Archive for the ‘usability’ Category
Teamwork 4.5 released: a major free upgrade
Filed under: issue tracking, news, project management, releases, usability, work management | Tags: kanban tool, teamwork issues, Teamwork 4.5
Comments (1) We are really happy to announce this major release update. As you may guess from the length of this announcement, this update will improve your Teamwork in almost every section, providing more modeling tools and functions. The web browsers’ enhanced capacities (in particular those of Firefox, Safari and Chrome) are used in depth to give users a better experience.
This is a free upgrade for all users of version 4. Get the installer / upgrader here: http://www.twproject.com/download.page
The main features of this release are:
- Issue managing by dragging – “kanban” like.
- History of issue assignee, status and task change (better help desk and issue scaling support).
- Customizable issue statuses.
- Better graph and agile / scrum handling.
- Cross links between tasks / issues / resources / agenda events / meetings / boards.
- In-place popup editors.
- Operator load computation has become much smarter.
- Greatly extended user guide with real case work “mappings” to Teamwork, and a new section on performance optimization.
Layout changes
Several pages that up to now were popup windows are now windows in place, which improves their usability: issue editor, custom forms, workgroup selector.
Several text areas now support internal links (e.g. T#MYCODE#), web links (http://www.twproject.com), smiley’s, absolute URLs to images.
New features
Issues.
Issue statuses – customizable. New issues statuses can be created. There is a page for managing issue statuses (which before version 4.5 were fixed):
And for every status not only its color, but most importantly its business logic behavior is determined from this editor:
Whether it should “behave” when asking user feedback as an open status, as close, whether it should ask for comments and / worklog when entering a status.
So typically if your status is something in which the issue enters at “end of life”, it should be marked “as close” and “ask for worklog” too should be enabled.
Issue change history. When changing a status, task or assignee on an issue, the editor will ask for a reason, and the change will be recorded on the issue. And in fact there is an additional tab on the issue editor, “history”.
Issue organizer “Kanban”. Issues can be now be organized in a completely visual way by dragging and dropping them: filter the issues in which you are interested in, and then select the “organizer” button.
Now you can also enable use of external codes on issues (admin -> default for projects).
Dashboards.
The usability of the “customize this page” function has been improved: all portlets are always visible:
And it’s easier to drag them in the dashboard. Moreover it is easier to access the general page / portlet disposition page: just click “all users”. 
There is a new additional starting page: help desk support.
Operator load and planning. This was the user request:
“refine the operator load showing the effective load taking in consideration worklog done. E.g: 100h estimated on 20 days, done 10h in 10 days the resting 10 day must have a load of 90h not 50h like now”
Also take care of unavailability.
Use the new operator load on plan, load by day, end wherever it is meaningful
Operator load textual: put worklog with totals and pink holydays. Use striped background
Advanced users
- The examples in the distribution and the documentation now cover also “custom wizards”: see section 14.4 Custom wizards of the user guide.
Minor improvements
- More kinds of documents are now full-text indexed; these are the extensions now supported:
“.txt”, “.rtf”, ”.log” “.pdf”. “.htm”, “.html”, “.zip”, “.war”, “.jar”, “.xls”, “.xlsx”, “.xltx”, “.xlsEmb”, “.doc”, “.docx”, “.dotx”, “.docEmb”, “.ppt”, “.pptx”, “mpp”, “mpx”, “.msg”, “.msgEmb”, “.vsd”, “.pub”.
Also custom fields are full-text indexed.
Here are several user requests fulfilled:
- “Add worklog approval monthly screen” -> We will add bulk status change in worklog search / analysis (http://feedback.twproject.com/forums/6995-suggest-features/suggestions/305194-add-worklog-approval-monthly-screen?ref=title).
- Expose issue id in editor and list (http://feedback.twproject.com/forums/6995-suggest-features/suggestions/257395-expose-an-issue-id).
- LDAP authentication cascades to system one (http://feedback.twproject.com/forums/6995-suggest-features/suggestions/265843-login-with-ldap-for-external-users).
