Thoughts @ Dotner

The following changes have been deployed in production today.

New Features

• The user can specify a default phase for a task. The information is used when people are making time entries regarding the task.

Bug Fixes

• Extra backslashes were appearing in task and project titles and descriptions when items were edited. This should not happen anymore.
• Removed an ajax related warning message when creating projects or tasks.

The following fixes have been deployed in production today.

• Phase selection added to the time entry dialog.
• Priority and deadline can be left empty when editing project details.

Also, the code should load faster now. If you notice any difference, I’d like to hear about it.

This release was deployed in production on March 10th, 2009.

New Features

• When making time entries, you can specify the phase you are working on, if applicable. The phases can be for example:
  • Plan
  • Implement
  • Test
  • Fix
  • Refactor
  • Document
• Absence requests are shown on the dashboard for admins.

Improved Usability

• Form validation improved.
• Tentative absence is shown in the journal with a dashed border.

Security

• Eliminated XSS (Cross-Site Scripting) possibilities.

This Tracker version will become available for production use during February 2009.

The new features and functionality

• Navigation buttons for journal.
• Time entry creation via my journal is no longer listing the closed tasks.
• You can now comment on tasks and projects.
• Comments are shown in task and project detail page in reverse chronological order.
• Latest 5 comments are shown on the dashboard in reverse chronological order.
• When removing projects, you can now either drag them to the Archive folder like before, or if the project is empty, just delete it.
• The time entry form (the one you get by pressing the clock icon) accepts now the regular “1h 30m” format strings instead of the obscure “1.5″ format.
• Task and project priority mechanism works in a new way.
• Multiple items can have same priority.
• Items are listed in priority order in the sub project contents.
• Project search enables the user to list sub projects and tasks by author, assignee, priority and status.
• Descriptions and comments support the textile markup.

Bug fixes

• Inputing an absence entry without choosing a task gives now an error message.
• IE rendering is at least slightly improved in various views.
• Duplicate entries on active task list are handled gracefully.

Visual and usability improvements

• New login screen.
• Hover tips for image buttons.
• Task links show the project path in the hover tip.
• Tabs for report views for choosing the month and user.
• Rounded corners for tabs and headings on Firefox browsers.
• New soothing button design for task and project detail views.
• User can open the project details, search and comments from behind a tab. This saves space and decreases clutter.

Some earlier features I may not have mentioned much anywhere

• Support for OpenID authentication.
• The user can specify a trusted OpenID URL, which the user can use for logging into the account.
• The administrator can disable this feature for the whole system.
• Support for Yubikey authentication.
• The user can specify which physical Yubikey token the user can use for logging into Tracker.
• When logging in, the user inputs their user ID and triggers a one-time password from the Yubikey token.