Google offers the Firebase suite of application development tools, available free or at cost for higher degree of usages, priced flexibly accorded to features needed. The suite includes A/B testing and Crashlytics, Cloud Messaging (FCM) and in-app messaging, cloud storage and NoSQL storage (Cloud Firestore and Firestore Realtime Database), and other features supporting developers with flexible mobile application development.
Buzilla is easy to use and provides basic functionality to use as a bug tracking tool. If big size attachments are allowed it would have been great. Also with Bugzilla home->Test management area is improved by allowing multiple sections it would be awesome!
Firebase should be your first choice if your platform is mobile first. Firebase's mobile platform support for client-side applications is second to none, and I cannot think of a comparable cross-platform toolkit. Firebase also integrates well with your server-side solution, meaning that you can plug Firebase into your existing app architecture with minimal effort.
Firebase lags behind on the desktop, however. Although macOS support is rapidly catching up, full Windows support is a glaring omission for most Firebase features. This means that if your platform targets Windows, you will need to implement the client functionality manually using Firebase's web APIs and wrappers, or look for another solution.
Open source! No license fee involved, no limit to the number of licenses.
Easy to install and maintain. Installation is very easy and hardly needs any maintenance efforts, except when migrating from one version to other. Each project can have its own group of users.
Includes all the core features/fields that are needed to log a software bug/issue.
Multiple attachments are possible, supports various formats.
Good for reporting. Filtering mechanism lets you query bugs by various parameters.
Analytics wise, retention is extremely important to our app, therefore we take advantage of the cohort analysis to see the impact of our middle funnel (retargeting, push, email) efforts affect the percent of users that come back into the app. Firebase allows us to easily segment these this data and look at a running average based on certain dates.
When it comes to any mobile app, a deep linking strategy is essential to any apps success. With Firebase's Dynamic Links, we are able to share dynamic links (recognize user device) that are able to redirect to in-app content. These deep links allow users to share other deep-linked content with friends, that also have link preview assets.
Firebase allows users to effectively track events, funnels, and MAUs. With this simple event tracking feature, users can put organize these events into funnels of their main user flows (e.g., checkout flows, onboarding flows, etc.), and subsequently be able to understand where the drop-off is in the funnel and then prioritize areas of the funnel to fix. Also, MAU is important to be able to tell if you are bringing in new users and what's the active volume for each platform (Android, iOS).
Cloud Based. I'd like to see bugzilla be cloud based. The company I currently work with made a final decision to change db's for this specific reason. Due to the frequency of travel in this company, they need access to bugzilla from differing national / international locations.
Larger File Attachments. I believe the limit of a bugzilla content upload is 4 megabytes. For many of our video'd issues, this file size is simply impractical without the additional effort exertion on video compressor applications.
Attribution and specifically multi-touch attribution could be more robust such as Branch or Appsflyer but understand this isn't Firebases bread and butter.
More parameters. Firebase allows you to track tons of events (believe it's up to 50 or so) but the parameters of the events it only allows you to track 5 which is so messily and unbelievable. So you're able to get good high-level data but if you want to get granular with the events and actions are taken on your app to get real data insight you either have to go with a paid data analytics platform or bring on someone that's an expert in SQL to go through Big Query.
City-specific data instead of just country-specific data would have been a huge plus as well.
For future projects I will look at something that is hosted in the cloud that I don't have to manage. I would also like something that has a more modern feel to allow my customers to use it as well as my employees.
This is a pretty straightforward system. You put in the bug details, a ticket is created, the team is notified. The user interface reflects this very simple and straightforward flow. It's certainly much easier than trying to track bugs with using Excel and email.
I don't use the Firebase UI much, but rather connect it to GA4. GA4 has a great event model but the GA4 UI and analysis capabilities are limited. It's harder to measure product usage type of engagement but if you have the time and resources to leverage the GA4 to BiqQuery export you'll have all the raw event data you'll need for deep analysis, segmentation, and audience activation.
Since it is open source, it doesn't have customer service. However, the amount of information on forums is vast. If you can wade through it, you'll get what you need
Our analytics folks handled the majority of the communication when it came to customer service, but as far as I was aware, the support we got was pretty good. When we had an issue, we were able to reach out and get support in a timely fashion. Firebase was easy to reach and reasonably available to assist when needed.
Implementation was pretty simple. Particularly because the product cannot be customized so there is not much to do apart from getting it up and running.
We migrated away from the whole suite of Rational tools because of their massive complexity around administration and inflexibility regarding workflows. In addition, the suite was insanely expensive, and users hated the usability of the tools. We evaluated, and liked JIRA, but because the organization was looking for cost savings, we ended up going with Bugzilla and it's FOSS model so as to avoid ongoing costs.
Before using Firebase, we exclusively used self hosted database services. Using Firebase has allowed us to reduce reliance on single points of failure and systems that are difficult to scale. Additionally, Firebase is much easier to set up and use than any sort of self hosted database. This simplicity has allowed us to try features that we might not have based on the amount of work they required in the past.
It has made the SDLC process more efficient. Bugs were logged and tracked in emails or in Excel sheets leading to slow communication and at time version issues with multiple files. Being an online tool, Bugzilla solved those issues, improved communication, instant status updates and improved efficiency.
We have used Bugzilla with a lot of federal goverment agencies (DHS, CMS, SAMHSA, CDC, HHS etc). Project Directors adn Principle Investigators were at times given access to Bugzilla which provided a snapshot of open vs closed issues.
Some groups would resist using Bugzilla with the email reminders being the main reason. Turning off or reminding them of features where we can 'control' email notification helped a lot.
Makes building real-time interfaces easy to do at scale with no backend involvement.
Very low pricing for small companies and green-fields projects.
Lack of support for more complicated queries needs to be managed by users and often forces strange architecture choices for data to enable it to be easily accessed.