- Develop a resource snapshot (http://feedback.twproject.com/forums/6995-suggest-features/suggestions/348397-develop-a-resource-snapshot).
- Sort File Storage Document Listing (http://feedback.twproject.com/forums/6995-suggest-features/suggestions/369822-sort-file-storage-document-listing).
- Make “add document content” in a rich text editor (http://feedback.twproject.com/forums/6995-suggest-features/suggestions/239855-make-add-document-content-in-a-rich-text-editor).
- Please put a link to a task on the agenda event (http://feedback.twproject.com/forums/6995-suggest-features/suggestions/223380-please-put-a-link-to-a-task-on-the-agenda-event): we actually did much more by having full internal links.
- Need to add subscription event for when a new version of a document is uploaded (http://feedback.twproject.com/forums/6995-suggest-features/suggestions/624803-need-to-add-subscription-event-for-when-a-new-vers).
- Display agenda items in planByResource like in worklogWeek (http://feedback.twproject.com/forums/6995-suggest-features/suggestions/142356-display-agenda-items-in-planbyresource-like-in-wor).
- Search for specific custom fields.
- You can have a customized help message in the “help” page, just add in the labels CUSTOMIZED_HELP_CONTACT (http://feedback.twproject.com/forums/6995-suggest-features/suggestions/599247-add-a-customizable-area-on-the-help-page-so-local-)
- Notes on issues are on the main tab and self-resize.
- Issue assignee selector got simplified.
- Now you can create subtasks as sub-fluxes.
- Counters can now be reset and deleted.
- When changing a task on an issue, notify the new assignees.
- Since version 4.5 custom fields support also “typing” of data. E.g. “cost,20,java.lang.Double” will add a custom field of length 20 and type “double” (a floating point number).
- Holiday settings: now you have year-specific settings.
- In issue list you can now filter by task type.
- Resource print includes my assignments.
Bug fixes
- Check why in the assignment notification we add a link to the task even if the resource has not the rights to read task … .
- Meetings are not full-indexed.
- Index custom forms data.
- Create issue from task editor menu does not launch creation nor filters???
- Issue multi edit: bulk change gravity do not close actions clicking “close”.
- Fixed MIME for teamworkMenuPlusCss.jsp,
- Issue cloning did not raise events,
- Fixed various combo positions in bulk update screens in case of scroll.
- Summa is not saved on document link and file storage on tasks and resources.
- A fix for Oracle on Resources with no surname.
- An operator may change his own password even if cookies are enabled.
- Do not notify disabled users.
Technical points
- In order to optimize memory usage,
If you log as administrator and go to the label management section, open the “label rules” container (it is closed by default), and say if you want to have only English as language, type EN in the enabled languages field and select SAVE.
- Teamwork 4.5 is no more on quirks mode – we dropped support for Internet Explorer 6 – and pages are in HTML 5
Important for upgrades. Several JARS have been updated, added and removed. If they are present these JARs should be deleted by hand from WEB-INF/lib:
o commons-collections-2.1.1.jar
o commons-logging-1.0.4.jar
o poi-3.0.1-FINAL-20070705.jar
o jcaptcha-all-1.0-RC3.jar
- Added -server configuration to the Java JVM distributed.
- If using HsqlDB you can make a dump of the current log by hand from system check instead of having to wait Teamwork restart:
Notes for updating to 4.5:
Any custom filter on issues will need to be redone as the issue statuses are a lookup field.
Unfortunately all document list attached to discussion points of meetings will be reset.
P.S. We’re building the beta of a new online service – called Licorize – a cocktail of Delicious bookmarking and light to-do management. If you’d like to beta-test it, just send an e-mail to info@twproject.com with “Licorize” in the subject or body – we will soon give you access and also a year of free usage to your entire group.
Doing better than the usual project management software?
Filed under: IT integration, project management, usability, work management | Tags: personal productivity software
Comments (3) 
How can we improve Teamwork, and more in general, how can we help people and teams manage their work better and better?
