First Impressions of Dragnet

mhawley · Post by **mhawley** » Thu Nov 04, 2004 11:13 pm

My first impressions of Dragnet so far? Well, its not that impressive to be honest. The entire workflow of things just isn't there like in other popular defect tracking software (FogBugz). Seriously the whole UI just isn't that intuitive at first, and frankly looks like a childs website. I'm all for slick looking UI, but this one is overkill if you ask me.

After about 10 min of poking around, I was finally able to create a project and add a case. Then I realized I was in as admin, so I logged out and logged in as my user. Much to my dismay that project dissapeared, or did it? Nope, it was there, I just had to give my user (or in fact a group) access to it (which I like). Okay, so how do I complete this case? Hmm, not really sure. Poked around for another 10 min and realized you had to Edit the case and change the status manually to "Completed". Again, very cumbersome in design, in the fact that a case doesn't have to follow a normal routine (opened -> resolved -> closed) but rather can go from (opened -> closed -> disregard -> unconfirmed -> opened -> closed).

Another thing I dont like is when I'm adding/modifying case information, and just change the status, I have to scroll to the bottom of the page to save. Cumbersome and a time waster. BTW, I'm running this on 1280x1024.

When you're viewing the listing of cases, its also a bit hard to drill down into that case. I realize as you get more and more cases, the area gets wider to select (you select the ID of the case), but still, I would like a button that says "View" that will always be big enough and prominent so I wouldn't miss it.

So, my "sum this thing up already so I can go to bed" consensus about Dragnet, is its a decent 1.0 product, and from what I can tell, is lacking a lot things that most users looking for defect tracking software requests. Don't get me wrong, a product has to start somewhere, I just don't think that Dragnet will be able to compete with FogBugz or Axosoft any day soon.

sterwill · Post by **sterwill** » Fri Nov 05, 2004 9:21 am

I moved this over to the new Dragnet discussion forum.

ericsink · Post by **ericsink** » Fri Nov 05, 2004 9:38 am

mhawley wrote:My first impressions of Dragnet so far? Well, its not that impressive to be honest. The entire workflow of things just isn't there like in other popular defect tracking software (FogBugz). Seriously the whole UI just isn't that intuitive at first, and frankly looks like a childs website. I'm all for slick looking UI, but this one is overkill if you ask me.

After about 10 min of poking around, I was finally able to create a project and add a case. Then I realized I was in as admin, so I logged out and logged in as my user. Much to my dismay that project dissapeared, or did it? Nope, it was there, I just had to give my user (or in fact a group) access to it (which I like). Okay, so how do I complete this case? Hmm, not really sure. Poked around for another 10 min and realized you had to Edit the case and change the status manually to "Completed". Again, very cumbersome in design, in the fact that a case doesn't have to follow a normal routine (opened -> resolved -> closed) but rather can go from (opened -> closed -> disregard -> unconfirmed -> opened -> closed).

Another thing I dont like is when I'm adding/modifying case information, and just change the status, I have to scroll to the bottom of the page to save. Cumbersome and a time waster. BTW, I'm running this on 1280x1024.

When you're viewing the listing of cases, its also a bit hard to drill down into that case. I realize as you get more and more cases, the area gets wider to select (you select the ID of the case), but still, I would like a button that says "View" that will always be big enough and prominent so I wouldn't miss it.

So, my "sum this thing up already so I can go to bed" consensus about Dragnet, is its a decent 1.0 product, and from what I can tell, is lacking a lot things that most users looking for defect tracking software requests. Don't get me wrong, a product has to start somewhere, I just don't think that Dragnet will be able to compete with FogBugz or Axosoft any day soon.

You make some excellent points here. I especially agree with on the idea that it should be lot easier to change the status of an item.

Thanks for speaking up to help us make the product better.

mhawley · Post by **mhawley** » Fri Nov 05, 2004 11:08 am

No problem, I'll get some more testing time under my belt and see what else I can come up with.

nicw · Post by **nicw** » Fri Nov 05, 2004 9:46 pm

Righto then. I think the other person (mhawley?) stole my thunder a bit. Personally, so far, I like it a LOT, and I intend to use it from now on for my personal stuff (as I use Vault....)

Things I'd love to see:

1. More obvious WHO you are logged in as. I kept wondering why I couldn't get My Open to work - then I realised I was admin

2. I got a setup problem when I first tried to install it on my laptop (which had SPS / WSS on it) - there was an assembly problem with vs.dll. ASP.NET didn't give much more info. I've uninstalled SPS / WSS now, and it works fine. Might be something worth looking at (I run 2K3 server as my dev environment)

3. I'd like way to: a) "move this item to the next thing in the process" - eg, very basic work flow. But with one button, ala "I'm finished with this!". OR an easier way to set the status other than drilling right into it! (I usually set the status to complete....)

Other than that, its very nice, VERY fast, and installs like a dream (ala Vault

)

Cheers!

Nic
Fast Chicken Ltd - MS MVP .NET.
http://www.fastchicken.co.nz/blog/
4.

Post by **jclausius** » Fri Nov 05, 2004 10:54 pm

nicw wrote:1. More obvious WHO you are logged in as.

It is not very pronounced, but take a look at the title bar of the browser once you've logged in to the system.

nicw · Post by **nicw** » Fri Nov 05, 2004 11:07 pm

yeah, I did see it up there. Why not have it next to the dragnet logo, or as a heading on top of the little right menu.

BTW, did I mention I rather like this tool?

Post by **jclausius** » Sat Nov 06, 2004 6:16 am

I'll log this as a feature request.

Thanks,

nalenb · Post by **nalenb** » Sat Nov 27, 2004 2:55 pm

Interesting. I think the interface is a lot better than FogBugz. I like the clean layout and menu system. I found it pretty easy to create projects, assign users, and add bugs. I like the presentation of open bugs a lot better than FogBugz which tends to put too much info on the screen at once for my taste.

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