Targetprocess iOS app v.1.1 is there

Today new version of iPhone/iPad app is available in App Store.

Here is the list of new features and improvements:

Search 

Tap search icon on top and find any entity quickly by keyword or by Id.

Add comments and attachments

Finally, you can take a photo of your whiteboard and attach it to the user story! If you work on mobile applications, you can quickly attach screenshots to bugs as well. There are quite many real life scenarios:

• Attach meeting results to Feature or User Story
• Attach fresh sketches draw on iPad to Feature or User Story
• Attach screenshots to Bug

Adding comments is easy as well. Now you can discuss User Story or reply to Requests right there:

Create teams and projects

Tap Teams and Projects selection menu. Here you can add new projects and new teams.

Delete entities

Navigate to entity and delete it.

Interface improvements, performance and bug fixes

This version works faster. Many bugs were fixed and stability improved. User Interface was polished and streamlined.

Targetprocess 2.24.6: More context actions, Finish iteration action, better context

In this release we've completed Context Menu feature, added some improvements and fixed quite many bugs. It will be available for accounts this week.

Context Menu

More actions are available in context menu now:

Change Assignments and Effort

Assign people, change assignments, update effort for any card on a board in few clicks:

Add Sub-entities

Quickly add inner entities. For example, if you have a User Story card on board, you can add Task, Bug, Test Case, Impediment or Time record via context menu:

Convert

Convert action is now available via context menu as well:

Finish Iteration/Team Iteration

This action was replicated from Targetprocess 2 and improved. If you have a board with Iteration/Team Iteration lane, you'll see Finish link (Finish action is also accessible via Iteration/Team Iteration View):

When you click the Finish link, you will see a dialog with Finish Iteration options:

Note, when User Story is split, relation is created between new and old User Stories.

Better Saveable Context

Here was the problem:

Saved context of Any Project switches to all projects except the new project after a project has been added. This should probably remain any project rather than require a new save context for each board to have the extra project.

You will have this problem no more. It will be required to re-save context for boards with Any Team/Any Project contexts, but then with new projects addition you will still have Any Project saved. 

Better Clipboard

Many people had problems with Clear/Delete buttons in clipboard, so we redesigned it. Now it is very hard to accidentally delete cards. 

Range selection works in clipboard as well, so you can quickly select several cards.

Avatars Highlight

Now you can see better who is responsible for the card right now. For example, QA engineers are responsible for User Stories and Bugs in Testing state. On the image below they are highlighted, while other assigned people are less visible:

Embedded Pages Mashup

One more useful mashup appeared in Mashups Library. The Embedded Pages mashup allows to see the pages by links you've provided in a URL and Template URL custom field as an additional tab on an entity view, so that you can work with the external pages and documents straight in TargetProcess.

Other Improvements and Fixes

• Action in error message about teams and project relations. Now if you don't have relation between team and project while trying to create a User Story, you can add this relation with a single click.
• You can add new User via top Add menu now
• FIX: Long Test Case names are not broken into several lines and corrupt the UI
• FIX: When you add a new Iteration it is not clear that you should use calendar days as a duration
• FIX: Endless loader on Release view: Iteration tab when I drag'n'drop entities between Iterations
• FIX (annoying bug): Connection lost message appears every time I go to another board
• FIX: Support non-English custom field values on boards
• FIX: Tasks are not moved to TeamIteration along with parent User Story

TargetProcess v.2.24.5: New Lookup Fields, Context Menu, Mashup Library

In v.2.24.5 release we made several improvements. This version will be available to all later this week.

New Lookup Field

It was very hard to find required entity when you add a new Relation, link User Story to a Feature, link a Bug to a User Story, etc. With new lookup field this is not a problem anymore!

New lookup shows more relevant information about target entity and helps you to find it using quick or advanced filters.

Continuous scroll helps to navigate long lists.

New lookup field appeared in v.2 and v.3.

