As an improvement to In-Portal infrastructure we're working on changing it's issue tracker from Mantis into Jira.
One (among other) things I've noticed useful in Jira is helpers. They are wizards, that help user to determine why something doesn't work as expected.
Here are wizards, that can be developed for In-Portal using ideas from Jira:
Permission helper
Administrator enters "username" and "tree section" and clicks on "Inspect" button. Then diagnostics information is displayed:
- has permission
-
doesn't have permission and possible solutions (e.g. add user to a group, that has that permission)
Field helper
Determines, why given user can't see a field on a form.
Hook helper
Determines, why given hook event is not being executed.
General idea is to scan workflow and look a bit outside of it to easily tell developer what is wrong and how this can be solved.