Log In Process

To use ProblemTracker you must log into the system. Start your web browser and go to the following URL:

http://servername/workgroup/ptlogin.asp

where servername is the TCP/IP name of the host where the ProblemTracker server software is installed, and workgroup is the name of the of the ProblemTracker workgroup (e.g. "pteval") you wish to access. If you are not sure where ProblemTracker was installed on your network, please ask your ProblemTracker Administrator.

You will be presented with the login screen. Enter your username and password to log in or, if available, click on the link New User? Register Here. Details on creating your own account by Self Registration can be found in the User Accounts Help section.

On occasion when logging in, you may encounter the error message, "Login Failed - Your previous login session is still active." This message can come up if you were previously logged in to ProblemTracker, but did not click the Logoff icon to finish your session. Select Yes so that the previous session will be closed and a new session will begin and allow you to login. If you select No, you will not be able to login to ProblemTracker.

If you are using floating licenses, it is important that you click the Logoff icon to end your ProblemTracker session when you are done. Simply exiting your browser will not end your session and may prevent other users from being able to access ProblemTracker. If you do forget to click the Logoff icon, simply login in again, answer Yes when asked to delete your old session, and then click the Logoff icon on the Home page when it is displayed.

If you browse off to another site without clicking the Logoff icon to end your ProblemTracker session, you can click the Back button on your browser several times to return to the last ProblemTracker page you were on and then click the Logoff icon. Or, you can simply browse back to the login page, login again, then click the Logoff icon on the Home page when it is displayed. ProblemTracker does not allow more than one active session per user account (irrespective of license type), so if you login and then logoff you can always be certain that you have not left any active sessions around.

If your user account is of the floating license type, you may encounter the error message, "Login Failed - The maximum number of concurrent logins has been reached. Please try again later or contact your administrator." This message is generated because the maximum number of floating license users are already logged into the system. As soon as another floating license user logs off (or is forced off by your administrator), you will be able to login to ProblemTracker.

If it is important that you are always able to login, please ask your administrator to configure you as a static license user. Static license users have a single license permanently assigned to them.

After logging in, the first screen you will see is your ProblemTracker homepage.

By default, this page has two reports, which display the records assigned to you and the records reported by you. Also present on the Home Page is a link to the personal preferences section, where you can customize various user settings, such as your changing your password and selecting date and report settings. A link to edit your account information may also be displayed depending on the privileges granted to you by your system administrator

Report Layout
You can customize the columns of the reports displayed on your home page either by creating your own saved report layout or selecting an existing saved report layout. Please refer to the section Using Saved Queries & Reports for details.

Report Query
You can customize the query "Assigned To Me" with a query of your choice by defining your own personal saved or advanced query and selecting it for the First Home Page Report field in the Personal Preferences page. Alternatively, you can select an existing saved or advanced query for this first home page report as well. You can customize the query "Reported By Me" using the Second Home Page Report field in the Personal Preferences page. Information on selecting the queries for the Home Page reports via the Personal Preferences page is described in the section below. Please refer to the section Using Saved Queries & Reports for details on how to create your own saved query or refer to the section Advanced Queries for information on creating advanced queries.

Dynamic Report Selection
You can view different saved queries or charts on the Home page at any time by clicking on the pulldown menu above each report. Any saved query or chart to which you have access will be displayed in the pulldown for selection. To permanently change the reports displayed on the Home Page when you first log into ProblemTracker, you will need to select the desired reports in the Preferences section.

Dynamic Sorting of the Results
You can change the way the reports on the Home page are sorted at any time by clicking on the field name. The field that is being used as the primary sort field will have an arrow to the right of the field name. If the arrow is pointing down, the results are sorted by that field in a descending order. If the arrow is pointing up, the results are sorted by that field in an ascending order. Clicking once on the field with the arrow will reverse the sort order. Clicking once on any field that does not have the arrow will sort the results in ascending order by that field. Any field except large text fields can be clicked to sort the results by that field.

Other Features of the Home Page
When the Assigned To or Reported By fields are displayed as columns on a Home Page report, the user's name will appear as a clickable link if you have the appropriate privilege. Click on the user's name to display the user's profile information as shown below.

There is one export icon for each report displayed on the Home Page. The records displayed in each of the Home Page reports can be exported to a CSV file (comma separated values format) by clicking on the export icon in the upper right corner of the report. You can then open this file with another tool such as Microsoft Excel or Crystal Reports.

If you have exported Metric (chart) data, you can create a chart in Microsoft Excel from the exported data by doing the following. Open the file in Excel and "rubber band" (left-click mouse and drag a rectangle around) the data plus column and row titles (exclude rows 1 through 3, but include the individual row/column titles in row 4 and column A along with the data in your selection) and click the Chart Wizard icon (or select Insert->Chart...). Click the Finish button in the Chart Wizard to accept the Microsoft Excel default settings for the chart; or make selections, click Next button, then click Finish to create a chart with custom settings. Please review the Microsoft Excel Help for further information on Excel charts.

