Redmine

Implementation
Cookbook
 Table of Content
The most often way of using Redmine .................................................................................................... 3
Before you get started with your settings............................................................................................... 3
Why should you follow our suggestion? ............................................................................................. 3
Setting ..................................................................................................................................................... 3
1) Custom fields ............................................................................................................................... 3
Formats of custom fields and examples .......................................................................................... 4
Where to set custom fields: ............................................................................................................ 6
2) Users ............................................................................................................................................ 7
Where to set users .......................................................................................................................... 8
3) Trackers ....................................................................................................................................... 9
Where to set trackers ...................................................................................................................... 9
4) Issue statuses ............................................................................................................................ 10
Where to set statuses.................................................................................................................... 10
5) Roles and Permissions ............................................................................................................... 11
Where to set roles and permissions .............................................................................................. 12
6) Workflow setting ....................................................................................................................... 16
Where to set workflow.................................................................................................................. 16
7) Spent time activities .................................................................................................................. 17
Where to set spent time activities ................................................................................................ 17
Where you will use spent time activities ...................................................................................... 19
8) Set up filters (queries) ............................................................................................................... 20
Recommended issue filters ........................................................................................................... 20
Where to set filters........................................................................................................................ 21
Where to use filters ....................................................................................................................... 23
9) Homepages ................................................................................................................................ 24
10) General setting ...................................................................................................................... 24
Create project structure .................................................................................................................... 27

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Redmine Implementation Cookbook
The most often way of using Redmine
Most of the users want a smooth workflow when working on their projects – to track time, to plan
project, to see the progress in order to know if they work effectively.

Here we show you the most elegant ways how to set up your basic Redmine setting in a way that
gives you great value. The point of this cookbook is to get the most from your Redmine with little
setting.

There are other cookbooks coming showing you specific setting for:

 Software development companies

 Marketing companies
 Web developers
 Architects

Before you get started with your settings...

Think about who will be using Redmine and what are the main insights that you want to get. Having
concrete requirements will help you to create effective settings.

You should know the answers to these questions:

 What do you want to get from your Redmine?

 What is the main reason of using Redmine?

Why should you follow our suggestion?

Before you start creating projects and issues (issue can be understood in general as task, the
particular chores to be done on the project) it is important to create default setting for these entities
as well as setting of users and general setting of the application. That’s why we guide you through
the setting and we insist on the suggested order. If you keep suggested order you won’t have to do
any setting twice and you won't end up in a blind alley.

Setting

1) Custom fields
If you already know that you want to track special information at basic entities (users, issues,
projects, time entries) create these fields in the beginning. If you don´t know about any of the fields
yet just skip this step.

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Examples of the most often custom fields

 Users – telephone, birthday

 Projects – type of project, area, priority, client
 Issues and trackers – price, standardized work specification, model, material

Formats of custom fields and examples

In the diagrams below, you can see all the available formats of custom fields in editing mode, which
are also listed on issue detail and shown on a list of issues.

Let’s explain the formats:

 Text – a single text line, where you can add some specific information about the issue, which
you may later want to view on an issue report.
For example: location, type of hardware
 Boolean – a binary option
For example: Paid issue?, Toolbox required?
 Date – if start and due date are not enough to specify the issue
For example: Planned visit on-site, Review before closing issue
 Float – decimal number
For example: Lengh of a cable, Unit price

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  Integer – whole number
For example: Number of units, Number of visits on-site
 Link – link to a website. The value in this field will be clickable and can be directly open on
your browser
For example: Client’s website, Useful source of information
 List – you can define a custom list of standard values to choose from
For example: OS of client, Material for fixing
 Long text – unlike text, this provides more lines and therefore space for extended
description.
For example: detailed specification, possible risks
 User – if assignee is not enough to define the ticket, you can add another field where you
choose a user from your Redmine
For example: Supervisor, Trainee

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Where to set custom fields:
Go to ADMINISTRATION >> CUSTOM FIELDS. When clicking New Custom field, you will see all
entities, you can specify by custom fields.

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When creating new custom fields, you may come across the following settings.

 Required – it is not possible to save an update or create the entity, if this field is empty
 For all projects – will be automatically enabled on all your projects, you will not be able to
disable it for certain projects
 Used as filter – you will be able to filter entities according to this parameter
 Searchable – by typing the value into search, you will get results of the entities containing it
 Visible – you can hide the fields for certain role

Custom fields are enabled per project and tracker.

