Bug triage is where your team reviews reported bugs, prioritizes them, and sends them to the team that will fix them. Because every bug that still needs a decision is in one place, whether it was reported in the web app or the Atono Chrome extension, your triage team can make sure the most urgent fixes reach a team first and nothing waits unnoticed.

To open Bug triage, click Bug triage in the side menu. The page lists the bugs that haven't been triaged yet. A bug is triaged once it has both a team backlog and a risk rating.

Everyone in the workspace can view and triage bugs here. Bugs on private team backlogs are only listed for users who can access that team's backlog.

Bug triage workflow

The page groups bugs by where they are in triage, so your triage team can see at a glance which bugs need a decision, which are waiting on the reporter, and which have been set aside.

Reported bugs: Bugs waiting to be triaged. New bugs are added here, along with bugs that are returned to Bug triage. Bugs created on a team backlog without a risk rating are listed here too, and they stay on their team backlog while they're in triage.
More info required: Bugs waiting on more details from the person who reported them.
Won't do: Bugs that were rejected because they're no longer relevant or won't be fixed, so they're out of the way without being deleted.

Each section lists its bugs from newest to oldest, by the date they were reported, and shows how many bugs it contains. Once a bug is triaged or moved to a 'Done' workflow step, it leaves the page.

Collapse and expand sections

Collapse the sections you're not working in, such as 'Won't do', to keep the bugs that need a decision in view.

Click the arrow next to a section's name to collapse or expand it.

View a bug

Click a bug in the list to show it in the panel on the right. When you open Bug triage, the first bug in 'Reported bugs' is shown.

The panel shows what you need to triage the bug: its title, description, and attachments, the triage buttons, and who reported it and when. It doesn't show the bug's details, comments, subtasks, or activities.

To copy the bug's Item ID, click the Copy ID icon next to it. To see and edit everything else, click the View bug details icon, which opens the full bug in a new tab. From there, you can use the Previous item and Next item icons to move through the other bugs in the same section.

Triage a bug

To triage a bug, give it a team backlog and a risk rating. To open the triage settings, view the bug and click Triage.

You can set the team and the risk rating in either order. Until both are set, the button at the bottom of the triage settings reads 'Save', which saves your changes but leaves the bug in 'Reported bugs'. Once both are set, it reads 'Finish'.

When you click Finish, the bug leaves Bug triage and is added to the bottom of the 'To do' step in the team's backlog. On a Scrum team, it's added to the bottom of the 'Unscheduled' section of the backlog.

A bug is also triaged as soon as it has both a team and a risk rating, even if they're set outside Bug triage, such as on the bug itself.

Assign the bug to a team backlog

Under 'Team backlog', click Add to team backlog.
Search for or select a team.
Click Finish, or click Save if the bug doesn't have a risk rating yet.

Private teams are marked with a lock icon. If you assign a bug to a private team you're not a member of, you'll lose access to the bug, because only users with access to that team's backlog can see it. In the confirmation dialog, click Change backlog and lose access to confirm, or click X to cancel. To finish triaging the bug in one step, set its risk rating before you assign it to the private team.

Set or suggest a risk rating

A bug's risk rating helps teams prioritize it against other bugs, based on how likely customers are to run into it and how serious the effect would be. The rating is the bug's probability multiplied by its impact, each rated from 1 (lowest) to 5 (highest), so risk ratings range from 1 to 25, with 25 being the highest risk.

Under 'Risk rating', select a Probability and an Impact value, or click Rate it for me to have Atono suggest them.
Click Finish, or click Save if the bug isn't assigned to a team yet.

You can also set or change a bug's risk rating from the bug itself. For more details, see Update a bug's risk rating.

Probability and impact values

Probability: The chance this bug will be experienced by a customer, compared to other bugs.

1 - Impossible
2 - Unlikely
3 - Possible
4 - Probable
5 - Certain

Impact: The severity of this bug's impact on a customer, compared to other bugs.

