iTracker - Open source bug tracker

I am working on a Debt Reduction/Wealth Builder software project for Ideal Financial Solutions where the team is dispersed geopgraphically. We have two developers, two testers, and some project manager types in four locations. We made it through the initial development phase with weekly phone calls, emails, and a few in-person meetings, but when we hit the testing phase, we had some big problems.

We started out by tracking the bugs in a couple of Word documents that we would email back and forth. The developers would add their comments on the issues and email the docs to the testers and vice versa. This got unwieldy after a couple of weeks, not to mention the attachments of the emails kept getting larger and larger.

I decided to look for an open-source (free) bug tracking tool and found iTracker. We've only been using it a couple of days now, but what a difference it has and will make for us.

I think my biggest gripe is the lack of detailed documentation, but that is to be expected with most open-source software. I originally wanted to use a MS SQL Server database as the backend, but quickly discovered I would have to spend a weekend pouring over JBoss installation/configuration documents in order to understand exactly what the limited documentation was asking me to do. (I only have Tomcat experience.)

Thank goodness that iTracker ships with an "Express Install". The Express Install uses HSQL, not sure if that is a JBoss specific persistence mechanism, or another open-source package. Using the Express Install I was up and running in less than an hour. I still need to figure out why the email notification isn't working. It appears to be an SMTP server problem. I contacted my ISP and they gave me the SMTP server info, but email notification is still not working.

I remember seeing some posts at the iTracker forum regarding troubleshooting email notifications. I'll have to do a little research and get it going.

Update - Email notification now working
Since I was running outside of my ISP's network, I had to provide authentication information. After I specified that in the itrackerApplication.properties file I still had problems. The last thing I had to do was provide valid email addresses in itrackerApplication.properties. I had some bogus email address for the from and reply. After changing them to real email addresses, email notifications started working.