As the majority of IT-professionals, QA professionals are interested in professional growth. I am not an exception. I’ve been working as a QA professional for 4 years and I hope to be promoted to a position of a leader of the team of QA professionals in our company. Of course, genuine professional growth can’t exist without improving the knowledge and skills in my professional area. Expansion of knowledge embodies mastering at some new software products which can be helpful in everyday work of QA. I want to share my experience of mastering the new bug tracking system called Comindware Tracker. There has been mentioned some information about the features of this program here, but since then the software has not only been released, but it has made an update recently which has made work with this soft really smooth. For instance, this online application now has a mobile version. But let’s start from the beginning.

For me as a QA professional it is very convenient to detect all “fresh” defects immediately, and notify the developers at the same time, so that they can at once see and fix them in the program. There is the status of each defect and its description so that a developer will be able to reproduce and fix the bug. And the online availability of Comindware Tracker, by means of your favorite browser, is quite what I need. It helps to solve the majority of working problems “on-the-run”. The professionals of our company easily set up Comindware Tracker under the needs of our company and certain project, and the work on our project is extremely convenient now. I can mention that Comindware Tracker is more than just bug tracking system and here’s why.

Comindware gives a lifetime free solution for task management. This free component will be downloaded together with the 30-day trial version of Comindware Tracker and will remain mine in any case. The component which helps you to create new project tasks is called Comindware Task Management. This application will not cope with the aim to arrange separate tasks in organized processes, but will be enough to create new tasks and to store the important information about existent tasks. It’s not a bug tracking component itself because workflows are only possible in Comindware Tracker, but I like this soft for being free and easy to cope with.

As I’ve mentioned, the recent Comindware update gave new significant features which have been added recently to the functionality of ComindwareTracker and which simplify daily work on our projects. Mobile version of the software: Comindware Tracker is available from any mobile device, with real-time update on tasks and items statuses.

Second thing I want to speak about it task and item creation by email. I’m playing with it right now. I can create and assign the necessary tasks and items just by sending an e-mail to a specially set-up email. I can report a bug by sending an email. After this the item starts running down the fixing process, as Comindware Tracker takes the email and transforms it into an item, which lives its normal life in the solution.

Testing the software was fun. Their special solution for bug tracking is ready to use, just out of the box. But I can modify it in the graphical workflow builder with a couple of clicks: no programming or over-thinking, I really appreciate this.

Learning new soft is another achievement. I do suggest for any QA professional to try out at least one new software product per month for ‘keeping fit’. Feel free to comment or ask questions, will gladly answer.