Eventum Review

We have dealt with issue tracking software extensively in the past. Now we decided to take up an open source Project Management/ issue tracking system used by the MySQL team. Eventum is written in PHP and used MySQL. It has been designed to create and manage new projects and assign users to it. The system can be used to designate issues and track all the bugs and task. Rich in  features, the issue tracking system also adds time management feature. It’s mainly used by support departments to track incoming technical support requests. Some software development teams use the system to organize tasks and bugs easily.

Initial Setup

Creating a project is simple enough in Eventum except the new projects have no default priority codes or issue types.

Interface

Eventum features a browser based interface that is easy to use and fully-customizable.

Feature

Eventum is packed with features - ideal for those looking for timekeeping. Especially, the core feature in Eventum are quite impressive.   It allows you anonymous posting of new issues to configure certain projects as well as create, modify and delete custom according to issue resolutions.

Some of the major features

User Management : The issue tracking system allow visitors to sign up for new. With user management feature it’s possible to create users within application. Each user can be assigned a specific permission level. Users can only access applications of the sections which are under the permission.

Handling Multiple Projects

Eventum is designed to run several projects with the same instance of Eventum. Users can create custom releases, categories and priorities for each project. Each user can be assigned a specific project.

Creating Issue

Users can create specific projects based on the issues assigned to them.  Based on the status of the resolution of issue updates are provided from the project.

Custom Search Options

The Eventum software features a custom search where the users can save the common search/queries criteria. This saved search criteria can be used execute and retrieve the results.

Email Integration

The system allows the users to create, modify and delete email responses to automate common tasks such as replying to support email. Moreover the email attachments are automatically saved in each issue. The blocked emails get saved as notes for later use.

Time Tracking

This is a simple feature the allows users to track the time spent on resolving the issues.

Integrated source code management software

If Eventum is being used to track software development issues/bugs, the SCM used by the organization can be integrated with Eventum. The integrated SCM would enable the system to track the details of the files associated specific issues.

Eventum Workflow API

Workflow API offers custom functionality to Eventum. It includes several common events like creating, assigning, updating, closing issues, receiving, associating, blocking email, new notes, etc. These are mapped to corresponding methods in the Abstract_Workflow_Backend class  These can be extended to offer new functionality for those events. Each project made its own customization of the class or it might share a single customization.

Eventum: Pros

Eventum is easily customizable according to individual requirements

• It offers a simple and easy to use browser based interface
• The system offers effective issue tracking and monitoring, consequently improving the response time for each issue.
• Whenever changes are implemented in the duplicated issue they are automatically propagated to the child issue.

Eventum: Cons

• Eventum is not for those looking for issue management. It is difficult get the notes on issues, like after opening an issue you can’t see the note history immediately. This makes it difficult to see where the progress is being made and its current status. This is beyond the implementation status code.
• Eventum might cause some initial hitch-up during installation. After loading the installer get long list files that Apache doesn’t allow to write to. It requires the deprecated allow_call_time_pass_reference in php.ini.
• When you open the assignments it shows open the Stats page instead of opening the My Assignments page.
• It requires a preference to change the default rows per page on the issue lists to something other than 5, which is the default.
• Although intuitive and self-explanatory, the interface has nothing much to a developer’s delight. Navigation is not too smooth and confusing at times.

Conclusion

Overall Eventum is user-friendly system with impressive features. However, to make an effective issue manager Eventum needs to work on its clunky features that we have provided in the cons.