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How do I link a task with a story?

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Karl Stenerud
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I recently downloaded and installed mingle, but now I'm kind of lost regarding how to use it.

I used the scrum template and then created a story. That went OK, but now the story detail shows two entries under "Related Stories" linking to "#0", which, when clicked on, brings me to a page saying "Card 0 does not exist".

There's also a section "Tasks" in the story card, which has no tasks in it. I couldn't find any button for adding a task to this story, so I went to "My Work" and created a task there, but then the task wouldn't show up unless I clicked on the "All" tab.

But now that I have a story card and a task card, there doesnt seem to be a way to connect the two. I tried modifying the "Type" field, but that brought up an ominous warning about how it would screw a bunch of things up. It seems like a strange thing to put in if it can do so much damage.

I then went to "Tasks by status", which just showed my task on an empty board. Do I need to create the lanes for the board?

When I clicked on the task, it brought up a window that had a "start task" button on it. When I clicked that, it brought up two "complete transition" windows, one slightly overlapping the other (one is covered in a grey film, the other is not). The one that is not greyed out has a disabled "complete" button that I can't press even after filling out hours remaining and comment, so I'm not sure what to do at this point.

What I'm really looking for something that has a natural scrum flow to it, where I can create story cards, have them show up immediately, and be able to attach task cards without having to go through a bunch of intermediary steps (like what I'd do on a physical board). Have the normal lanes ready, that I can just drag cards to. Does Mingle do this? And if so, how would I set it up? I'm currently using the "Scrum" template, but it doesn't seem to be working.

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    Ken Mugrage

    Hi Karl,


    Mingle can definitely do what you're asking.


    One thing I would recommend is to make sure that you choose "include pages" when creating your project from the template. If you do this, your new project will have a couple wiki pages that outline how to use that specific template. It's also not a bad idea when you're first learning Mingle to "include cards". The Scrum template has quite a bit of sample information that will help you learn how it works when you do this. You can always delete the sample cards if you wish.


    In the project you created, each card has what we call "Card Defaults" ( http://www.thoughtworks-studios.com/mingle/3.3/help/card_defaults.html ). You can think of these like a template for that type of information. In the story defaults, there are examples on how to create links to other cards ( the #0 that you referred to ). This is just meant as an example, and definitely wouldn't work. If you edit the card and put in a valid card number that link will work.


    There are multiple ways create associated stories and tasks, here are a couple options.



    1. The Story to Tasks relationships in that particular template are created by the Schedule tree. You can access that tree directly from the right hand sidebar. If you add your stories there, you can click on "Add Child" and create the tasks from the same screen. This will make it so that when you subsequently open that story, the related tasks will show up in the table you referenced in your post. ( http://www.thoughtworks-studios.com/mingle/3.3/help/working_with_card_trees.html )

    2. If you're already viewing a story that's in the Schedule tree, you can click on the + symbol next to "from Schedule tree" on the bottom of the card to create new tasks. Again, those tasks would automatically show in that story card. The key here is that because the relationship is created by the Schedule tree, the story has to already be a member of it. The idea is that the story would have normally been created as part of a product backlog, and then put into play for a release and / or sprint before you would do a task breakdown. If your company preferes to do task breakdowns earlier, Mingle can certainly be configured to support that.


    Showing two "complete transitions" windows is definitely something that shouldn't be happening. I'm afraid I don't have an easy answer for that one. If that's repeatable please let us know, we'd love to troubleshoot it and make sure that if it's an issue with the template it gets corrected.


    I would also encourage you to either attend our public webinars ( http://www.thoughtworks-studios.com/webinars ) or contact us at studios@thoughtworks.com if you would like a product specialist to walk you through Mingle. 


    I hope this helps,


    Ken

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