2) Users
Add users using the button “new user”. When adding more users, use the button “save and
continue”. Don´t forget to set more users setting (see diagrams below)

- Sending information emails

- Time tracking
- Showing issues history
- Time zone – your users can be from whole world so don´t forget about this setting

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Where to set users
Go to ADMINISTRTATION >> USERS

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 3) Trackers
For the beginning we suggest to start just with one tracker, which can be named “task”. In general
different trackers help you to sort your work more precisely.

When to use different trackers

- You have more types of work in your company that you want to track
- You have different workflow for different types of work
- You want to fill different fields (follow different types of information) for specific type of
work

Some examples of trackers

- Bug – for IT companies – tracker with different workflow and specific custom fields
- Customer request ticket – add custom fields where can be set requests details
- Design ticket
- Helpdesk ticket – different workflow, custom fields like external e-mail

Where to set trackers

Go to ADMINISTRATION >> TRACKERS

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 Settings of a tracker:

Not all types of work are needed on all projects, so you can select only the projects where each
tracker will be active.

You can also set which fields are enabled on the tracker.

4) Issue statuses
For the general usage we suggest you these statuses:

 New – a new issue was created and so far no work on it has been done
 Realization – issue is assigned to a user and being currently worked on
 Consultation – in order to complete the work, there is some consultation between coworkers
required. Issue is being reassigned for clarifications
 To check – issue is assigned to the person, who is provides the final review before closing it
 Done – issue closed; issue was successfully resolved, finished, closed
 Canceled – issue closed; issue was closed before full completion according to the assignment

Where to set statuses

Go to ADMINISTRATION >> ISSUE STATUSES

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Issue closed – statuses can indicate that the issue is closed – no longer active. Make sure to set the
respective statuses for closed issues. It will be very handy later on, when you will only want to filter
and list only open or closed issues.

5) Roles and Permissions

To work on project user has to be in “role”, this role says what this member is supposed to do in the
project and takes specific permissions.

You can have many roles and many combinations of permissions. We recommend you to start with
these:

 Manager – can create projects, set the project, set all the project modules, create issues
 Worker – can create issue, edit own issue, track time
 External – can see only his issues, can track time

Administrator is usually someone from the managers, this user can see all the data and edit all the
information. To set someone as administrator check the checkbox at users detail.

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Where to set roles and permissions
Go to ADMINISTRATION >> ROLES AND PERMSSIONS

It is possible to sort the roles, which you can use to determine their hierarchy.

By clicking on the button “Permissions report”, you will see a neat matrix of permissions enabled for
each role. By clicking on a certain role, you will see the permissions relevant to that role along with
some other specific settings of that role.

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For example, you can only set external user to only view his own issues.

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Below are our recommended settings for the roles we listed.

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In the initial configurations you may only start focusing on general permissions, issue tracking and
time tracking permissions.

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 6) Workflow setting
Workflow combines setting of trackers, statuses and roles. It shows you what role can change status
of what tracker.

Using the example for tracker “bug” – only manager can close this tracker to status “done”. Worker
can change the status only to “to check”.

In general – managers can close the issues, workers can´t – they always have to use “to check” status
and assign the issue to their manager

You can copy already created workflow for other tracker – use the button “copy”

Where to set workflow

Go to ADMINISTRATION >> WORKFLOW

1. First choose the role and the tracker to configure, then click Edit. The lines represent the
current status of the issue, while the rows represnt the statuses which the role can set when
updating the issue. In this example, we can see that role manager is basically omnipotent. In
the diagram below, you can see that worker can only actively use 3 statuses and is not able
to close the issue, reopen and issue, etc.
2. It is possible add further status changes if the user is assigned to issue or if he is author.
3. Copy workflow button – to use an existing setting on new role/tracker combination.

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Worker can only use the statuses – Realization, Consultation and To check when working on issues in
tracker Bug. However, if he is the author – he reported the bug, he can also close the issue.

7) Spent time activities

Spent time activities setting is necessary when you want to track spent time.

