When Oracle launched the first Early Adopters Release of Application Express 4.0 on the Amazon EC2 Cloud at http://www.tryapexnow.com we could see a feedback link on the application, so people testing APEX 4.0 could quickly send findings to the Development Team.
This functionality is also available for our own applications. This recipe will show us how we can set up Feedback on an application and handle responses in Team Development.
In the recipe "Create a Navigation Bar" there is an explanation on how we can add a Feedback link on an application. Use this part of the recipe to add a Feedback link to the Navigation Bar of the Enterprise Application we used in the other recipes of this chapter.
Also allow Feedback on the application by editing the Application Properties!
To have something to work with, we will first create a Feedback entry.
- Run the Enterprise Application.
- Press the Feedback link in the Navigation Bar.
- In the pop-up screen, add Feedback in the textarea: The information on the Home page is not complete.
- Feedback Type is General Comment.
- Press the Submit Feedback button.
We can now go back to the Team Development environment to process this feedback. When we open up the Team Development Dashboard, we can see an entry for the feedback that we have just created among the other pieces of information.
- Click on the new Feedback entry.
- This will take us directly into the Edit Feedback screen. We can now change the properties of the Feedback and log in.
- Set Status to 1. Acknowledged.
- Developer comment is Still waiting for input from management.
- Public Response is Will be fixed as soon as possible.
- Press Apply Changes.
After applying the changes, we are taken to the feedback overview screen. This overview offers a lot of information about the feedback, its status and the environment of the person that gave us the feedback in the first place.
The information about the user environment can be especially important when a bug is reported that is not reported on all web browsers.
We will now log this feedback as a To Do.
- Click on the button labelled Log as To-do.
- Enter information for the To-do using the following data:
- Name and Description are taken from the Feedback, so they can stay the same.
- Release is 0.2.
- Assigned To is Project Manager.
- To do status is Work Progressing 50%.
- Press the Create To Do button.
It can now be found among the other entries in the To-do section. All information is already available, except for the Milestone. Follow the steps in the previous recipe to assign the Milestone as well.
Now that we have filled our Team Development environment with Milestones, Features, To-Do's, Bugs, and Feedback we can take a look at an overview.
- Go to the Team Development main overview.
- In the Team Actions list to the right of the screen press Release Summary.
The overview that is now presented shows all kinds of information about the available releases in the workspace. This overview can also be used to follow the progress of development.