Archive for February, 2010|Monthly archive page
Download Teamwork ready and running in a VMware
Not all companies have Java expert IT admins. And even if they have, most companies don’t have time to spend in installing evaluation software. Well, a simple solution is to use online demos. But in the case of Teamwork, this can mean limiting the evaluation, as many IT-integration tasks cannot be carried through using the online demo, and also all the administrative tasks are disabled in the demo case.
In order to simplify evaluation and deployment, we have prepared a complete Vmware image – for both 64bit and 32bit servers – which you can download and use as Teamwork server. It runs a Debian operating system with Apache Tomcat and includes a pre-configured PostgreSQL instance.
In order to use Teamwork, you just have to launch the VM and point the browsers to it – no config needed. The only configuration step we suggest to do as soon as your image is running is inserting the free 30 days demo license.
The VM’s download and instructions page is here.
Teamwork release 4.4.15100
This is a minor release which includes some bug fixes.
The most important ones are:
- fixed bug in the issues import from csv
- fixed bug in the new public page – no event created on issues added and no worklog details shown
- fixed bug on import projects form Basecamp
You can download this release here;
This release does not include schema changes.
Teamwork 4.4.0 available: public pages for tasks
Filed under: news, releases | Tags: sharing project data, teamwork public projects
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Teamwork 4.4.0 is released: download it here.
We often get requests from customers and evaluators to give access to some Teamwork data to someone who does not log in Teamwork; data like status, progress and open issues on a project . Before this release, to do this you had two options:
1. set the customer as an assignee and give them access to Teamwork with limited rights (which from a Project Management perspective is formally the right choice), or
2. you exported the project data in say a PDF and sent it to the customer
Both choices have their disadvantages: the first one, that you are giving access to a system of which the customer does not know anything about, and the second one is that you have to do the procedure by hand.
Hence in this release (4.4.0) we added a third option:
3. public project pages: for any project / task, a public page can be enabled which will be exposed at Teamwork’s address, will not require login, and will present selected information. It is a way to automate distribution of information always updated from Teamwork to people that do not access it.
The pages will be available at URL of the form
[http://your teamwork address]/project/[task id]
When enabling such pages, there are several options available; most are self explanatory, like “show issues” or “show costs”, but these two need some clarification:
- “enable add proposal”: if you enable this option, visitors to the page will be able to propose issues / features on such task: the proposal will be saved as an open, unassigned issue on the task.
- “ask key to access the page”: access to the page will be protected by a key which you define and will be requested on access.
In the picture above an example resulting page.
Another nice feature is the introduction of custom types on issues (six fields like in tasks) and the refinement of those on tasks, that now support dimensioning. Full details are in the user guide, section 5.8.
Other new features
• added custom prefix for Teamwork notification by e-mail
• issue list export in Excel now exports also estimated duration, so you can esteem the load of any group of issues
• new custom field management with filed size
• added notification on change assignee on issue
• check on issue editor remove tab notes as button submit
• created a new line in notes when the issue change assignee
• nicer browser history
• older hits get removed from database
• tested file storage with Drop Box works just fine
• automated worklog entry question also for issues going from test to closed
• updated Twitter import with latest Twitter4J API
Bugs
• bug on first access with cookies in page size
• fixed bug on priority color in portlet “My assignments” (wp_myAssignment.jsp)
• check on issue editor remove tab notes as button submit
• fixed bug on cookies
• fixed bug on work load
• fixed bug on bulk issue move operations of required fields
• fixed bug on issue list drag and drop
• false JS error message “element not…”
Update
The schema update will add six columns on issues (twk_issues) for the custom fields and the distributed web xml will add a filter for the public task pages.
Teamwork’s philosophy: a short story
Filed under: project management, work management | Tags: teamwork software
Comments (2) 
There were once two brothers and a sister, and they were managers at three companies.
The first brother was called Micro Manager, and he picked the most complex and integrated management tools, which were entrenched in the technical staff IDEs and into all their network activity, so that not a single line of code could be written without it being carefully logged. Not an hour could pass without justifying time spent; not a file could be opened without explaining why. Not a project could be created without designing a 100 leafed Gantt. And after a week everybody hated the system, and then they hated Micro Manager, and everybody was unhappy.
The second brother was called Over Simplify, and he didn’t want any kind of management apart from to-do lists. And everybody just had to-do lists, and for the first week everybody was happy. Then many started having long to-do lists, and some started worshipping them, and instead of working, they were compiling longer and longer personal to-do list. And every list was different from any other, and nobody knew what, when, how, and why, and everything was in a mess. And then they hated Over Simplify, and everybody was unhappy.
Their sister was called Reasonable Modesty, and she had minimal goals, had always clear that what matters is how people work and interact, and that software is always secondary, and should be flexible, not do too much, and not get in the way. She started evaluating Teamwork.