Teamwork today is a stable, well known and widely used application – its sales getting better every month. We are always improving it and searching for new ways to make it better. The feedback given by users through the feedback service and the answers Q&A gives us a lot of ideas.
But people’s way of work change evolve all the time. With software we should try to foresee changes, and in the case of structuring work, be compatible with new ways of working. Now, project and work management is a field where there is a lot of competing software, and new solutions are created quite often. So in the last weeks I checked competitors for new ideas and evolution that would cover the recent trends in ways of working, like for example having the browser as the “operating system” where more and more applications operate, and so in many organizations a considerable amount of activity is on applications in the browser. Yes, of course Teamwork is web based, but one can do much more than that today. New ways of working need new ideas, sometimes radically new ones. Is anyone proposing different models, or reacting to new working ways?
Well, to my surprise, no. The same mistakes are simply repeated, again and again, like trying to “trap” user communication flows and other user usages in the project / work management software; development is done under wrong beliefs like “using e-mail is wrong, and users should be ‘educated’ to centralized communication systems”. Such tasks are destined to fail: it is simply assumed that users will happily and daily spend a considerable and growing amount of time on your specialized project / work management application because of their stakanovistic dedication to organization, which is the opposite of what is happening: people use more and more different, specialized applications for their tasks, and dislike and refuse single, centralized “monster apps” which attempt to replace all others.
In my review of “solutions” I’ve even seen a specific content manager connected to a popular issue tracking system that offers users a blogging platform. Now, how likely is that? How happy will employees be of being forced to blog in that corner of the bizarre issue tracking software instead of using their preferred blogging platform? This kind of ideas just don’t make sense: you have to improve work management without directly impacting software usage, and without trying to replace high quality specialized solutions with centralized (low quality) ones.
We have learned a minimalistic, relational approach and deposited it in Teamwork years ago. Now what about going beyond that? Well, no concept evolution is happening in direct competitors.
So in my search, I ended looking at personal productivity software, after seeing this nice presentation by Scott Hanselman, and there indeed there are some original ideas; consider for example Evernote ©.
The high level of interactivity, openness to devices and compatibility with user habits of this application is striking. The aim of Evernote seems not as much managing work, as simply collecting notes for personal usage. But there is a lot of stuff to look and learn. And many users will start work management from a personal perspective, and then will try to propose it as a shared approach: I believe this is a path that currently lacks appropriate tool support. There is a divide between project / work management tools and personal productivity ones that should not be there. On one side project / work management tools still pursue the centralized application option, on the other the sharing features of personal productivity tools are weak.
So we decided to open an experimental platform where to try and test different approaches to managing work, in particular starting from the personal / to-do point of view. In the meantime, Teamwork will keep evolving and improving, eventually getting new features and improvements from this experimental platform. We will blog about our experiments here in the coming months. If you any suggestion to make, post it on the feedback service: thanks!
P.S. Teamwork release 4.4 should be out in a couple of weeks (a free upgrade to all users of version 4), and will introduce the notion of “public” project – keep in touch.
Open Lab and Teamwork are not associated with Evernote in any form.
Teamwork release 4.3 available for download
Filed under: IT integration, issue tracking, news, project management, releases, time recording, work logging, usability | Tags: multi Gantt
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Teamwork 4.3 multi-Gantt view.
A free upgrade release for all users of version 4.0-4.2, this release includes some major extensions of functionality; while there is no “revolution”, this kind of release makes your “Teamwork life” more comfortable. Several features requests from the feedback service have been fulfilled. Also the user guide has been updated.
Download this release here.
Multi-Gantt support
This was motivated by this request: “Manage graphical Gantt-type overview of all projects”. We then realized that all it needed was the filtering power of projects search together with a Gantt style visualization. So this is what we’ve done: we added an additioanl visualization of the search results. So for example you can see all your root open project closing in 2 weeks in a Gantt style view.
Also all the Gantt scales have been extended to 5 years.
Import from CSV – Bugzilla
Import of issues and resources from CSV files: issues get imported from the Bugzilla CSV export format, but of course in this way you can import from anything.
