When customers use an app and notice issues or want to suggest new features or improvements, they will likely reach out to your support staff to leave feedback.
An issue tracker is software that allows developers, managers, and customer support agents to organize, prioritize, and track these issues and bugs until they are resolved.
In this article, we’ll explain what an issue tracker is, why it’s important, and its key features. We’ll also compare 2 leading issue tracking systems — monday.com and Jira — to help you make the right choice for your business.
What is an issue tracker?
Your software development team could have the most experienced software engineers, but there will still be bugs — they’re unavoidable.
The same goes for product development.
As the name implies, an issue tracker is software that enables developers to log bugs, prioritize them, and track progress on fixing them. The issues don’t always have to be software bugs; they could be improvement ideas, elements that users have complained about, etc.
Issue trackers also play a significant role in quality assurance (QA), a process that ensures that products and services meet quality standards.
The best issue tracking software updates in real-time and boosts transparency across teams (something a bug tracker would help you achieve).
Why is an issue tracker important?
Issue trackers have several key benefits:
- Centralized issue management: when all existing and solved bugs are stored in one central database, it’s easier for developers, project managers, and other team members to find relevant solutions quickly.
- Issue history tracking: on a similar note, a comprehensive issue tracker enables teams to keep track of repetitive issues and effortlessly find answers to them.
- Appropriate delegation of work: a central issue tracker improves delegation. For example, if there’s a problem with your app’s UI, you can instantly assign the issue to the design team.
- Monitor actions related to every issue: relevant teams can get real-time updates about every step taken to solve an issue, so everyone is up-to-date on ongoing and solved bugs.
- Improved information sharing: when every issue can be tracked at a single glance, client-facing teams can give users timely updates to show you’re working on a solution and, consequently, boost customer satisfaction.
- Automated reminders: you can’t take forever to fix issues. Customers and clients have limited patience. A bug reporting system with automated reminders ensures you never miss a deadline.
- Increased efficiency: a centralized issue tracker allows you to identify more effective methods used by other teams and implement these best practices in your team’s processes.
- Better collaboration: software developers aren’t the only ones involved in fixing bugs. Customer service reps, the QA team, and any other relevant teams all have to pitch in. You can streamline this collaboration with dynamic bug tracking software.
What to look for in an issue tracker?
To ensure that the issue tracker or bug reporting software you pick suits your team, you must look for the following features:
#1. Centralized issue tracking
Avoid sticky notes, email chains, and update calls by using a centralized issue tracker, where every issue, regardless of the team, can be seen in a single window.
Customers don’t always report issues using the same channels.
Some contact your customer support team, others raise a ticket via a form, some will make a phone call, or tag you in a social media post.
Bug reports can also be raised internally. For example, a QA engineer could find an issue during exploratory testing.
A central tracker that collates all issues and organizes them in one place helps your developers and designers gain clarity.
With monday.com, you can set up a tracker in minutes using our bug tracking template.
This way, developers can easily notice issues relevant to their team, see if they’ve worked on them before, and search for the applicable solution.
If it’s a new issue, they can prioritize it and devise a project plan to fix it effectively.
Either way, everyone involved — including client-facing team members — is aware of what’s happening with every bug. As developers work on solving the issue, your customer support reps can provide rapid updates to users.
#2. Add tags, filters, and priorities
A poorly organized list of issues with no particular order or differentiation is frustrating for software engineers.
To avoid confusion and streamline bug fixes, teams should use tracking software that separates issues by the team they’re relevant to and enables filtering using other appropriate parameters.
An issue tracker like the one you can build in monday.com allows you to mark a bug’s priority level using different colors, so your devs are working on fixing the most impactful issues first.
Custom filters let managers or team leads check task status, see how many bugs a developer is currently working on, and track the time spent on each bug.
You can use custom tags to mark weak spots in a workflow or areas that need special attention.
#3. Customizable workflows
Every issue or bug can’t be solved using the same method. Your team must be able to define custom workflows that match the issue they’re dealing with.
With monday.com, for example, you can simply drag and drop columns to change the order of work stages. There are 20+ different types of columns for you to choose from, so your team can thrive.
You can build your workflow based on due dates, assignees, and statuses. You can also use 8+ board views to arrange your issue tracker based on what you want to focus on.
Checklists, text notes, and seamless file sharing also help define and streamline work processes.
#4. Collaborative problem solving
An app or software product is a complex combination of software development, QA, design, testing, project management, and more.
Your app must cater to the best interests of your audience, and doing so isn’t easy. Your product or software development teams can’t handle all bug fixes by themselves.
With a bug reporting platform, like monday.com, you can enable different teams to work together effortlessly.
While a central board helps everyone stay on the same page, features like in-task comments and seamless file, image, and video sharing ensure that all bug-related communication occurs within context.
So, for example, your QA team, developers, and designers can clearly communicate to solve a UI bug.
#5. Automation and integrations
Automation and integrations are crucial for software engineers and support reps to fix bugs seamlessly.
You need software that can automate repetitive tasks, like turning a support ticket into a task on the Issue Tracker board with all the relevant information and any file attachments.
While automation reduces your team’s workload, third-party integrations help them speed up work processes.
monday.com can integrate with software development tools like GitLab and GitHub, along with 100s of other apps. Essentially, you can use one single platform to track bugs, plan Scrums, and manage product roadmaps.
#6. Dashboards for issue reporting
Issue tracking software must be able to generate detailed reports.
Dynamic reporting helps identify trends, such as repeat issues or successful test cases, that can then re-define your project management process, sprint planning, software QA plan, and product roadmap.
With monday.com, you can create a dashboard that uses visual widgets to help you track key performance indicators (KPIs) such as time spent on each issue, your most efficient developer, and so on.
monday.com vs. Jira for issue tracking
Jira is a popular agile project management tool specifically created for software developers, managers, and teams working on software-related products.
Let’s see how it stacks up against monday.com when it comes to bug tracking:
- Issue tracker setup: while Jira is easy enough to set up, monday.com clearly wins out here thanks to our bug tracking template that’ll have you ready to go in minutes.
- User interface: monday.com’s UI is more intuitive and easier to navigate compared to Jira’s, according to the reviews. G2.com gave us a 9.1 out of 10 for ease of use, while Jira only scored a 7.7.
- Automation: We’d say both platforms are on par when it comes to bug tracking workflow automation.
- Integrations: Jira integrates with many software development tools, but monday.com integrates with 100s of apps. In Jira, you have to manually create an issue and add details, while monday.com can automatically create it for you from support tickets on Zendesk or other apps.
- Reporting: Jira does not have a dashboard for easy visual issue tracking reports, unlike monday.com, which has a completely customizable dashboard.
- Customer support: Technical issues can delay your bug-fixing endeavors. This is why monday.com provides 24/7 support. Jira offers 24/7 support only for its enterprise plan users; everyone else can use their knowledge base or fill out a support ticket and wait for an undefined period.
Overall, Jira is a decent bug tracker, but monday.com offers everything Jira does and a lot more, whether you’re a software development team or not.
Don’t just take our word for it — G2.com rates us 4.7 out of 5 stars overall, while Jira rates at a respectable 4.2 out of 5.
Rapidly resolve issues with monday.com
monday.com is a dynamic platform that lets you build the issue tracker of your dreams. It’s intuitive, easy to use, and boasts so many features that even our 100s of blog posts haven’t covered them all!
The platform is an ideal issue tracker with endless filters and customizations, tons of integrations, easy-to-implement automation, and detailed reporting of every bug.
You can find out more by trying out our bug tracking template.
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