If you want to have one general activity use just activity “work”. Once you decide to do more
sophisticated time tracking and have more specific data, you can start using different types of
activities:

 Meeting
 Programming
 Analyses
 Testing

Where to set spent time activities

Go to ADMINSTRATION >> ENUMERATIONS >> ACTIVITIES (time tracking)

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Setting Active means that this activity is enabled on new created projects. If disabled, you need to
activate the activity on new projects manually. This is useful for only specific activities on a smaller
number of projects.

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Where you will use spent time activities
Logging spent time on issue updating

Logging time manually

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 8) Set up filters (queries)
Filters help you to see the issues and projects you want to see including all details.

Saved filters are ready to be used at any time by both, you and other users. You can also use these
filters at your homepage and project homepage.

When creating filters you can of course use your custom fields.

Recommended issue filters

If you are a manager, your staff will be having you check their work to approve it has been done
correctly, so you can filter out issues which are assigned to you in status “To check”, hence the first
saved filter.

You may also want to list all issues once in a period as a kind of a report of what still needs to be
done on a project.

Then there are some public queries you can set for all users to list their high priority or overdue
issues.

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Where to set filters
Filters can be set for issues and spent time. The principle is the same for both of them. Let’s take
issues list as an example.

Directly below the “Issues” header is the filtering component. From Add filter dropdown box, choose
an attribute. Afterwards, specify the conditions for this attribute. In the diagram above, the only
filtering criterion is status and only open statuses are chosen.

Furthermore, it is possible to define which attributes are shown in the list. Select columns from one
box and move to the other using the arrow buttons between them. This way you can simply choose
which attributes to see in the list and which to hide.

For repetitive issue listings, you can save the filters in order to not to have to always set them from
scratch. In Redmine, these are called custom queries.

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Referencing the diagram below. We are preparing a filter which will show all the users their issues
that passed their due date.

1. Choose whom should the saved query by visible to. This is especially useful, if you want to
prepare some listings for your whole team. But of course there are some lists, which are only
useful for your own work.
2. If you disable default columns, you can set which attributes should be shown in the list (2a.)
3. Define the filtering attributes. We used the filter for assignee <<me>>, which is applied to the
user who opens the list. This is how you can define such a filter accross the whole system to
your whole team.

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Where to use filters
From projects tasks list:

(In this case, grouped by assignee.)

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From projects general tasks overview:

9) Homepages
Redmine allows you to configure your personal page – My page. You can choose from a few of
modules to show you what data you need (your reported issues, your assigned issues, spent time,…)

On your homepage you should have the most important information – to see them immediately after
login or to get them after one click.

10) General setting

We are almost ready now to create projects. Before we start we prepare default setting of projects
and issues.

Go to ADMINISTRATION >> SETTINGS >> PROJECTS and set:

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 1. Default modules enabled on new projects
2. Default trackers enabled on new projects

You can also set:

1. Application title
2. Hostname and path
3. Application e-mail

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In ADMINISTRATION >> SETTINGS >> GENERAL (EMAIL NOTIFICATIONS) respectively.

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Create project structure
Now your Redmine is ready! Create projects, tasks and start working!

Add team members

- User + role
- Group + role
If you add a group to the project, it means that all users who are members of the group are
added to the project. If you remove the user from a group, he will also be removed from the
project. If you add new users to the group, they will also be added to the project. If you add
user into the project individually, these rules do not apply.

Create issues

Now your project is ready to be filled with issues. Simply click on new issue and start planning your
project.

Good luck and don´t forget to tune your setting once in a while!

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Easy Redmine Can Help You With:

Basic Project Management Finance Management

Project and tasks Project Budget and Cash-flow
Personal dashboard for work management Project Price Calculations and Quotations
Project dashboard Payroll and invoicing sheets
Gantt chart for project planning Transactions and personal finances
Project Management in mobiles
Project documents Resource Management
Time tracking on projects, tasks, by users Resources
Project templates Attendance
Quick project planner
Quick “to-do” reminders Advanced
Project Chat Agile Development (Agile board for SCRUM,
Branded PDF exports KANBAN)
Project statistics Project knowledge base
Project graphs and charts Meeting Calendar
Customer Management Time sheets
Help Desk Alerts – Early Warning System
CRM – Management of sales activities Social Wall
Invoicing Task Sequences
Contacts Custom fields formula
Marketing Automation

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