How to Use JIRA as a Ticketing Tool Software Testing Help. The test teams are always apprehensive about picking up JIRA for defect Management. The doubt is warranted. It stems from the fact that, though JIRA bug tracking tool is applicable to IT businesses it is a generic ticketing system. Even for IT projects, JIRAs popularity with the Development teams makes testers and QA teams uncomfortable. Despite the comfort or discomfort, the test teams have no choice but to use JIRA bug tracking tool in most companies. WhyThe best software teams ship early and often. Not many tools, one tool. Jira Software is built for every member of your software team to plan, track, and release. JIRA-Software-screenshot.png' alt='Best Bug Tracking Software Jira Training' title='Best Bug Tracking Software Jira Training' />Bug Tracking Software Find the best Bug Tracking Software for your business. Compare product reviews and features to build your list. Learn Why Capterra is Free. Find the best Bug Tracking Software for your organization. Read user reviews of leading solutions and get free comparisons, demos price quotes. Reviews of the 15 Most popular Bug tracking Software to make your bug management process simpler. So you can concentrate harder on finding more defectsissues. Download Service Pack 4 For Windows Vista. Innovative software testing solutions tools and services for automated and manual testing of application software, Web sites, middleware, and system software. Learn how to use JIRA for defect management. This is the tutorial that will demonstrate to you about JIRA bug tracking tool, via screenshots and everything, JIRAs. Simple logic Companies do not want to invest in multiple tools. It just makes good business sense to maximize your tool utilization and not go crazy with purchasing too many licenses. So, if a Development team is using Atlassian JIRA bug tracking tool to track its requirements, enhancements, tasks or user stories, then the test team, most probably, has to use it for bug tracking. But, relax. JIRAs Defect Management is just as good as any other tool. In fact, in some situations, it could even be better. This is the tutorial that will demonstrate to you, via screenshots and everything, JIRAs applicability to bug tracking. Want to learn Atlassian JIRA test and project management tool We have a detailed series of tutorials you can check here. The Best Features of JIRA Bug Tracking Tool. Here we go. So, in JIRA to create a defect would be to create an issue of the type Bug. Note Click on any image for enlarged view2 Defect reporting needs the following information recorded for every issue Defect IDDefect title. Defect description steps to reproduceEnvironment information. ScreenshotattachmentSeverity. Assign it to someone. Status All the statuses in the bug life cycle. All the options are available to be able to create a defect effectively. Please note the fields highlighted in Red below The two fields you are not seeing here are These two fields are auto created by JIRA. All issues will have a unique ID assigned to them by JIRA. Status of all issues is To Do or New in JIRA by default on creating a bug. Therefore, all the common facilities for defect reporting are available in JIRA too. In fact, more options such as labels, linking defects, estimating efforts can be used. Defect Life Cycle All bug life cycle statuses as in Bugzilla or any other popular bug tracker can be accomplished here too This will need a little bit of customizing by your JIRA admin, but it is easy to do. For those, do not want to bother with the customization, you cant go wrong with the default set up as well. Comments and collaboration with the Dev Team. Every issue, its updates, people assignment, comments received from the Dev team everything is tracked in JIRA under the activity log. This allows for better visibility and collaboration with the development teams 5 Linking the defect to a requirement to enable traceability. Link option in the JIRA issue fields lets you link a particular issue to another one. Lets say if Defect 2 is a duplicate of Defect 1 you can establish that relationship. Similarly, if a defect is blocking a requirement or is related to a requirement you can make this aspect visible in JIRA. The resulting links will appear in the issue details page as below The relationship types are self explanatory and the usage of simple common everyday language words such as relates to, caused by, etc. JIRA user to use this right. Defects can be imported from a CSV file. This aids the bulk creation of issues in JIRA at once. Also, if your team is new and you dont want them creating issues directly into the tool, you can have them report the defects in an excel sheet. Once they are reviewed and confirmed as valid, they can be imported all at once into the tool using this functionality. Whichever way you use it, this is a big plus. Defects can be exported into Word, XML, and printable formats. This supports better portability of your defect data, especially useful if you want to share your defect data with people who are non JIRA users. Comprehensive Issue Reports In addition, if you need reports  go to Project  reports and generate all sorts of reports as below If we have to review JIRAs analytics in one word, its fantastic. AdvancedPower users of JIRA can also create advanced search filters to generate deeper insights. For example, if want to look at all the defects assigned to you across multiple projects BM and AB, you could use a JQL query like below So all in all, bug trackingdefect management in JIRA is very similar if not superior to dedicated bug trackers. Next time you have to work on it, dont worry. You are in good hands. Applicability of JIRA to Testing Alternative dilemma. While this is one side of the coin, there is definitely another dimension to how people view the applicability of JIRA to QA or testing. When you ask a group of QAs, What is JIRA Many will answer that JIRA is a defect tracking tool. Mind you, I have heard this from many senior QA professionals. This might be from the fact that, defect managementtracking is all they might have used JIRA for. But, there is a lot more to it. When used right, core JIRA with its agile capabilities can be your one stop shop for high level project management. It can really support requirement tracking and progress, bug tracking, estimating, sprint tracking through SCRUM KANBAN boards, reporting and collaborating. You might be using a tool for one thing, but next time try and learn a few things around and about the tool that will help you understand and use it better. So, as a next step, you could explore few other cool features of JIRA that might not directly be related to bug tracking that might make it your go to choice. Customizable Dashboards. Test Management Add ons. Vote and Watching an issue. Time tracking. Agile Project and Scrum boards. ConfluenceDocumentation support integration, etc. Over to you. Now, it is time to hear from you. Have you faced any challenges using JIRA for bug tracking Do you think there is any weight to the resistance that test teams have in adapting JIRA for defect ManagementAbout the author This hands on tutorial is written by STH team member Swati. Please share your comments.