Using Preferences in Bugzilla

Features of Bugzilla

Bugzilla provides many key and advanced features to users. Below are a few useful features of Bugzilla.

• Bugzilla allows users to create, edit, view, and search for bugs with effective management.
   
• Bugzilla supports various commercial databases and operating systems.
   
• Bugzilla allows users to attach various bug-supportive files as well as manage them.
   
• Bugzilla provides advanced search options to filter, track, and manage bugs based on several criteria. These criteria include keyword, version, severity, custom fields, etc.
   
• Bugzilla has an automatic email notification system that sends real-time notices to the users on their emails.
   
• Bugzilla has a reporting system that can generate bug statistics, metrics and charts, which are used to enhance software quality.

General Preferences

This section allows you to modify several default settings of Bugzilla. Below are some features available in general preferences.

• Reviews and Needinfo: With this feature, the user can block review and feedback requests. He can also set reminders for overdue requests and block needinfo requests as well.
   
• Searching: In this section, you will be able to enable tags for bugs, include comments when you are doing quick searches, and use elastic search.
   
• Bug editing:  Here, you can set the position of the additional comment box, change comment order, view bug activity, etc.
   
• Email notifications:  You can change the preferred email format and include x-Bugzilla in the BugMail body.
   
• User Interface:  This will allow you to show attachments inline, change the language used in the email, display duplicates when reporting a new bug, change the timezone, etc.

Email Preferences

In this tab, you can turn email notifications on and off. Bugzilla provides its users with the ability to control the amount emails they want to receive.

You can click on Enable All Bugmail to receive email notices from Bugzilla or click on Disable All Mail to stop receiving emails at all. Further, you have global options for emails when someone asks you to set a flag, or you ask someone to set a flag.

You can check and uncheck the options as per your requirement.
Apart from this, if you want to set some other options apart from complete ON and OFF, then you can use the Field/recipient options to modify as per your need.

Lastly, Bugzilla allows you to ignore all the bugs which you no longer wish to receive mail.

Saved Searches

In this tab, you will be able to save and access all the frequently used search queries. You can view and run any saved searches that you have created here. Also, you can view saved searches of other members in the group.

Two-Factor Authentication

In this table, you can provide two-factor authentication for your Bugzilla account. You can authenticate between two options. The first one is the TOTP (Time-based One-Time Password), and the second one is Duo security.

Note: Your two-factor authentication setting will not be updated until you click on the Submit Changes button.

Sessions

In this tab, you can see your active Bugzilla sessions. You can also log out of all other sessions and check the last used session with its IP Address.

API Keys

API keys allow external software to log in to the web service API. The external software would use the token you will provide to log in without knowing your password. You can revoke this token to stop the web service without any need to change your password.

On this page, you can revoke, unrevoke, and change the description of some existing API keys. You can also create more than one API key with an optional description. 

Permissions

This tab is purely informative. It outlines the user's current permissions on the installation of Bugzilla. You can assign user roles, set the privilege level for the user's actions, and inherit and assign access rights in this section. Below are key aspects of permissions in Bugzilla.

• User role: There are various predefined user roles in Bugzilla, such as developer, tester, reporter, and administrator.
   
• Inherited rights: Bugzilla allows rights inheritance. This means that those with lower-level can access the rights of higher-level.
   
• Assign access rights: Those with higher-level rights can assign as well as revoke access rights to other lower-level individuals.
   
• Privilege level: There are several privilege levels in Bugzilla to control user actions.
  
  • View: Determine whether users can view errors or not.
     
  • Create: Allows users to create new bugs.
     
  • Assign: Allow users to assign errors to others or to themselves.
     
  • Edit: Allow users to edit the error field and change existing errors.
     
  • Close: Allows users to close a bug and mark it as done.
     

Note: Only the users with the editusers privileges can edit the permissions of other users.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Bugzilla?

It is a web-based bug-tracking system developed and used by the Mozilla project and licensed under Mozilla Public License.

Are Bugzilla preferences user-specific?

Yes, the Bugzilla preferences are user-specific. Each Bugzilla user can customise their own preferences independently.

What can I customise using Bugzilla preferences?

You can customise email notifications, time zone, data formats, user interfaces, and many more.

What are all available options in Bugzilla preferences?

In Bugzilla, there are many options like email and general preferences, saved searches, sessions, API keys, etc.

Conclusion

This article discusses the topic of using preferences in Bugzilla. We discussed the different features available in the preferences option in Bugzilla. We hope this blog has helped you enhance your knowledge of using preferences in Bugzilla. If you want to learn more, then check out our articles.

• Create Graphical Reports in Bugzilla
• Bug Life Cycle
• What is Sanity Testing
   

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