Version 3.2.4 Released

Posted by Bill on September 20th, 2008

We're pleased to announce the release of v3.2.4 which introduces the ability to assign bugs through the same easy drag-and-drop interface used for setting priorities and severities. If you need to reassign workload due to an emerging situation, an employee departure or to balance responsibilities, you can quickly see what the current workload is and easily "trim the sails".

Assign bugs by dragging and dropping the bug to the new assignee.

You may see the new functionality in our online demonstrations or download your own evaluation copy.

Version 3.2.3 Released

Posted by Bill on August 17th, 2008

We're pleased to announce version 3.2.3 which includes four new portlets:

Counts by Priority
Counts By Priority Portlet

The Counts By Priority portlet differs from the Top 5 Priorities by reporting on all priorities, not just the top five.
Counts by Severity
Counts By Severity Portlet

The Counts By Severity portlet provides a table of the number of bugs by severity for each product.
Counts by Status
Counts By Status

The Counts By Status portlet provides a table of the number of bugs by status for each product.
Side By Side Comparison
Side By Side Comparison

The attributes of any two bugs can be compared to one another with the differences appearing in red on the right.

The online demonstrations have been updated as have the downloads.

Version 3.2.2 Released

Posted by Bill on August 8th, 2008

Version 3.2.2 of the Bugs Dashboard is now available for evaluation and licensing! We are very pleased to bring printing and individual refresh capabilities to each of the portlets with this release. Demonstrations of its capabilities can be seen at Bugs Dashboard.

This update includes the following:

Changed the default name for the "Bugs" menu to "Reports"
Changed the menus from splitting Set Priorities and Set Severities to a tab named "Manage Bugs" with sub-menus for setting priorities and severities
Changed the default name for the "Portals" menu tab to "Dashboards" .
A new property has been introduced to the portals. The "params" property allows the passing of additional parameters such as DWRUtil values, navigator.appName, etc. This eliminates the need for static variables in the portlets. You can still use the old method of calling a JavaScript method first, but this is not preferred due to the need for static variables in that methodology.
New "print" and "individual refresh" buttons added to all appropriate portlets. Those portlets which have an option with a "Go' button do not have a refresh button as the "Go" button serves the same purpose. You may elect to include the Auto Refresh Portlet and allow it to refresh all portlets at a given time interval, but the individual refresh buttons are presented to provide you with the assurance that you are looking at the most up-to-date numbers in that portlet. The print option brings the portlet up in an individual window and immediately invokes the print dialog. You may wish to cancel the dialog and resize the window (or new tab) before you print as some portlets are set to 100% width and will look differently in a full size window. Additionally, using the print button is a bit like first using the individual refresh for that portlet followed by the print button. It's not possible to get the contents of the portlet directly from the web page (it can be too lengthy), so the print Servlet calls back to the class of the portlet and gets the current numbers - as if you had just refreshed the portlet.
Restructured the menus:
Changed "Developer" edition to "Personal" and added a "Professional" edition. The Personal edition offers an individual a dashboard and reporting on their assignments. The Professional edition offers a team or small organization a dashboard and reporting on all assignees. The Enterprise edition continues to be unlimited in dashboards and reporting.
Changed the Denied Reviews Portlet to report on all products if not restricted to an individual product by the portal definition or the Restrict Portal Portlet and changed the column from "Count" to "Date of Review".
Changed all reports and portlets to report on the real name of the user, not their login name.
Changed the Links Portlet:

Added graphics from FamFam Silk collection for use with Links Portlet added a background to the span for the link to display the graphic.
Added a links.css for styling the links
Changed the links_en_US.properties to include a property for the graphic for each link.

Changed the ScrumSprint Portlet to:
- sort by bug_id
- changed to the use of datediff() for date calculations
- Updated the property file to include a "db" property to specify which vendor is used (for proper date calculations).
Corrected the Big Reporters to report only those users who have submitted more than 500 entries.
Changed Top Ten Attachments column headers to more clearly reflect the contents.
Corrected the style for the Added Attachments portlet.
Changed the By Age and By Resolution reports by adding an option to show only the most recent entries for bugs or all entries, suppressed any repeating bug ID and age and adding the date of entry for the description.
Updated the By Priority report's sort order
Dropped the use of the Classic menu

Version 3.2.1 Released

Posted by Bill on July 8th, 2008

We are pleased to announce the release of version 3.2.1 with the following updates:

