Features
tBits ITS has zero learning curve. Anyone who knows how to email, can use tBits easily. Powerful features like email integration, quick search and more make issue tracking a breeze.
Two way email integration
tBits ITS sends and receives emails and updates the respective issues. So, instead of opening a web browser to update an issue, users can simply reply from their email client (Microsoft Outlook for example).
Any email client which supports HTML can be used with tBits ITS. tBits ITS has been tested with Outlook Express, Microsoft Outlook, Mozilla Thunderbird, Lotus Notes and Gmail.
This feature makes issue tracking as simple as using emails.
Quick Search
Users can search with keywords that are found anywhere in an issue. Users may also search using filters like Issue Type, Issue Status, Issue Category and/or Issue Severity.
Users can also select more filters like Created Date, Update Date and Due Date.
Therefore, if there are lots of issues, it is quite easy to find a particular issue using search feature.
Search Inside Attachments
In an organization, a lot of data pertaining to issues exists as attachments. tBits ITS indexes the text extracted from various document formats like pdf, xls, ppt, doc, tif, jpeg and uses it to quickly search inside attachments.
Therefore, you can for search for issue having attachments containing a certain keyword.
Search inside Images (OCR)
Using tBits ITS, you can also search for text inside images.
If you have scanned your documents and uploaded in tBits ITS, you can quickly search for a document having a particular keyword.
Advanced Search (DQL)
tBits ITS provides a simple interface to prepare complicated search query for example "Get me the issues logged by x with status open or logged by y with status active".
Therefore, you don't need to be a wizard to drill down the data.
Jump to Issue Id
tBits ITS provides facility to quickly jump to an issue or range of issue by using issue ids.
This feature is especially useful in helpdesk systens where client asks for an status on particular issue id.
My Issues
tBits ITS provides a quick view of issues that belong to you . This avoids searching for issues.
This serves the purpose of user dashboard.
SMS Integration
tBits ITS sends SMS Alerts whenever there is an update on issue. Such SMS Alerts are configurable to cut down the SMS traffic.
If you have a team that can't access emails, you can send alerts using SMS.
Simple and consistent User Interface
The interface shown to the end user is minimalistic. The complexity of user interface is absorbed by Administration panel.
The email interface and web based interface have same look and feel.
This heavily reduces the training cost.
Save and Share Search Query
If users need certain search query frequently, they can save it for future.
Also they can mark a search query as default meaning whenever they open tBits ITS, it will by default show the filtered data.
This enhances the productivity.
If you have to send a report to your boss, you can simple mark a query as shared and send the link to the boss rather than exporting to excel and then sending the file.
Bulk updates
If you have to update a number of issues together, you don't have to open and update each of the issue. You can use bulk update feature instead.
Outlook Integration
Along with two way email integration, tBits ITS comes with an outlook plug in especially designed for higher management who have to frequently delegate tasks received as emails.
To delegate a task which is received in email, user can simply select the assignees and click "Send and Track" button available in Outlook having the tBits ITS plug in.
Drafts
Users can save drafts if they want to postpone the submission of a request to a later time.
Later on, users can resume the saved draft and create an issue.
Export to Excel
tBits ITS provides the facility to export the search results into a Microsoft Excel file. Thereafter users can format the results as they want. This is often used when users want to prepare reports.
Automatic Reminders
Automatic Reminders help avoiding the deadline slip because tBits ITS does the job of follow ups.
Users can be notified about the issues assigned to them, created by them or subscribed to them a certain time before or after the due date.
Sub issues
If an issue has many subparts which have to be completed by different persons. It is always a better idea to have sub issues.
tBits ITS provides facility to define a parent-child relation between various issues to any depth. Such hierarchy of issues is displayed like a tree.
Linked Issues
If the issues are duplicated, are similar in nature or have inter dependency, it becomes must to define linkage between issues.
Such relationship can be established using Linked Issues in tBits. This relationship can be between the issues across departments or business areas.
Exhaustive Admin User Interface
Almost every aspect of tBits ITS can configured using the web based Admin Interface. This makes it quite easy to configure the system as you don't need to be a wizard to configure the system.
Works seamlessly in Firefox and IE
tBits ITS is completely web based system. To use it, all you need is a browser.
tBits ITS has been well tested with Mozilla Firefox, Internet explorer 5.5, Internet Explorer 6.0 and Internet Explorer 7.0.
Spellchecker
While creating or updating an issue, you don't need to worry about spelling mistakes as tBits ITS comes with a spell checker.
Smart Tags
During the discussion of an issue, it is common to refer to some other issue. So, to make it convenient to provide references, tBits ITS automatically creates hyperlinks to the issues which are referred in BA#issue_id (e.g. tbits#23) format.
Summary Diff
If the issue has become a big discussion, it is always required to put a summary and keep updating the summary. Since the summary changes need to be keenly observed, tBits ITS provides Summary Diff which shows what has been deleted and what has been added.
Its flexible design along with components like Reporting and Rule Engine makes it useful for any kind of organization.
Business Areas
An instance of tBits ITS can have many business areas. A business area can be a department (for e.g. Accounts, Systems) or a business process (for e.g. Customer support, Bug tracking etc.). So, you divide an organization into various business areas and make teams who will be part of various business areas. A business area can be private so that only business area member would be able to see it.
Business Areas help to map the organization or organization process in tBits ITS.
Configurable Fields
Since every department can have different business process. It is mandatory to have different set of fields in each business area.
