One of the more substantial changes to the next version of BugNET is the addition of custom fields. The original ASP.NET Issue Tracker Starter kit which BugNET is based on did have this feature but was not seen as an essential feature at the time in BugNET. With the addition of various fields to BugNET such as hardware, operating system & URL fields custom fields also did not seem necessary as a lot of extra information can be captured.
BugNET’s implementation of custom fields extends the initial design of the asp.net issue tracker starter kit which only allowed custom text fields to allow custom fields of Text, Date, dropdown List, yes/no (checkbox) and rich text. In the project administration (screenshot below) you can see that by clicking the view options button for a custom field which type is dropdown list will present the user with a list of custom options. The user can then add or delete options as he or she fits. These options are defined at the project level for maximum flexibility.
In the second screenshot you can see how custom fields are displayed on the issue details screen. Here I have added 4 custom fields to the project; a date field, dropdown list, checkbox and a text field. Each of these fields can be defined as required and have data type validations.
Now that custom fields will be implemented it almost seems like the hardware, OS and URL fields are redundant as they are not flexible and globally set for all projects. I have started a discussion thread to get user opinions on whether you find these fields useful, if custom fields can fill their place. A planned future enhancement will be to define custom fields by a template and share them via the community.