Admin Configuration

Admin configurations are accessed through the administration button in the navigation bar. These configurations personalize the LOBSTA to your company´s needs.

Users and Groups

Before you create a project, you need to have other users and group tags. You can create users the same way you made your admin account in Step 1, just skipping the Administration checkbox. Once you add users and groups to a project, they become members of the project.

To make a Group.

1. From the group page:
2. Click New group
3. Fill in the Name and Create.

A group is a label for various users to distribute roles and permissions on projects. Instead of assigning a role to each user individually, you can assign a role to a group and assign that group to the desired users. This is helpful if you are going to have the same people doing the same tasks on different projects.

Relevant User Manual Section: Users, Groups.

Trackers

Trackers help categorize issues, describing the type of issue being submitted. Given that not all issues are of the same nature, you can define the fields that must be filled for a tracker. Trackers are context sensitive and thus the trackers company A uses will not be the same as company B.

To create a tracker:

1. Click on New Tracker
2. Fill the name and the default status the tracker will have when selected. For most cases, a “New” status will suffice, but depending what the tracker is for you adjust accordingly.
3. Fill in a description so that other users understand when to properly use that tracker.
4. Select the Standard Fields that appear for the tracker. Custom fields for trackers also appear here.
5. You can copy the workflow of other trackers.
6. Finally, select which projects will have access to these trackers and create the tracker.

You now have your first tracker. A tracker is going to help you to organize and signal other users on what course of action they must take. Not all trackers need to appear in all projects, so you can be selective with the trackers you use for specific projects.

Relevant User Manual Section: Tracker

Issue Statuses

Issue Statuses define the completion progress of an issue. When creating or updating an issue, this field can be changed by a user to indicate the work done.

To create an issue status:

1. Click New Status
2. Fill Name. The name should be clear to describe to other users the issue's progress.
3. Check Issue Closed if needed. Whenever an Issue is applied with this status, the issue becomes closed.
4. If the Global setting Calculate the issue done ratio with is set to allow defining % done to issue status, an extra field will appear requiring a % done to be attributed to the issue status.
5. Click create.

You have created your first issue status. If the issue status you made closes an issue, then that issue can no longer be updated by a user. For a user, a closed issue can for example mean that it's complete, rejected or suspended, depending on the status name. LOBSTA cannot detect the difference of reasons on closing an issue, but is still able to recognize two statuses that close an issue as two separate categories. Additionally, you can also order how the statuses appear in fields throughout LOBSTA. Having a order with consistent reasoning (ie. statuses on top are “new” and those in the bottom are complete”) will help the user to avoid confusion.

Relevant User Manual Section: Issue Statuses

Workflow

Workflow defines a user's ability to transition between issue statuses and special permissions to fill fields. These are configured globally or per tracker and per role.

Status Transitions

Status Transitions define the user´s ability to update an issue status to another when updating an issue, configured by role and tracker.

1. Click on Role and Tracker and select all or the specified tracker and role. Click Edit.
2. You will see a table with Current Status and New Statuses allowed. If a box is checkmarked, it means that the current status can transition into the new status. If you picked all, boxes apear instead, with yes means transitions are allowed.These transitions should make sense to other users. For example, a “In progress” status should not be able to change into a “New” status.
3. After un/checking the boxes you desire, press save.
4. Additionally, you can define transitions for the author and the assignee of the issue to further specify transitions. With transitions complete, you define which transitions users can make according to their role and the tracker they are editing. This limits user error and narrows the tasks for each role and trackers.

Field Permissions

Field permissions define the user's ability to fill certain fields when creating or editing an issue, configured by role and tracker.

1. On Field Permissions, select a Role and Tracker and click Edit.
2. Each box can be either blank, Read Only and Required. Blanks adopt default behavior, which means it is fillable. Read-Only makes that field not editable by the role and tracker. Required forces the user to fill that field to update or create the issue.
3. Once you have selected the fields you wish to control, click Save.

With workflow you now control the logic behind updating statues and filling fields depending on roles and trackers. With mastery of workflow, you can limit use error and force roles to only make certain changes on the trackers they are working on.

Relevant User Manual Section: Workflow

Roles and Permissions

Roles and Permissions are the main functionality that defines what a user can and can´t do. A role is a label containing a bulk of permissions. Two roles exist by default and apply globally to all users that are logged in and not logged in.

To create a New Role:

1. Click New Role. Fill the Name of the Role. Fill the other fields to limit visibility for this role for issues, time logs and users. You can also block issues from being assigned to this role and to copy the workflow from another role.
2. Check the permissions you want the role to have. For the full list of permissions and their description, see the documentation page.
3. Click Create to save the role and its permissions..

Now you have set a Role with a certain set of permissions. Each role can only do the things permissions allow them too. There is no minimum or maximum to the permissions allowed, so a role can have focused permissions while another role can have more broad permissions. This depends on what you want the user with that role to do.

Relevant User Manual Section: Roles and Permissions

Custom Fields

Custom fields are exactly that, fields that are admin made for specific data you wish to collect.

To create a custom field:

1. Click New Custom field, and select where this custom field appears and click Next.
2. Now you can fill the form. Only Name is required, but the other field customizes the valid inputs the field takes and its visibility for trackers, roles and projects.
3. The most important field is Format, as that defines how a user fills the field, if by a number, text, by selecting from a list, if it needs to be checked etc. Format also changes the other fields that appear to be filled, which are minimum requirements to fill the field.
4. For a full list of available Formats and possible fields to fill, check the documentation page. Custom fields also appear in workflows.
5. Click Create when you are done.

Your finished custom fields will allow you to fill extra information not available by default. The benefit is that it's entirely customizable and depends on what information is relevant to your work.

Relevant User Manual Section: Custom Fields

Enumerations

Enumerations define categories for activity, documentation and issue priority and are used to clarify information to the user. They only require to fill a Name field.

• Activity: Category indicating the reason why an issue got updated in Time logs.
• Documentation: Category describing the type of document being uploaded.
• Issue Priority: Category describing the urgency of an issue to be completed.

Relevant User Manual Section: Enumerations