This section provides answers to some of the most Frequently Asked Questions by our prospective
customers. The FAQs are grouped in several categories to make finding the answers easier:
What makes
SpiraPlan
better than other Agile Project Management systems?
SpiraPlan
has all the features you would expect in a world-class Agile Project Estimation,
Planning and Management suite yet is only a fraction of the price of our competitors.
You just won't find a more feature-rich Agile PM suite at anywhere near the price
of
SpiraPlan.
What makes
SpiraPlan
better than other Bug/Issue Tracking tools?
SpiraPlan
provides all the features you'd expect for detecting and tracking bugs/issues, yet
for the same price as many standalone bug/issue tracking systems you also get the
tools to manage your project requirements/scope, project estimation and planning.
How many times have you wished you could determine which bugs affect the most important
requirements, or been able to demonstrate that fixing X bugs will impact the existing
project plan and result in Y development tasks getting rescheduled to the next iteration.
With
SpiraPlan
you can now manage projects with this level of rigor, using just one integrated
application.
What makes
SpiraPlan
better than other Planning and Collaboration tools?
SpiraPlan
provides all the features you'd expect for creating, managing and executing project
plans and tasks yet for the same price as many standalone collaboration systems
you also get the tools to manage your project requirements/scope, track the defects
discovered during the project lifecycle and have a central document repository of
all project artifacts.
How many times have you wished you could prove to a customer that all the requirements
have been fully completed, that all bugs have been fixed. With
SpiraPlan
you can now manage projects with this level of rigor, using just one integrated
application.
Do you have a guarantee? What if I'm not happy
with
SpiraPlan?
We are so confident that you will be fully satisfied with our software that we offer
an unconditional, 30-day money back guarantee!
Can I take a trial of SpiraPlan to see how it works before purchasing?
Absolutely, you can sign up for a 30-day free trial, which enables you to try out all of the features of
SpiraPlan on either our SaaS environment or on your own servers. No credit card or payment needed, and you
get all the features of the full system. Best of all, if you like SpiraPlan, you can switch to production and keep all
your trial data. So, lets get started!
What is the difference between Spira Edition and Spira Version?
The editions control what level of artifacts, grouping, and additional functionality are available. Spira comes in three editions. These are:
- SpiraTest
- SpiraTeam
- SpiraPlan
The versions control functionality that is released or updated in the Spira editions as part of the
SpiraPlan roadmap.
For example, a version would be version 7.4 vs. version 7.3.
Purchasing Questions
Can I pay for the software using a purchase
order?
Yes. We gladly accept purchase orders. Please contact us at
sales@inflectra.com for more information.
Do you offer a discount for Government, Non-Profit,
and Academic Institutions?
Yes. We offer a 20% discount off our already low price for non-profit, Government
and academic institutions. Please contact us at
sales@inflectra.com for more information.
Can I pay for the software using a wire transfer
or ACH payment?
Yes. We gladly accept wire transfers and ACH payments. Please contact us at
sales@inflectra.com for more information.
How will I access my instance of
SpiraPlan?
Once your purchase has been confirmed you will be logged into the secure customer
area of the website. For on-premise customers, this will contain the link to download the software as well
as the license key for the version you purchased. For cloud customers, this will contain the URL for your
dedicated instance of SpiraPlan, as well as any add-ons you have purchased for your subscription.
What is the price to upgrade from one edition
of
SpiraPlan
to a higher edition?
The price to upgrade from one edition to a higher edition (e.g. from the 10-user
to the 20-user edition) is just the incremental difference in price between the
two editions.
Please contact us at
sales@inflectra.com for more information.
Getting Started Questions
Should I setup my SpiraPlan users or products first?
There is no preference. They can be done in parallel. What is important is that both the products and user setup are followed by
product membership and role setup
so that people can start working on the projects.
What are the different ways to set up users?
There are four ways to set up users. All these are based on the level of controlled access an organization plans to have. These involve the following:
- Users sign up themselves. The benefit is that the administrator need not know the password. Any such user signed up should be approved in Spira by the administrator.
- Users are added natively. The administrator can set up these users themselves and enforce organizational IT policies such as the password and MFA.
- Users are signed up with OAuth providers: Users can sign up themselves by using one of the OAuth providers (like Google or OKTA Authentication). The administrator should set up the OAuth authentication.
- Users are imported en-massse from Active Directory (using LDAP protocol). The benefit is that the organizational controls from AD are extended as part of the SSO.
What is the purpose behind a SpiraPlan template?
When products are created,
they have some properties. These include types of artifact, priority, importance, severity, workflow, notifications, custom properties, etc.
A business may want to have products/projects that have the same characteristics and avoid duplication of effort or potential misses among projects without a common way to standardize these properties.
That common mechanism to standardize project properties is the template.
What version or Spira edition is required for SpiraApps? SpiraApps are not connected with a specific edition but has limitations based on theedition.
So, the better question would be what SpiraApps is relevant to various Spira editions.
Since the Spira editions support certain artifacts, the specific SpiraApps is relevant based on the Spira edition.
For instance, the FMEA SpiraApps uses the risk management module relevant only in SpiraPlan. Similarly, the Task and Test presets SpiraApps works with both Tasks and Tests. The task portion is relevant only for SpiraTeam and SpiraPlan but the Tests portion is relevant for all Spira editions.
How to Import Data into SpiraPlan from Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets?
SpiraPlan comes with a free utility to import tabular data (e.g. CSV or TSV exports) into the system.
To make it easier, SpiraPlan provides add-ins for both
Microsoft Excel
and
Google Sheets
that allow you paste in your data and import in just a few steps.
How to Import Data into SpiraPlan from Microsoft Word?
SpiraPlan comes with a free utility to import requirement and test case Microsoft Word documents into the system.
The importers can handle different document styles, images, tables and bullets/lists.
To make it easier, SpiraPlan provides add-ins for both
Microsoft Word 365
and
Microsoft Word 2016 or earlier.
Does SpiraPlan have an Application Programming Interface (API)?
Yes, SpiraPlan comes with a robust, fully-versioned REST and SOAP API that contains built-in documentation and sample
code for the different API calls. When we release a new version of SpiraPlan we make sure the older version APIs
maintain backwards compatibility. This significantly reduces your Total Cost of Ownership (TCO).
Technical & Support
Where can I find information about SpiraPlan release notes or product roadmap?
Inflectra publishes the SpiraPlan product roadmap and release notes at
https://spiradoc.inflectra.com/About/roadmap/
Where can I get information on the tables available for custom reporting?
These are available in SpiraPlan documentation available from within the product as well as outside of the product.
Please refer to https://spiradoc.inflectra.com/Reporting/Custom-Report-Tables/
What is XSLT and why is it required for Custom Reporting?
Custom Reporting is a niche field that requires a good understanding of extensible stylesheet language (XSLT) that transforms extended markup
language (XML) required with a lot of data elements in SpiraPlan. The XSLT converts the data in XML to Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML)
so that these reports can be rendered in the browser or exported into one of the other formats like Portable Data Format (PDF) or
Microsoft Word or Microsoft Excel.
To ensure your satisfaction, we provide product support free with every subscription purchase, which guarantees
you unlimited access to our knowledge base, customer forums and helpdesk.
Review our support policy.