1 - Negligible
2 - Minor
3 - Medium
4 - High
5 - Severe

Suggested risk ratings

A suggested rating gives you a starting point when it's hard to judge a bug against the others in your workspace. 'Rate it for me' needs at least 130 characters in the bug's description. If there's less, Atono shows a message asking you to add more detail to the bug.

When you click Rate it for me, Atono compares the bug with similar bugs that have already been rated and fills in suggested probability and impact values. A 'Suggested rating' section explains the reasoning behind each value. Suggestions depend on the bug's description and the bugs it's compared with, so review the reasoning before you keep them.

While a value matches the suggestion, it's marked with a sparkle (✦) icon, and when both values match, the rating appears as a pill, for example, 'Risk Rating 12'. Changing a value removes its sparkle, and clicking the X on the pill clears both values. The sparkles only appear while you're triaging the bug, not on the bug afterward.

Request more info

When a report doesn't have enough detail to rate or assign, send it back to the person who reported it.

Click More info required.

The bug moves to 'More info required' and is assigned to its reporter, replacing any current assignee, so they can see it's waiting on them. If the reporter doesn't have access to the bug's team backlog, its assignee doesn't change. Atono can send the reporter an email notification about the assignment, depending on their notification preferences.

To point the reporter to what's missing, click the View bug details icon and add comments to the parts of the description you have questions about.

Reject a bug

Reject a bug that's no longer relevant or won't be fixed.

Click Reject.

The bug moves to the 'Won't do' section. A bug without a team moves to the 'Won't do' step of the bug workflow, and a bug on a team backlog moves to its team's 'Won't do' step.

To remove a bug from your workspace instead, click the View bug details icon and delete it there. For more details, see Delete a bug.

Move a bug back to 'Reported bugs'

Move a bug back once the reporter has added the details you asked for, or if a rejected bug turns out to need fixing after all.

Click Move to reported bugs. This is available for bugs in 'More info required' and 'Won't do'.

A bug without a team moves to the 'Reported' step, and a bug on a team backlog moves to its team's 'To do' step. To ask the reporter for more details about a rejected bug before triaging it again, click More info required instead.

Return a bug to Bug triage

When a team won't be fixing a bug after all, remove it from the team backlog so it can be triaged again and assigned to another team.

Open the bug, and in its 'Team' field, click the team's name.
Select No team.
In the confirmation dialog, review what will change, then click Unassign from team to confirm, or click X to cancel.

The bug is added to 'Reported bugs' in the 'Reported' step. It keeps its risk rating, assignee, and timebox, but its sprint is removed, since it’s specific to the team. If the bug was on a private team, anyone in the workspace can see it again.

Bugs also return to 'Reported bugs' when their probability or impact is set to 'Not selected' on the bug itself, and when their team is deleted and its items are unassigned rather than moved to 'Won't do'. For more details, see Delete a team.

Identify 'old' bugs

Atono marks bugs that are more than seven days old and still in 'Reported bugs' or 'More info required', so they don't wait unnoticed:

The bug's row shows a red clock icon. Hover over it to see 'This bug has been in triage over 7 days.'
Bug triage in the side menu shows a red dot whenever at least one bug you can see is marked.

Bug triage steps on other pages

Outside Bug triage, such as on the Everything page, bugs show a workflow step rather than a triage section. Bugs that don't have a team use a fixed bug workflow that can't be customized, with the steps 'Reported', 'More info required', 'Won't do', and 'Done', and each step is marked with a bug icon in its own color. Bugs on a team backlog keep their team's workflow step while they're in triage.

Like team workflow steps, each step in the bug workflow belongs to a workflow category: 'Reported' is in 'To do', 'More info required' is in 'In progress', 'Won't do' is in 'Won't do', and 'Done' is in 'Done'. The categories determine where these steps appear when you filter the Everything page by workflow step.

Triage activity

Atono records changes to a bug's probability, impact, and risk rating in its Activities list. When the values come from 'Rate it for me', the entry shows the rating as 'Rate it for me' followed by the rating, for example, 'Rate it for me (12)'. To show only these changes, filter the Activities list by the 'Triage' type.

For more details, see Filter by type.