Why should this not be possible to do combined? If I'm not mistaken the major difference you describe is the "visual" separation of Tender being the public interface and Lighthouse the internal private one. However (from my understanding) this could easily be done with just one database table and an additional "issue type" flag. If for a given issue the flag's set to "bug report", then it shows up in the internal bug tracking system. If however the flag happens to be set to "feature request/user question", then it simply shows up in the public interface. And connecting two database entries (like when connecting between Lighthouse and Tender) is fairly straight forward with a single database, too (if not much simpler). Also if a user posted a feature request which turned out to actually be a bug, then it's just the switch of a single flag to turn it into its proper issue type, while with separate systems it would probably require much more (transfer and synchronization) work to do so.
The thing of having two distinctively different "views" (as as such also probably different "controllers") for handling "bug reports" and "user support" is kinda obvious, no doubt about that. Different "views" are _just_ a matter of filters and visual representation, while the internal logic wouldn't have to differ much at all. I'm wondering however why there appears to be a need (or tendency) for separate "models" of (probably naïvely thinking) the same structure. As from my understanding separate systems would result in a lot of code and structure redundancy (of which most could be solved by shared codebases, but not all!) and coding and maintenance overhead, there just has to be some serious advantage, making it worth the effort, I think. One advantage of separate "issue tracker" products obviously is the chance to bill your users twice, no doubt about that. But I can't believe this being the only reason. So obviously I'm asking more from an implementation standpoint than from the opint o a user. But I thought user experiences might actually give some insight on the benefits of each implementation, so I asked anyway ;) --- In [email protected], Scott Morrison <sm...@...> wrote: > > Hi Vincent > > I am using Lighthouse with Tender and I really like having the two separate > systems -- Tender as the discussions with the end user -- we can use this to > ascertain the problems -- many issues are not bugs but just general support > issues -- I have one person that whose job is basically to work with the end > user to figure out what the problem is and to communicate. > > And Lighthouse as the internal system for my coders to work with -- they only > get the issues that are actually bugs, we can easily keep track of bugs in > this system that we discover internally, set up work orders -- etc. > > The nice thing about Tender + Lighthouse is how they talk to one another -- > so that I can easily associate a specific bug with multiple user discussions, > and also break a user discussion into multiple bugs. It then allows me to > back track from resolution of a bug to beable to communicate to multiple > users having a problem. > > If it is one monolithic system, this isn't as easy to do. > > My 2 cents
