Raising Issues

What is an issue?

If you spot a bug, have a suggestion for development or want to ask a question, you can do this by creating an issue.

An issue:

  • Captures a problem or idea: Anything from “the Rmd crashes when I click X” to “we should make this chart blue”.
  • Creates a place for discussion: Team members can comment, ask questions, or suggest solutions.
  • Keeps work organised: Issues can be labelled, assigned, linked to pull requests, or grouped into milestones.
  • Documents decisions and progress: The whole conversation stays visible, so anyone can see what happened and why.

Creating an issue

Navigate to the ‘Issues’ tab in the repository to see existing issues and create a new one.

For a new issue you can:

  • Name the card and add a description
  • Assign someone (including yourself) to do the work
  • Add labels and issue types, including priority labels

An issue can have both a ‘Type’ description and a ‘Label’:

  • The ‘Type’ defines the primary nature of the issue and can be either ‘Bug’, ‘Feature’ or ‘Task’.
  • A ‘Label’ adds extra information about the issue, such as the level of priority and area of interest.

An issue can only have one ‘Type’ but it can have multiple ‘Labels’. Both the ‘Type’ and the ‘Labels’ can be used for filtering on the ‘Issues’ page and on a project board.

Tip

The more detail you can add to a card, the better!

Sub-issues

You can create a series of sub-issues related to an issue:

New cards are created for each sub-issue. This means you can assign different team members (or yourself) to different sub-issues, create individual branches and track progress separately. The relationships section also lets you see which issues and sub-issues are related:

Project Boards

Project boards are a great way of plan, track, and manage a piece of work. They are used alongside issues to manage workflow and collaborate with your team. Read all about project boards and issues here.