Collapsible project trees
Projects trees can be collapsed and there are options to keep them open by default etc. . This was this request; thanks to Halil for the first implementation.
More Twitter integrations
Twitter integration with any action and there is a new portlet for filtering tweets on any topic: see the user guide, section 8.3.3.
Little improvements
- All notifications have in the subject the task they refer to, if it exists (this request).
- Display log on descendants (this request).
- Balloons have no more the confusing Roman number.
- Use darker gray on Gantt duration background – better prints.
- Search analysis worklog: make the field “action” larger.
- In resource list there is no more the bothering default filter by company.
- Snapshot of a task can be edited.
- Search analysis worklog: make the column “action” larger.
- Issue multi editor: if there is a task on the issue and you have an assignment on it, let the watch icon appear even if the issue is not assigned to you.
- Experimental: supporting SSL over LDAP (LDAPS)
Bug fixes
- Issues didn’t get indexed any more for full text search.
- Order in company news doesn’t work.
- Portlet news doesn’t show news ordered by order factor.
- Resource hourly cost sometimes gets set to zero.
- Meeting: drag&drop multi editor doesn’t work for the just inserted.
- The link to resource drawn by the smart combo if the resource is from another area on which you have no right you see the link but you get an error.
- Search of a string containing ” in issues looped the application.
- Sometimes the rollover menu opened in the wrong direction.
- If you change the allowed file storage roots, disable links to old locations.
Technical notes for upgrade
This release build is 11250; it contains no database schema changes for all users of 4.2.10080 and following. As it contains an issue full-text indexing fix, you should reindex your data: see 17.4 of the user guide.
| try darker gray on gantt duration background |
Notes on usability, game mechanics, and Teamwork’s evolution
Introduction
The work documented in this post was ignited by receiving the first video tests from usertesting.com and other sources (by the way, Usertesting supplied valuable feedback for a very cheap price), and about at the same time watching a video where Amy Jo Kim from Shufflebrain does a great and inspiring presentation showing how some game mechanics are used by successful social software.
Motivation
Teamwork 4 was realized after studying several texts on usability, and even inventing new techniques, see for example
Smarter search and recent object functionality
Managing with lists vs. managing with trees
But our internal speculations lacked the ideas that may come from an independent fresh look; we received a lot of positive feedback from new users of Teamwork 4, but the problem is that those that do not understand your software, don’t usually give you feedback. So we submitted Teamwork 4.1 to several testers that were first-time users. Then, looking at the testers’ video, these were full of surprises, and quite… painful to watch! Poor users!
Putting together feedback of the testers and the idea of the prime importance of positive feedback from the software, in particular in early usage phases, we designed a new release of Teamwork which we hope should be friendlier for both the first starter and the daily user. Here we document some of the differences. I hope that being this a concrete example of usability evolution, it can be of some interest for those who are working on web application usability in general.
The criteria which we used for evolution of the interface have been inspired also by Amy Jo Kim’s work from Shufflebrain who in this presentation shows how some game mechanics are used by successful social software, and this may inspire in general who is designing any kind of application:
Putting the Fun in Functional: Applying Game Mechanics to Functional Software
This is filled with interesting ideas and observations; to me what results more interesting is not so much the extrapolation of the specifics of game mechanics, but looking at ways to involve with feedback the user in its first steps in your application, and then guide the evolution of it. It is clear from the speech and Q&A part of the video that she has a wide usage and behavior culture which is only partly expressed there.
Limits of game techniques
Looking at human beings as reacting to behavioral stimuli is taking an extremely partial view, which has little explanational mileage, but not zero.
It is true that games tap in primal response patterns; but that is also their limit, at least for games that use proximal metaphors (body movements) and not reasoning, collecting, quantifying. Collecting and quantifying means inserting strings and numbers; something at which Mario Bros. like interfaces are vary very bad at; like using the iPhone keyboard for a lot of data input. But collecting and quantifying is what is most important for a huge number of applications, and where the proximal metaphors simply won’t help.