In tBits ITS, you can have different values for Category, Status, Severity, Request Type etc and can rename these fields to whatever to want. For example you might want to rename 'Status' to 'State'. Along with that you can add more fields of various types (Dropdown list, Textbox, TextArea, Date, DateTime and checkbox). This can be done from the Admin Panel with zero programming effort and without stopping the running system.
So, each business process keeps evolving continuously with very less effort.
Dependant Fields
On selecting a certain value, you might want some other values to be filled.
For example: On selecting Windows in OS combo box, you want to fill the Versions combo box with 98, 2000, XP and Vista. This kind of requirement is fulfilled by dependant fields.
This helps mapping the business process effectively.
Workflow and Business Rules
Every organization or business process has its rules.
For example:
In customer support, you might want an issue to be closed only by the customer who raised it.
In Software Bug tracking, you might want a process wherein a bug goes through the various steps in its lifecycle.
All such business specific needs are solved using Workflow and business rules.
Issue escalation (SLA Agreement)
In a service delivery solution, you would need to enforce the Service Level Agreement.
For example, you might want to mark an issue as critical, if only one day is left for due date. And you would like to inform user's manager if it slips due date.
All such requirements can be catered using the Issue Escalation provided by tBits ITS.
Reports (Business Intelligence)
In any organization wide system, it is must to have a business intelligence reporting.
Examples of Reports can be:
Top management might want an overall ageing reports which shows which issue is overdue by how much time and on who.
Your customer might want the salaries calculated based on how much time has been spent per user basis.
All such reports can be made using the reporting IDE provided by tBits ITS.
With tBits Reporting you can add a rich variety of reports to your application.
Lists - The simplest reports are lists of data. As the lists get longer, you can add grouping to organize related data together (orders grouped by customer, products grouped by supplier). If your data is numeric, you can easily add totals, averages and other summaries.
Charts - Numeric data is much easier to understand when presented as a chart. BIRT provides pie charts, line & bar charts and many more. BIRT charts can be rendered in SVG and support events to allow user interaction.
Crosstabs - Crosstabs (also called a cross-tabulation or matrix) shows data in two dimensions: sales per quarter or hits per web page.
Letters & Documents - Notices, form letters, and other textual documents are easy to create with BIRT. Documents can include text, formatting, lists, charts and more.
Compound Reports - Many reports need to combine the above into a single document. For example, a customer statement may list the information for the customer, provide text about current promotions, and provide side-by-side lists of payments and charges. A financial report may include disclaimers, charts, tables all with extensive formatting that matches corporate color schemes.
Single Sign On
As a new system comes to organization, users would need to remember one more login and password. This is not the case with tBits ITS. If you are logged in a Windows domain, you dont have to again provide login and password to open tBits ITS.
The authentication module of tBits ITS is pluggable. tBits comes with NTLM authentication module and a web based authentication plugin.
SMS Rules
Since SMS comes at a cost, organization might want to optimize on the SMS traffic which is sent from tBits ITS.
To solve this problem, tBits ITS comes with SMS rules using which you can define such rules: Notify only if the issue is critical and belongs to 'Customer Support'.
Scheduling Capability
tBits ITS comes with a scheduler which keeps running in the background and executes various task at specified schedule.
A goo example can be: you want to log certain issues every Monday morning in a process oriented environment.
The schedule can be specified in using standard cron expressions.
Template based architecture
Organization might like to change the look and feel of tBits ITS to fit their theme or might want to place a link to their home page at tBits ITS main page.
Such requirements can be quickly fulfilled using templates provided by tBits ITS.
SOA (rdf/xml output)
In an organization, apart from humans interacting with tBits ITS various other systems have to talk to tBits ITS to search for issues, retrieve issue details, create or update an issue or subscribed to the various activities in tBits ITS. tBits provides such facilities using Service oriented Architecture (SOA).
Command Line Interface
To ease the system administration work, tBits ITS provides a command line interface using which administrator can add, update, search for requests.
This makes it handy to do bulk or data intensive operations.
API(Aplication Progamming Interface)
tBits ITS comes with an open API (Aplication Progamming Interface). This makes it easy to write applications on top of tBits ITS.
OS independent (Low TCO)
tBits ITS has been designed in operating system independant manner so that organization is not locked with a certain operating system. This reduces total cost of ownership.
This is one of the reasons to choose Java as the programing language.
tBits ITS maintains the security and safety of organization data. This makes it reliable to be used in high performance environments.
Role Based Access Controls (rbac)
The role based access controls in tBits ITS make it possible to map any kind of organization security and permission.
In each business area, you define certain roles. You can put users into these roles. If a user is part of more than one role, the permissions are combined.
Permission on each field
tBits ITS provides an administration page to define which role can see, change and add what fields (inbuilt as well as extended fields).
This ensure complete security of data to a very granular level.
Non removable Issues
An issue once created can not be deleted by users or admins. This ensures the integrity of data in the system.
Fail safe architecture
In case of some failure, tBits will take the default values rather than stopping the service. If a certain part of system is not functioning, tBits will simply switch off that part and continue to function in order to provide service.
This ensures maximum availability of tBits ITS service.
Multiple Databases
If you have lacs of users accessing tBits ITS, you would need high efficiency environment. Since a single database can not cater to the load, you would need to have multiple databases one of which would master where all add/update operations would be performed while others would be for read-only access.
tBits ITS comes with architecture which can help making this quite easy.
In Java
The security vulnerabilities are lesser in programs written in Java as compared to any other language for example C/C++, PHP or perl. This is one of the reasons why tBits ITS is written in Java.
|
