ITOL - Issue Tracker Addin for Microsoft Outlook

ITOL allows to create an issue in JIRA from a mail with a few clicks.

Since it seamlessly integrates with the Outlook user interface, ITOL lets you feel like working in a single program instead of jumping back and forth between two different worlds.

 

Issues can be created inside the Outlook explorer window as shown in Figure 1. Button “Issue Pane” shows or hides the pane “Issue” (1). To initialize an issue based on the selected mail, click button “Assign” (2), which performs the following actions:

  • The mail subject is copied into issue summary. (3)
  • If the mail subject contains the project name or shortcut, the issue is assigned to this project. (4)
  • HTML mail body content is converted into JIRA markup. (5)
  • Embedded images are replaced by thumbnails. (5)
  • Mail attachments are added as issue attachments.
  • Issue fields are initialized with default values.

Review the prepared issue data and click on button “Create” to create the issue in JIRA.

Figure 1, ITOL docked at the right border of Outlook explorer window

Feature List

  • Seamless integration into Outlook user interface as a task pane.
  • Create, update and view issues. Create subtasks of issues.
  • Scan mail subject for issue ID. If an ID is found, load the issue into the add-in.
  • For a new issue, scan mail subject for project name or shortcut and copy mail body to description.
  • For an existing issue, copy mail body into a new comment – provided that the mail is newer than the last comment.
  • Convert HTML mail body into JIRA markup.
  • Add all mail attachments to the issue. Exclude attachments listed in a blacklist (e.g. company logos).
  • Add the original mail as an attachment to the issue. The mail can be added in format MSG, RTF or plain text.
  • Provides an editor for text fields that behaves most like JIRA’s markup editor – inclusive user mentions and file links, which can be inserted via drag & drop, too.
  • Add issue attachments from clipboard, by drag & drop, from recent file list or by selecting files from the filesystem.
  • Show thumbnails for attachments if available.
  • One click to export issue attachments to a directory on the filesystem and open Windows Explorer or your favorite file manager. This functionality is especially useful when examining log files.
  • Insert the issue ID into the mail subject. If you answer that mail and the receiver replies in turn, ITOL can display the associated issue.
  • Store the mail sender address into a custom field. When an issue comment is added in ITOL, a new mail to this address is automatically prepared.
  • Support for custom fields.
  • Support for time tracking fields.
  • Show history of issue comments.
  • Navigate to the issue in JIRA.
  • Enables drag & drop of mails and attachments to JIRA web dialogs by integrated DDAddin.

Entire program documentation can be found here: ITOL.pdf