Multiple print icons may be displayed on the Home Page. The print icon below the date and time information in the upper right corner of the Home Page will print the Home Page as it appears in your browser window (excluding the top button bar that has the action icons such as "Home", "Add", "Help", etc.). Printing with this icon will include the "Welcome <User>" message, the date and time, and the records or chart displayed in each report. When reports are displayed on the Home Page, using this print icon to print the Home Page will only display the records that appear in your browser window, but will not print all records in the query results for each report.

To print the results of a report or chart displayed on the Home Page, click on the print icon in the upper right corner of each Home Page Report. When a report is displayed on the Home Page, clicking on the print icon in the upper right corner of the report will print all of the records that match the Saved Query (including those records not shown on the Home Page when the number of records in the query results exceeds the maximum number of records displayed per page).

Account Info

If you have been granted access to edit your own user account information, a link labeled Account Info will be present in the upper right corner of the Home Page. Click on this link to edit your user account information.

The Edit User Account page allows you to update the contact information stored in ProblemTracker including your email address, phone number, address, etc.

To update your account information, enter information in the fields displayed, then click OK to save your changes.

The contact information that you can update in the Edit User Account page includes:

New Password
To change your password, enter the password you wish to use in this field.

Confirm New Password
Re-enter the password you typed into the New Password field above. You must enter the same password into both of these fields in order to successfully change your password.

Last Name
Depending on the way your ProblemTracker has configured the system, your last name may be displayed in reports on the Home and / or Query pages when you are listed as the Assignee or Reporter of a record.

First Name
Depending on the way your ProblemTracker has configured the system, your first name may be displayed in reports on the Home and / or Query pages when you are listed as the Assignee or Reporter of a record.

Company
The name of the company or organization you represent

Email
Your email address. This address will be used to send you email notification, alerts, or discussion messages about records in ProblemTracker.

Phone Number

Fax

Address 1

Address 2

City

State / Province

Zip / Pincode

Country

Comment
Any comment you wish to include in your user account information

From the ProblemTracker home page, click on the link labeled "Preferences".

You can customize the following features:

User Password Settings

• New Password
  To change your password, enter the password you wish to use in this field.
• New Password Confirm
  Re-enter the password you typed into the New Password field above. You must enter the same password into both of these fields in order to successfully change your password.

Report Settings

• Maximum Records
  You can select the maximum number of records that are displayed per page for reports on the Home and Query Pages. The upper limit for this maximum value is 100 records.
• First Home Page Report
  You can select a saved query, advanced query, or saved chart to be displayed as the first report on your home page.
• Second Home Page Report
  You can select a saved query, advanced query, or saved chart to be displayed as the second report on your home page. If you do not want a second report displayed on your home page, select the option "No Report" for this field.
• Third Home Page Report
  You can select a saved query, advanced query, or saved chart to be displayed as the third report on your home page. If you do not want a third report displayed on your home page, select the option "No Report" for this field.
• Chart Width X Height
  Enter the dimensions that should be used when a saved chart is selected for one of the Home Page reports. The setting that works best in most environments is 700 X 300. This preference is not available for Restricted Users.

Help Settings

• Display Field Help
  Check the box to display the Field Help icon, a yellow question mark next to the name of the fields displayed on the Add, Task, and Edit pages. When the Field Help icon is displayed, you can move your cursor over this icon to get an explanation about the field.

Date Settings

• Date Format
  Select a format for the Date from the pulldown menu. The format that you choose will be used to display fields that contain date information within ProblemTracker.
• Time Format
  Select a format for the time from the pulldown menu. The format that you choose will be used to display all fields that contain time information within ProblemTracker. Choosing 12 hour for the time format will display times followed by AM or PM to denote the appropriate 12 hour period, such as 02:05:38 PM. Choosing 24 hour as the time format will display times without the AM or PM designation, such as 14:05:38.
• Time Zone
  Select a time zone from the pulldown menu. The time zone that you choose will be used to display all fields that contain time information within ProblemTracker. For a list of available time zones in your operating system, please refer to one of the following sections:
  Windows 2000 and Windows XP Time Zones
  Windows NT 4.0 Time Zones
• Adjust To Daylight Saving Time (DST)
  Check this box if you wish to have ProblemTracker adjust time information to account for daylight saving time. If you selected a time zone in which daylight saving time is observed, we recommend that you enable this option.

Export Settings

The following preferences are used when report data is exported from the ProblemTracker Home, Query, and Metrics pages. Data is exported as a CSV (comma separated values) file. However, because there is no firm definition of a CSV standard, you may need to modify some export parameters to allow use of the exported data by other applications (spreadsheet, database, etc.). ProblemTracker and your ProblemTracker Administrator have set these values to defaults that should work in most environments. So in most cases, you should not need to change these settings. If you have an application that is not importing the data correctly, review the information below. If that does not help, please contact your ProblemTracker Administrator.

