Now I was ready to post my first issue by clicking on "submit an issue". The input form for adding a new issue is clear and easy to use. I selected a predefined category and a predefined group and selected "notify when issue changes". Finally, I entered a title and a descriptive text; I also attached a file. (Note: This issue – a simple one stating that I had begun a project – is not visible in the screenshot of the Issue Summary page above because at that point I had not yet added it.)

After I had posted my issue I received an email containing information about my issue, such as author, priority, title, summary, category, etc. Some attributes such as priority and status can only be set after the issue has been submitted. This can be done easily, by clicking on the issue to edit its attributes.

Because I had selected the option "notify when issue changes" on submitting my issue, I will get an email informing me of the change any time a user makes a change in the issue. A nice feature is that the email contains only the attributes which have been changed. In the following example, I logged in as another user, "jphelp", and set the issue status from 4 to 6. Here is the email I got:

Screenshot

Screenshot: email notification

It would be good if the email would also contain the name of the user who has made the changes in the issue.

Another nice feature is: users who are not the author of an issue can choose "notify when issue changes" as they view an issue.

Deleting issues

To delete an issue one sets its status to "deleted", which means that this issue no longer appears on the issue summary page, even if the status attribute in the filter is set to "any". Nonetheless, the issue is still available. When you set the status attribute in the filter to "deleted", ZShrink displays all those issues that have been deleted. You can then edit this issue and set its status back to "open" or make another selection. No issue is removed from the database until the ZShrink instance is completely removed. This provides an ongoing history of issues for the user: months or years later the work done on an issue can be easily reconstructed – in particular this allows one to tell whether an issue was "deleted".

Configuration

You can configure a ZShrink instance via its Properties tab. The categories, groups, statuses, etc. are properties of the ZShrink instance, so you can change them to meet your own needs.

Documentation

There is a 4-page README file with installation instructions, which also gives you information about the features of ZShrink and an online demonstration of ZShrink in action. It also describes how the email notification works.

The Python code is not well documented: for example, some of the methods do not have a "docstring" and the classes the author developed do not have a "docstring". Every Python developer should use docstrings in order to help other developers understand their code.

Summary

I tested some other tracker products for Zope and concluded that ZShrink is the best tracker product for my purposes. It is easy to install and easy to use -- except for user management. The email features are very nice and the product itself uses Zope's new language "TAL". In future releases, I would hope for an improved user management structure as well as a search interface. If you are looking for a tracker product for Zope this product deserves a closer look.

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Product Review End.