Exploratory sessions

A session is time-boxed exploratory testing. Where a bug hunt gives you steps, a session gives you a charter — an area, a goal, a question — and a clock.

Creating one

Sessions → New session.

Field	Notes
Title	What this session is about
Charter	The goals, the scope, or the area under test
Tags	Labels for finding it later
Date	When it is planned for
Planned duration	15 minutes to 8 hours, in quarter-hour steps
Participants	Everyone who may log notes and bugs against it

The title and the planned duration are both editable afterwards from the session's own header — click the name, or the duration beside the clock. Both are guesses made before the session started and are routinely wrong by the time it has ended.

The clock

A session has a real timer, and its status says what the clock is doing:

Status	Meaning	Button offered
Planned	Not begun	Start
In progress	Running	Pause
Paused	Begun, stopped	Resume
Completed	Finished	—
Archived	Set aside	—

The elapsed total is banked whenever the session is paused, so the clock survives a reload, a different device, and somebody else opening the page.

:::caution A started session never goes back to Planned Planned means not yet begun, and once a session has begun that stops being true of it. The status picker drops the option, and the server refuses the write — so an assistant or a script cannot do it either. Restating the current status and unarchiving a session are not that move and both still work. :::

:::note Recently changed This replaced an older model where the resting state was called Draft and pausing dropped the session back to it — the same word an untouched session wore. If your instance still shows Draft and has no Paused, it predates the change. :::

Notes and bugs

While a session runs you log two kinds of entry against it:

• Comments — observations, setup notes, anything worth recording
• Bugs — with a title, severity and status (Open, Resolved, Closed)

Both take rich text and attachments. Files you attach are shown as a strip of thumbnails on the entry; clicking one opens it full size in place rather than over the page, so the note it belongs to stays on screen beside it.

:::info Commenting on a session joins it A session has no owner field — participants stand in for one. So commenting on a session, or reporting a bug in it, adds you to its participants. It is a courtesy on top of an action that already succeeded, and it never fails the action. :::

Filtering the feed

The activity list has the standard toolbar: search, and a filter for whether you want comments, bugs, or both.