• Field Separator
  Choose one of the options to be used as the separator between the fields (values) of a report that is being exported. The available options are Comma, Semicolon, and Tab. If you are exporting English language (or Latin1) data in the United States, you should use Comma. If you are exporting English language (or Latin1) data in a country that uses a Comma in floating point numbers to separate the whole number from the fractional part (e.g. 45,125 for 45 and one eighth), you may need to set this to Semicolon. If your ProblemTracker Administrator configured your system to use the Unicode (UTF-8) character set for multi-language support, Tab will generally work best in most applications.
• Row Separator
  Choose one of the options to be used as the separator between the rows (lines) of a report that is being exported. The options are Carriage Return & Line Feed (Windows), Carriage Return (Mac OS), and Line Feed (Unix). Choose the appropriate option for the operating system you are using on your desktop (the one running the web browser you are using).
• File Extension
  Choose one of the options to be used as the file extension when saving the file containing the exported data. The options are csv, txt, and No Extension. For English language (or Latin1) data, this should be set to csv. For Unicode (UTF-8, multi-language) data this should be set to txt. However, you can also choose No Extension if you wish to create a file without a file extension (without .csv or .txt at the end).

Note: When exporting data from a UTF-8 workgroup using the recommended settings listed above, misalignment of the data can occur when viewing the exported data in Excel if the file is not first saved to disk and then opened in one of the two ways listed below. Unfortunately, the default file open in Excel does not properly store multiple line text (as there may be in ProblemTracker BigText fields) in a single cell. Instead, it puts each line in its own cell which results in misalignment of the fields in the spreadsheet.

For UTF-8 data exported with Field Separator set to Tab, Row Separator set to Carriage Return & Line Feed, and File Extension set to txt, you can get Excel to properly place multiple line data in a single cell using one of the two operations below.

1. From Windows Explorer, select the file to be opened.
2. Right-click on the file and select Open With->Microsoft Excel.

1. From Excel, select File->Open.
2. Locate and select the file that you want from the list (the file you created when you exported the data from ProblemTracker).
3. Hold down the SHIFT key on your keyboard, and then click the Open button (if you do not hold down the SHIFT key, the file may not be processed correctly).

Dependent Pulldowns

• Enforce Dependency in Query Page
  Select Yes or No to determine whether the dependent relationships between pulldown fields should be enforced when using Query operations. This preference is not available for Restricted Users.

Multi-Line Field Settings

• Display Window
  Select the number of lines that should be displayed when editing (Edit or Task operation) or viewing (View operation) the text in a large text field. By default, this will be set to 5 lines. If the contents of a large field extend beyond the number of lines set in this preference, you will have the ability to scroll to see the complete contents of the field. On the View page if you are using Internet Explorer as your browser, you will have the option to dynamically expand the window to see the complete contents without scrolling by clicking on the "+" icon to the left of the text. On the View page, empty (blank) fields are always displayed as a single line.

Visual SourceSafe Login Settings

• SourceSafe Login Settings
  Enter your Microsoft Visual Source Safe user name and password to be able to use the Source Code Control Interface within ProblemTracker. This preference is not available for Restricted Users.

Discussion Settings
Note: These options will not be displayed unless you are using ProblemTracker Enterprise Edition. These preferences are not available for Restricted Users.

• New Post Notification
  This option determines when a user will be notified about discussions via email. Selecting "No Email" indicates that a user should not receive any email notification messages related to discussions. Selecting "Receive Email for each New Post" indicates that a user will receive one email notification for each new post in any discussion thread to which he/she is subscribed. Selecting "Receive Email for the first New Post to each Thread" indicates that the user will only receive email for the first post made to each discussion thread since the user last viewed the message list for the thread. With this setting the user can tell which threads have had postings since the last time they were read, but will not have a separate email for each posting (just one per thread with new posts). After viewing the message list for a thread, a notification email will be sent the next time a message is posted.
• Invitation Notification by Email
  This option determines whether a user should receive an email notification message when he / she has been invited to participate in a discussion thread initiated for a particular record. Selecting "Yes" indicates that the user should receive an email invitation for each new discussion thread.
• Message Display Window
  Enter the number of lines of text you wish to see when displaying a message within a discussion. The default setting is 5 lines of text.

Login Options

• Remember Password
  You can set whether or not your browser should remember your password by checking the box labeled Remember Password and entering the password in the box provided. When enabled, the password field is automatically filled in when you log in.
• Auto Login
  If your password is currently remembered by your browser, you can enable Auto Login. This feature automatically logs you in, bypassing the log in screen and taking you directly to your home page. To enable this feature, check the box labeled Auto Login.

When you log in, you are given access to data and operations as assigned by your ProblemTracker administrator. These rights are assigned to you via User Groups. Each group defines a set of privileges, and you are assigned to groups. The total set of privileges you have is the sum of all the rights of all the User Groups that you are a member of.

Please contact your ProblemTracker administrator if you wish to receive additional privileges.