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A way to track when a ticket was created with a pre-filled template
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Description

Several team I work with use "URL hacking" to pre-fill tickets, as a sort of template for tickets that often require fields filled or frequently ask for the same type of information. An example:

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It would be useful to track when a ticket was made with a special link like this, to see how often it is happening or to find opportunities to direct people to the links. The easiest way I can think of is to use a yellow tag (such as Technical-Debt ) along the lines of #ticket-from-template (or some more elegant name). Then the pre-filled tickets-by-URL can simply have that tag and automate the addition.

The risk I see is similar to Epic , wherein a ticket is made with Epic and then subtasks are made without removing the Epic from each subtask (each of which is not likely also an Epic ). In such a case, the ticket would be tagged with #ticket-from-template because it is a child of a task with that tag, but it will not have been made from a template because the auto-tag scenario only occurs when creating a ticket as a child, and the special URL would be inherently avoided.

(It would actually be nice to make a rule that excepts certain tags from tickets created by the "Create Subtask" option, and include Epic and this new tag in that rule, but that is another idea altogether, see T220835: Exclude specific tags globally when subtasking directly).

Event Timeline

"URL hacking" seems to be "passing URL parameters". Also note that Forms exist nowadays to pre-fill task descriptions.

to see how often it is happening or to find opportunities to direct people to the links.

Not sure why it would be useful for you to know how often it is happening. How would you use such data?

If I interpret correctly the only way to do this in Phab would be editing all and any such template links to add yet another project tag to the URL parameters, and as mentioned that is error-prone as people do not remove such tags when creating subtasks.

Maybe a better way would be analyzing this on a webserver log level (HTTP referrers etc).
You could also run queries either in the Phab UI or via Phab's Conduit API to find tasks which [do not] include these URL parameters in their descriptions.

IMO throwing random tags onto random things for the sake of having some statistics interesting for a few people (instead of using tags for organizing work) would not be a solution.

"URL hacking" seems to be "passing URL parameters".

Yes. :)

Also note that Forms exist nowadays to pre-fill task descriptions.

Yep, totally. The reason teams I've worked with like the URL approach is that it is quick and doesn't require assistance.

Not sure why it would be useful for you to know how often it is happening. How would you use such data?

Personally, I would this data to determine how and why a team is making tickets, and how to adapt. For example, if I know a team is making a lot of similar tickets, but not using the templates, I might investigate. Maybe they are not aware of the templates, or maybe there is a user-unfriendly thing happening. Similarly, if a team is using the templates but the tickets don't resemble the templates (meaning heavy editing happened) I can leverage that to look into permanent changes to make to the templates.

You could also run queries either in the Phab UI or via Phab's Conduit API to find tasks which [do not] include these URL parameters in their descriptions.

How would I use the Phab UI to do this? Do you mean adding a line at the end of a description such as, "This ticket was made via template" and then searching in Maniphest for that?

The reason teams I've worked with like the URL approach is that it is quick and doesn't require assistance.

Maybe form creation is a bottleneck? If so, that's worth a task IMHO.

How would I use the Phab UI to do this? Do you mean adding a line at the end of a description such as, "This ticket was made via template" and then searching in Maniphest for that?

In my understanding any string could be used that is already existing in some template, combined with setting team members in the "Authors" field on https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/maniphest/query/advanced/

Hmm, it's an idea. I think there would still have to be a stamp of some kind, such as "This ticket was made via template" but assuming Maniphest can handle the searching I think it's viable. :)

I think there would still have to be a stamp of some kind, such as "This ticket was made via template" but assuming Maniphest can handle the searching I think it's viable. :)

You're free to edit existing forms to include such a stamp (however I don't see a reason for that).

I'm going to boldly decline this task as I don't see anything to implement in Phabricator itself.