab in the 'Edit Product / Product Category' dialog or 'Customize Fields' button in the 'Add Product / Product Category' dialog window.

Product / product category advanced properties

Advanced product / product category properties are listed in this paragraph. If they are not specified, Issue Tracking System Setup program will set them automatically (except product administrator's passord for first created product / product category). You can change these properties if you want to use databases others than the ones created by the Issues Tracking System. Please read the next section - Issue Tracking System Databases Overview - for more details about Issue Tracking System databases relationship.

• ODBC data source name for product's Issues Database
  - name of ODBC data source for product's Issues Database. ITS products / product categories setup Dialog will allow you to create new ODBC database or to specify existing ODBC data source. If you specify existing ODBC data source then this data source must already have ITS specific tables for an Issues Database in it and at least one ITS administrator user profile defined in the User table.
   
• ODBC data source name for product's Users Database
  - name of ODBC data source for product's Users Database. ITS products / product categories setup Dialog will allow you to create new ODBC database or to specify existing ODBC data source. If you specify existing ODBC data source then this data source must already have ITS specific tables for an Users Database in it.
   
• Administrator's account name for newly created product / product category
  - if you are creating new ODBC data source for the product / product category Issues Database then this is the name of ITS administrator for this product / product category. You can create either new user account or you can specify existing account from the ITS Users Database.
  - if you specify existing ODBC data source for the product / product category Issues Database then this data source must already have ITS administrator user account specified in it.

Issue Tracking System Databases Overview

Issues Tracking System (ITS) allows to track issues of multiple products / product categories. For performance scalability reasons ITS keeps issues data for each product / product category in separate Issues Database (each of them might be located on different server).

ITS uses single Users Database to keep information about all ITS users on single place. Having just one Users Database allows to share user data, such as login id, password, e-mail address in one place, so just one login is needed to use multiple ITS products / product categories. Also, when changing information such as e-mail address or password, this information needs to be changed just once, instead of for each product, as it would be when each Issues Database would contain it's own user data.

To allow to define different user roles for each product / product category, each Issues Database contain also it's User Data. User Data of the Issues Database defines subset of users from the Users Database and user roles for each user from the subset. This allows to define different user roles for each product / product category. For example an user might be a developer for one product and the same user might be just product end-user of another ITS product.

You can delete an user from Users Database if you are an ITS administrator for any product / product category, and you already deleted the user profile for the product / product category. Second attempt to delete the user will remove user's record from the Users Database. However, be aware that if the user has still his/her profile defined for other product / product category, ITS will restore user's record in Users Database when the user log's into ITS for that product. Therefore, to completely delete the user you must delete the user's profile for all products / product categories and then delete the user profile from Users Database.

See Also

Installation & Settings, Setting Up License Key, Issues Tracking System installation checkup, Uninstalling Issues Organizer