Added an "Activity Graph" for graphing new, assigned and/or resolved bug activity.
Added the ability to define multiple portals per page.
The following have been changed to resize to 100% of the portlet width if the image size allows:
1. Responsibilities
2. Severities
3. Bug Burn Down (the remaining four require updating the property file)
4. Product Burn Down
5. Bar Chart
6. Pie Chart
Updated the Tag Cloud portlet:
1. Removed the anchor tag from the Tag Cloud
2. Updated the Tag Cloud css file to stop tags from overlapping.
3. Added the count per tag in parentheses to each tag
Updated the Old Bugs report:
1. Cleaned up the "Display issues" text to use only 1 line
2. Added a select to BugsInfo to get the list of bug_status rows
3. Added a dropdown to allow the user to select the status to be reported on; all or one specific status.
4. Added a "Printer Friendly" hyperlink to redisplay the page with no heading or selection criteria. Requires the use of the browser's back button after done printing.
Updated the Dynamic Drive tabbed menus:
1. Changed "Old Bugs" to "Bugs" with a dropdown for Dynamic Drive menus
2. Changed "Old Bugs" in the dropdown to "By Age"
3. Added a "By Priority" to the dropdown
4. Added a "By Severity" to the dropdown
5. Requires updated strings_en_US.properties file
New Reports (with Printer Friendly option; requires new strings property file)
1. Added a report of bugs by priority and status
2. Added a report of bugs by severity and status
3. Added a report of bugs by resolution
4. Added a "My Bugs" report of those bugs assigned to the person logged in

Change of Face

Posted by Bill on July 4th, 2008

Bugs Dashboard will be changing in the next few days and not in feature set, but in sales and marketing. Some of the changes we will be introducing include:

A new distributor - InfoStatus Corporation (ISC) replaces Little Cayman Labs, Inc. We are excited to be with ISC!
A new pricing structure - effective with the change to ISC, the price for Bugs Dashboard has changed. You will find our new pricing in the e-store on our website.
Reseller and Independent Contractor agreements will be available for those who wish to join us in implementing Bugs Dashboard for process improvement in software development at organizations big and small.
A two-day Quick Start will be available shortly to aid new customers with the installation, configuration and training in Bugs Dashboard to get them up-and-running fast. The Quick Start will be available on site or virtually through GoToMeeting and audio conferencing.

We will have further announcements as the changes occur during this exciting time of growth!

Individual Workload Portlet Released

Posted by Bill on June 14th, 2008

We are pleased to announce the addition of another portlet to the Community Portlets - the Individual Workload portlet. This portlet presents the workload of each user for all products or the product to which the portal is restricted. The portlet presents both the total number of open issues being worked and the percentage of the total each person is working on. The portlet presents the workload in three views, available from a select list; bar chart, pie chart and HTML table.

The bar chart will show the total bugs assigned to an individual via the bar and the percentage of the total the person is working in the label.

The bar chart presents the percentage of the total open bugs each assignee is working with their name.

The pie chart view presents both the count and the percentage in the label.

The pie chart view presents both the count and the percentage of the total number of bugs in the label.

The HTML table view presents the numbers for each user in alphabetical order.

The table view presents an alphabetical list of users and their workload.

This portlet is an excellent example of how to create a portlet which returns the visualization of the data in any one of a number of different options. It uses JFreeChart for the bar and pie charts and a URL connection to return the HTML table from the same helper Servlet.

Auto Refresh Portlet Released

Posted by Bill on June 14th, 2008

We are pleased to announce the addition of a new portlet to the Community Portlets - the Auto Refresh portlet. This portlet allows you to specify a period of time after which ALL portlets on that portal will be refreshed.

The Auto Refresh portlet allows you to specify a period of time after which ALL portlets on the portal are refreshed.

The portlet will display the countdown in the window status bar. (Note: if you have too many extensions in FireFox, the status may not display).

The Auto Refresh portlet will show the countdown in the window's status bar (assuming there is room and it is visible).

This portlet may help those who wish to configure a portal and then project that or use a large monitor where team members can easily see it. The portlet will keep the information up-to-date without further intervention.

Please see the notes in the readme included with the portlet for further information on the use of this portlet.

Version 3.2 Released

Posted by Bill on June 13th, 2008

We are pleased to announce the release of version 3.2 and thank all those who assisted us during the beta period.

