What strategies do you use to triage incoming issues quickly and effectively?

[Suhebdevtechnosys]

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What’s your process for reviewing, sorting, and prioritizing new GitHub issues efficiently?

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• I have read the above statement and can confirm my post is relevant to the GitHub feature areas Issues and/or Projects.

[sinavm]

Here’s a practical process I use to review, triage, and prioritize GitHub issues efficiently — especially in busy repositories:
1. Triage First, Don’t Deep-Dive Yet
• Quickly scan new issues daily or weekly.
• Close duplicates or invalid reports right away (use “Duplicate of #XYZ” comments).
• Label everything — even if roughly at first (e.g., bug, enhancement, question, needs-info).
2. Use GitHub’s Built-In Filters and Views
• Use Saved Filters like is:issue is:open sort:updated-desc label:bug.
• Create a Project (Beta) board with custom fields for “Priority,” “Severity,” and “Status” — that helps visualize progress.
3. Set Clear Prioritization Rules
• P0 (Critical): Blocks users or production use → fix ASAP.
• P1 (High): Major functionality or UX issues.
• P2 (Normal): Routine improvements or enhancements.
• P3 (Low): Nice-to-have or long-term ideas.
You can track this with labels like priority:0, priority:1, etc.
4. Automate What You Can
• Use GitHub Actions or Probot apps (like stale or labeler) to auto-label, close inactive issues, or remind maintainers to follow up.
• For example, actions/stale can automatically mark inactive issues after 30 days.
5. Review & Groom Regularly
• Hold a short “issue triage” session weekly with your team.
• Revisit old issues: close what’s outdated or merge duplicates.
• Reprioritize based on user impact and frequency.
6. Keep Communication Clear
• Always acknowledge new issues politely (“Thanks for reporting this!”).
• Add follow-up questions if context is missing — this helps others help you too.
• If you close something, explain why (helps build community trust).

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🔧 Bonus Tip

If your repo gets a lot of reports, create issue templates with required fields (steps to reproduce, environment, expected behavior). This reduces noise and makes triaging much faster.

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✅ TL;DR:
Label → Filter → Prioritize → Automate → Review.
A clear triage process keeps your backlog manageable and your contributors happy.

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