FogBugz and SnagIt Mashup

Update #1: I made a short video to show how it works.
Update #2: New version with more options.
Update #3: I posted the source code.
Update #4: Removed ASP-specific URL.
Update #5: Michael Pryor added code to handle logging in to FogBugz and to add a page to the post URL (without the page, the post fails on IIS5).

If you use FogCreek’s FogBugz 4.0 or higher, you probably have the cute little screenshot tool in your system tray . I use it from time to time when a picture highlights a problem better than words. At the same time, I’ve always been a little disappointed with the image editing features.

Sometimes I want to add arrows or highlight an area. When that happens, I take the snapshot with TechSmith’s SnagIt, add circles and arrows, then take a screenshot of the SnagIt screen with the FogBugz widget, crop it to remove the SnagIt window and then post that to FogBugz. Whew!

So the other day I got to wondering how hard it would be to use SnagIt to post directly to FogBugz. I knew TechSmith had documentation on how to use SnagIt as a COM server. So I wrote to FogBugz asking about their “API”. Michael wrote back with some hints and a suggestion to look at screenshop.asp. Although that got me most of the way, I ended up using Fiddler to watch the conversation between FogBugz Screenshot and the FogBugz server. That was all I needed.

This is the end result…

It probably looks rather familar. That’s because I kept most of the features from the original version so that I could use it without re-learning. There are some new features:

• You can set the choices from the context menu of the icon in the System Tray. One advantage of this is that if you pick “Submit As New Case”, and turn off “Show Preview”, then all you have to do is click the shutter button (the icon) and the image is sent directly to FogBugz.
• The actual image capture is done by SnagIt. I’ve added Selected Region to the list of choices, but it could be any of the inputs that SnagIt supports. I will probably add Scrolling Page (which captures an entire web page for example) to the list.
• If you pick Preview in SnagIt, then the image that you capture makes a stop in the SnagIt editor. There you can to all kinds of tricks including adding circles and arrows.
• I added a “Reply to Case” option. This is similar to “Attach to Case” but it starts up the email reply form instead of the edit case form. I’m thinking I may switch from SmarterTicket to FogBugz to tracking support issues and this was a requirement (every day I could use the ability to reply with an image…”Is this what you mean?”).

If you have FogBugz and SnagIt, you are welcome to try this out. It does require .NET 1.1 or higher. I plan on posting the code soon if you want to customize it for yourself.

download: exe | source

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