In playing games, often the player is happy to use “low level” skills; in planning work, not so much. That is also why simple stimulus – response – reinforce metaphors can be effective in gaming, advertising, but not elsewhere; we are not (fortunately) always that stupid. It is surely false that the most powerful way to manipulate human behavior is to do a variable response schedule: a good argument to a responsive crowd can do better than any behavioral proximal stimulus. But that would take us far, on the failures of behaviorism (this is old stuff from the 50′s). Still, when the users of any software are in their first steps, the response patterns of the application matter a lot.
On the Business of software discussion group I’ve recently seen a discussion on a tool for visually collecting bookmarks. The developers chose to develop a desktop client before developing a browser plugin (!); this to me is a clear mistake in adoption path strategy, which does not consider the critical point of lowering the adoption path as much as possible for such a secondary tool. Seeing collecting bookmarks as a “game played in the browser”, makes it immediately that the separate client idea is disastrous!
My point of this section is just that the gaming metaphors can help, but in limited forms and cases.
Examples
The task given to the testers was this:
- enroll to demo
- create a project
- assign yourself to it
- create a resource
- assign it to the project
- create a child task
- create some issues
- register some worklog
- search for a task
- create a to-do
Going through this, they met some difficulties, which we tried to overcome, and we document all this in this PDF:
TeamworkUsabilityExamples
(1.5 MB – lots of screen shots).
Some ideas in the PDF can be generalized; additional “behavioral reinforcement” tricks which we put in place:
- Whatever first tests the user does, he makes a % increment
- the “user score” (which was already there) has been structured in “badges” (which in our case are balloons of different color)
- operators are associated to a “color”: so say sticky notes coming from them are immediately distinguishable
Progress feedback always increasing.
Score generates balloon "badges"
Users are associated with a color.
N.B. The changes to which we refer are not released yet (May 13th, 2009); the demo and the downloadable version are those before changes, the new release (Teamwork 4.2) will be available in a couple of weeks.
Additional references
The World’s Largest MMORPG: You’re Playing it Right Now
How (not) to evaluate project management software
Filed under: project management, usability, work management | Tags: evaluating project management software
Comments (5) 
Evaluating Project Management software is a delicate matter, as it potentially involves changing deeply rooted companies’ habits; in general, this holds for all work management software. Being the subjects of such scrutiny, we experience that most companies fortunately take the right way right from the start, which is, trying the software, inserting in it some real project and people data, and seeing whether it works. In the case of Teamwork, this can be done quickly, and there is both a demo online and an easily installable version, and considerable support readily available online to all.
But unfortunately not all companies take this “hands on” approach: some take the path of putting together list of requirements, and instead of testing the software against those, ask the software producers “whether their software meets these requirements”.
Now imagine that this was the way you chose to buy a house: you went to the seller, with a list of features, and you never go to actually see the house. You buy it because the seller tells you that the house fills your requirements. Nobody would do anything so foolish, no?
Putting together requirements and testing the software against them is actually a good idea, if handled properly: testing will at times show that the requirements are contradictory, or need refinement, and that the software models problems actually better than how imagined in the requirements. This is not surprising, as widely used software includes a lot of experience in management, often more than the users have. So the initial requirements should be only a first indication, and not something that is the main criteria for the final choice, which should be led by the usability and coverage or real problems offered by the software at hand.
Unfortunately there are producers of PM software and consultants that encourage users along the foolish path: they give formal answers to formal requirements, do demos themselves instead of letting the customers do that, make phone calls to facilitate over-priced sales, and all the usual bad practices.
Well, we don’t do that. We concentrate all our energies in developing a better product, and in producing publicly accessible documentation; we want customers to have software that really works and is usable, not just to close formal deals.
One can make software that satisfies long lists of requirements, but is totally unusable, will be hated by users, and will lead to user rejection, and hence to a huge waste of company’s money and people time. We really hope never to take that path.
Silvia Chelazzi - Pietro Polsinelli
