Track And Manage Defects In Your Code Reviews

Minimize developmental defects and increase the code quality of your software

Categorize and Mark Defects by Severity and Type During Reviews

Using Defects in Collaborator as a Quality Gate

There are times in a review when a defect is found, or something needs to change before the review can be approved. Most code review tools allow reviewers to only make comments on changes. The author can listen to that feedback, but they might disagree and move forward without making a change.

Reviewers in Collaborator can make real-time comments and start chat threads, but they can also mark defects. By doing so, they are able to ensure that the issue they raised is trackable, labelled by type and severity, and addressed before a review is complete. This ensures that nothing is missed and that all review participants are clear about what the author needs to change. Reviews cannot be completed until all defects are fixed. This requirement allows Collaborator to serve as a true quality gate.

Exporting Defects to Increase Traceability

Collaborator also offers support for tracking defects in an external bug tracking utility. If a reviewer wants to mark something that needs to be addressed eventually but shouldn't delay the review, they can track the bug externally and close out the review. Collaborator easily integrates with web-based bug tracking tools like BugZilla, FogBugz, and others through its command line interface. If your team is using Jira for bug tracking, you can simply create a Jira ticket from within the Collaborator Diff Viewer.

Gaining Insights with Each Bug You Find

Your primary goal in reviews is probably to find bugs, but what exactly does a "bug" mean? Is it a simple typo? Is there an issue with the logic? If you can't categorize defects as you find them, you will miss out on key insights into your development. In Collaborator, you can create custom defect severities and types so you can find skill gaps unique to your team and drive process improvements. To make it easy, Collaborator comes with 12 out-of-the-box reports so your team can aggregate metrics and analyze your review process.

See How Reviewers Add Defects to Code Files in Collaborator


In this tutorial, we walk through how to manage feedback within a Collaborator code review, including how to leave comments and defects on lines of code.


Start a Free Collaborator Trial Now



Here's what your 30-day trial could look like:

