Review: Arctic Issue Tracker
by Jeremy on Sep.08, 2006, under Uncategorized
Over at Completely Unique, we needed a more efficient way to track bugs and feature requests. I tried to setup a number of different free systems like Flyspray, phpBugTracker, and Mantis, and none of them fit our needs. Some of them actually sucked pretty badly. So, we purchased a copy of Arctic from Olate, Ltd. It is by far the easiest to setup, use, and maintain as far as any “issue” tracker I’ve ever used. As you can see, our Development Team has already started using it. And it’s called an “issue tracker” because it is designed to already be able to track not only bugs, but features as well. And with some slight adjustments, it could also be used to allow us to assign tasks to developers as well. Adding new projects and versions to projects are a snap. Really simple and easy to do. One of Arctic’s biggest advantages, and I have already fallen in love with this feature, is the fact that it automatically generates changelogs and roadmaps for you. So, if you use the issue tracker like it’s designed to be used, then you don’t have to spend any time building up roadmaps or changelogs. It’s all done for you. The only problem I’ve had with it so far is it’s licensing system phones home in the Admin CP’s Home, which if it can’t hit Olate for some reason, it lags the Admin page pretty badly. Overall, I’d give it a 9 out of 10. Very solid product.
October 2nd, 2006 on 5:09 am
Thanks for the review! One point I should clear up though is your mention of the slowdown on the admin page. The licensing system is actually only called once every 15 days. The first time you access Arctic a call is made to our server and the license data is written to a local key file. For each subsequent load the data is pulled from that file meaning no remote requests and no slowdown. Every 15 days this file is refreshed.
What I think you’re experiencing with the slowdown on the admin dashboard is the call to the version check. Every time you access the dashboard a check is made against your version. So that could be the issue!
October 2nd, 2006 on 12:27 pm
Hey David,
Thanks for clearing that bit up. Arctic has suited our needs really well, so far. Thanks for making this wonderful product.
May 22nd, 2008 on 2:12 am
As a former Arctic user I agree that it is a very nice product indeed. However, someone decided that we should switch to BugWiki, and for anyone looking for simplicity and a nice UI, that is certainly something to try out. https://www.bugwiki.com
June 2nd, 2008 on 3:14 pm
Is it just me or is William C. a BugWiki employee. I have been researching some bug tracking tools recently and everywhere I see, there are some recent comments about how good bugwiki is (twitter, some bug tracker comparisons etc). I look at bugwiki and it’s no better than scribbling down stuff in a spreadsheet. I am not saying it’s bad (everything has it’s uses), but persistent comments stating how great bugwiki is, is pretty darn suspicious. Especially on a post that is a nearly a year old?
June 2nd, 2008 on 3:24 pm
That wouldn’t surprise me at all, really.
June 3rd, 2008 on 11:27 pm
The answer is no, I’m not part of BugWiki. What about yourself? Your comment about it being no better thab a spreadsheet is quite misleading (spreadsheets are not great at distributed collaboration, notifications, comments, attaching files, and probably more things I can’t think of right now). Could it be that it is really you who are representing someone?