Experiments with bugzilla email filtering
I’m sure you all suffer from the same problem as I, which is that you can get a heck of a lot of bugzilla email during the course of a day (well, a lot in general, but bugzilla is one I think I can do something about). Not all of it is urgent though. Lately I’ve been finding that my focus and attention is being driven by what comes into my inbox. When that happens, I no longer feel like I’m in control of my day (because, well, I’m not). I’d rather drive what I do based on my priorities, but I still need to maintain some awareness of what’s going on since some issues are timely.
The problem with bugzilla is that you can end up being on a heck of a lot of CC lists. This can be especially true for me when I’ve been doing bug triaging since I tend to CC myself on bugs I’m not sure I’ve vectored correctly. I don’t know about you, but I tend to not remove myself from CC’s even when they no longer serve a purpose.
Sometimes an item will be under heated conversation. For these, my preference is to wait a bit then get caught up with several comments in a row, rather than reading each in turn. I try to do this in recognition of the fact that building up the context in order to understand the latest comment takes time, and I’d like to be more efficient by collating those together.
My current experiment is the following email filter. It’s Lotus Notes, but most modern emailers have similar capabilities. Here I’m attempting to vector all bugzilla email to a dedicated folder which in theory I will check say once a day or every other day (ie. at a time of my chosing, not when the bugs come in). However, I did that in the past and the result was missing out on things people wanted me to comment on. I realized that its not all bugzilla email that should be filtered out, but rather than there is a subset that I want to prioritize my attention to and have in my inbox. The following filter attempts to express this.
Bugs assigned to me, or ones I logged, get priority. and go my inbox. The interesting one for me is the exception “Body contains ‘Kevin’”, which tries to capture the pattern,
“Kevin, do you agree?” “Kevin, can I take this bug?” “Kevin, are you there?” “Wake up Kevin!”
It’s still early but so far this seems to be helping.
I’m wondering how others deal with the bugzilla tidal wave.
Posted December 4th, 2008 by Kevin McGuire in category: Uncategorized
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8 Responses to “Experiments with bugzilla email filtering”
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Andrew Niefer Says:
December 4th, 2008 at 7:49 pm
I also filter into individual bug folders based on the body containing things like “Product/Component: Equinox / p2″
Nick Boldt Says:
December 4th, 2008 at 10:38 pm
Step 1: Forward all mail from Bugzilla to a Gmail address — there’s nothing wrong with doing this because there’s nothing Confidential in Bugzilla mail (and the contents of the mail is all in public anyway on bugs.eclipse.org). (I did this for years at IBM w/ management’s prior approval, so the precedent is set.)
Step 2: Set up a label (aka filter) so that your Bug mail goes into a folder while everything else goes into somewhere else.
http://bp0.blogger.com/_i21-98vOfTA/Rh03AiiPCsI/AAAAAAAAABI/GSHGzglD24g/s640/gmail_snap.png
Step 3: Check bug mail on a cell phone, in a browser, in Thunderbird, or in Tasktop (within Eclipse itself). Use Gmail / Thunderbird / Tasktop to filter/search/sort mail to find the specific bugs.
Step 4: Sit back and enjoy the fact that you can check bug mail w/o having to deal w/ Notes.
http://bp0.blogger.com/_i21-98vOfTA/Rw5FdiwO7WI/AAAAAAAAALI/aSxhTRHKqHU/s1600-h/Notes7-helpful-message.png
maarten meijer Says:
December 5th, 2008 at 2:08 am
Why not use Mylyn with a few queries and switch of most email from bugzilla.
There are 60 options in bugzilla email prefs, so you can select the important ones.
I have only 15 ones selected to send me email, the rest I see in my Task List.
Benjamin Cab Says:
December 5th, 2008 at 5:04 am
You can also create some very expressive filters using the headers that Bugzilla automatically adds.
For example, here are the headers of a mail I just received because of the creation of a new bug in an inbox I’m following
X-Bugzilla-Reason: None
X-Bugzilla-Type: newchanged
X-Bugzilla-Watch-Reason: AssignedTo Platform-UI-Inbox@eclipse.org
X-Bugzilla-Product: Platform
X-Bugzilla-Component: UI
X-Bugzilla-Keywords:
X-Bugzilla-Severity: normal
X-Bugzilla-Who: daniel_xxxxxxx@xxxxxxx.com
X-Bugzilla-Status: NEW
X-Bugzilla-Priority: P3
X-Bugzilla-Assigned-To: Platform-UI-Inbox@eclipse.org
X-Bugzilla-Target-Milestone: —
X-Bugzilla-Changed-Fields:
And here are the headers for a mail received when Ed made a comment on a bug I reported myself
X-Bugzilla-Reason: Reporter
X-Bugzilla-Type: newchanged
X-Bugzilla-Watch-Reason: None
X-Bugzilla-Product: EMF
X-Bugzilla-Component: Edit
X-Bugzilla-Keywords:
X-Bugzilla-Severity: normal
X-Bugzilla-Who: Ed.XXXXXX@XXXXXX.com
X-Bugzilla-Status: NEW
X-Bugzilla-Priority: P3
X-Bugzilla-Assigned-To: marcelop@xxxxxxxxx.com
X-Bugzilla-Target-Milestone: —
X-Bugzilla-Changed-Fields:
Using X-Bugzilla-Reason, X-Bugzilla-Watch-Reason and what actually is in the body of the mail, you can really do a lot of advanced filtering!
Gunnar Wagenknecht Says:
December 5th, 2008 at 10:21 am
Have you checked the headers? Bugzilla provides tons of them and they really help.
X-Bugzilla-Reason: Reporter
X-Bugzilla-Type: newchanged
X-Bugzilla-Watch-Reason: AssignedTo inbox@……
X-Bugzilla-Product: Community
X-Bugzilla-Component: Website
X-Bugzilla-Keywords:
X-Bugzilla-Severity: major
X-Bugzilla-Who: some.commentor@email.com
X-Bugzilla-Status: NEW
X-Bugzilla-Priority: P1
X-Bugzilla-Assigned-To: …..@….
X-Bugzilla-Target-Milestone: —
X-Bugzilla-Changed-Fields: AssignedTo Severity Priority
Gunnar Wagenknecht Says:
December 5th, 2008 at 10:25 am
Oh, I forget to tell what I actually implemented.
I added filters for most of my Eclipse.org mails. Every mailing list goes into a separate folder as well as Bugzilla and IPZilla traffic. I can read the folders threaded like newsgroups which really helps when you don’t catch up daily.
In general, I try to register mailing lists with Gmane. That turns them into real NNTP newsgroups which I read through Thunderbird as well.
Roy Denis Says:
December 5th, 2008 at 10:38 am
Bugzilla also adds information in the mail headers to make filtering easier. For instance:
X-Bugzilla-Reason: None
X-Bugzilla-Type: newchanged
X-Bugzilla-Watch-Reason: AssignedTo webmaster@eclipse.org
X-Bugzilla-Product: Community
X-Bugzilla-Component: SVN
X-Bugzilla-Keywords:
X-Bugzilla-Severity: enhancement
X-Bugzilla-Who: antoine@somewhere.com
X-Bugzilla-Status: NEW
X-Bugzilla-Priority: P3
X-Bugzilla-Assigned-To: webmaster@eclipse.org
X-Bugzilla-Target-Milestone: —
X-Bugzilla-Changed-Fields:
Kevin McGuire Says:
December 11th, 2008 at 8:48 pm
Thanks all to the great suggestions, in particular on the info in the mail headers