Version 3.2 provides the following:

Introduced the "Wizard" to provide the ability to edit the setup and configuration files from the browser in orderly steps.
Introduced the Severity Counts portlet displaying bug counts by severity in thermometer graphics.
Introduced the login and logoff features using the Bugzilla profiles table for the login validation.
Modified the behavior of the Set Priorities and Set Severities features to allow only those users authorized within Bugzilla to manipulate the priorities and/or severities. This is controlled through a new set of properties which replaces the "loginName". By specifying the name of a valid group in Bugzilla to which members who you are authorizing to edit priorities and severities belong and the name of any product or all products (designated with an asterick, e.g. *), the Bugs Dashboard will now restrict the ability to update priorities and/or severities to only members of that group which you specify for a given product. If you wish, you may use an asterik for both product and group to indicate all products may be edited by any team member.
Cleaned up the various menu styles to present the logo and header information more cleanly.
Broke the About page into seperate components when any Dynamic Drive menu option is selected. The About page will continue to show all components when the Classic menu option is specified.
Changed the default menu from Classic to Dyanmic Drive's SlidingDoors.
Added the UsersGuide.pdf to a docs directory and linked that to a new Help menu for any use of the dropdown menus. Added links to the How-To articles and Frequently Asked Questions from the Help menu.
Removed the ability to select all products and/or severities in the Set Priorites and Set Severities pages respectively. This is in keeping with the assignment of groups of one or more individuals with the authority to address particular products.
Changed the Priorities Counts (Thermometer display) from displaying five thermometers based on the properties passed in to displaying one thermometer for each priority regardless of the number of active priorities on file.
The web service feature has been updated such that it no longer attempts to load any html, including any required JavaScript or style sheet. Therefore, if you intend to use a portlet from another application, you must load the Direct Web Remoting (dwr) engine, any required javascript and any required style sheet in the header of that application. You can load these from the deployed directory of the Bugs Dashboard (i.e. /bugs) assuming that you have not locked those directories down (i.e. used htaccess files to prevent access from another source). Additionally, the web service feature will now attempt to write the results of any portlet back to an element whose id matches that of the portlet being called. For example, if you wish to display the latest issues opened from another source, you would call the Issue portlet, using a div or span wrapper in your html whose id is "Issue" (we will have a separate post on this).
The authentication servlet will no longer respond to an HTTP GET by attempting to log someone in with the values passed in the URL. This has been done as one means of preventing SQL injection attacks. Any attempt to use a GET method will now result in a warning dialog.
The images for the error, information and warning dialogs have been added back to the images directory.
The portlets_en_US.properties file which holds the information necessary for the web services to properly display and invoke portlets has been updated with the latest portlets as well as the descriptions for all portlets offered.

Demos Made Easy

Posted by Bill on June 2nd, 2008

We are pleased to offer you the ability to evaluate the Bugs Dashboard using your own database from our servers. To do so requires minimal effort on your part:

Send us an e-mail request
Please state the company, or organization abbreviation in your e-mail. The purpose of this is to allow us to install a copy of the Bugs Dashboard with a URL to that abbreviation. For example: WMPNJ Software would be installed to /bugs_wmpnj
Open the appropriate port for your database.
The port must be open for the Bugs Dashboard to communicate from our server to your database. In the email you will receive from us (see below), we will provide the command necessary to allow requests only from our server to your database. (This assumes you have not issued any other command that would open your database to requests from outside your network.)

We will install a two-week evaluation copy of the Bugs Dashboard to our servers configured to a URL as close to your abbreviation as we can. We will then notify you of the availability of your private demonstration. Included in our e-mail will be:

The MySQL command you need to execute if you are using MySQL to allow requests from our server to hit your database as well as the PostgreSQL modification you need to make should you use PostgreSQL.
The URL of the installation for your private demonstration.

Once installed, you may walk through the Wizard at the location we provide you and establish your properties. Thereafter, you login to your database from our server; no muss, no fuss!

Online Issue Tracking Now Available

Posted by Bill on June 1st, 2008

We have installed Bugzilla 3.0.4 on our LunarPages host and have made it available for tracking issues in the Bugs Dashboard. If you have an enhancement request, a bug to report in the Bugs Dashboard or a community portlet or wish to comment or vote on an open issue, you will find a new link under the Support menu - Issue Tracking. This will open to a new tab or window (depending on your browser preferences) with Bugzilla 3.0.4. You will be required to register if you wish to vote, comment or enter issues.

We have also added a link in the Support menu for "Issue Dashboard". This will display a few of the portlets called via the web service to display counts and facts from the Bugzilla 3.0.4 database.

Using the web services of Bugs Dashboard, we display some of the facts from the Bugzilla 3.0.4 database.

Bugs Dashboard