Context Menu

If you wanted to quickly change some content on cards in previous versions, you had to open View. Well, it was not so quick. Now we introduced context menu that helps to Delete entities, Rename entities and change tags.

Right click on a card to see actions:

Rename action

Change tags action

More actions are on the way. In the next release it will be possible to update Effort and Assigned users, Convert entities and Add new sub-entities via context menu.

Build Card

Now it is possible to create boards with Build card, add builds, etc:

Automatically Shift Iteration / Team Iteration

When you change start date or duration of current of next iteration you had to change all future iterations manually. Now it happens automatically. All future iterations will be shifted to required amount of days. Note, that this action does not work for past iterations.

Create Feature, User Story, Bug from Request

This action was missed in v.3. Now it is possible to create Features, User Stories and Bugs from request with a single click.

The following fields are copied from Request to a target entity:

• Name
• Description
• Tags
• New Relation (outbound for Request, inbound for target entity) type Relation
• Project
• Team

Mashups Library

Now you can install new mashups with a single click! You may think about Mashups Library as an App Store (but free). Only Admin can install new mashups. Navigate to Settings -> Mashups, find required mashup and click Install button.

Click on a mashup to read more information about it:

Mashups are actually stored on GitHub. If new mashups are added here, they will be automatically available in Mashups Library. 

Bug fixes:

• Auto-apply filters doesn't work if added entity has at least one required Custom Field
• Unnecessary Comet notification comes if entities have states with the same names and we update name for entity NOT selected on the board.
• New Search does not open items in New Tab (right mouse click)
• Unexpected permission error when I try to add time to entity that I'm not having rights to edit
• Cannot convert entity if it has related Request
• CKEditor copy-paste image from in FireFox
• Dates for current iteration and team iteration are not highlighted in green anymore
• Make Tags available for axis when Releases chosen as cards

TargetProcess v.2.24.1 (pre 3.0)

Hi folks,

Last two months we worked on v.3 stability and added many many small features and improvements. New build will be available in a week (or so).

Here is the list of changes:

New Cards: Test Plans and Test Runs

More helpful boards can be created for QA now. Board below shows Test Runs by Test Plans. You can create new Test Runs quickly here.

New Cards: Releases, Iterations and Team Iterations Cards

List of Releases by Projects, List of Iterations by Projects or Team Iterations by Teams — all that can be created. Such boards help to overview releases and change them quickly.

New Lanes: Create Date, Start Date, End Date

Create boards with simplistic dates columns to see what was created, started or completed day by day. Use filters to restrict how many days you see in date axis, like ?It >= today - 10(days)

This board shows added user stories, features and bugs by dates and by projects.

Prioritization with Shift by Default

When you create a new board, it will have Prioritize using Shift setting by default. It prevents sudden and unintended prioritizations.

When you start dragging, you will see a help message to hold Shift key to prioritize.

Easier Team/Project Relation Assignments

When you create a team, you can quickly assign several projects to this team. When you create a new project, you can quickly assign some teams:

Views Improvements

Now you can send links to Views quickly. Also there is a short link that is available in a format http://targetprocess/entity/87443.

Quick Add section added into View as well:

Editor was improved and restyled. Now you can add pictures via drag and drop

Tabs are now collapsed into More button if there is not enough space:

Board States Setup

Direct link to States modification is added into board setup. Now it is much easier to access entities Workflow:

New Top Menu

Top menu was re-designed to match tp3 style

Getting Started and Help

Maybe it is not that important to existing users, but new users will be grateful for the getting started scenarios built-in into TargetProcess:

Updated User Guide can be found at http://guide.targetprocess.com 

Search Improvements

• It is possible to search inside custom fields
• Search by numbers works (finally!)
• Search indexing works several times faster.

Performance Improvements

• Board loads with less requests to server
• Board requests are run in parallel when possible to reduce total time
• Batch operations take significantly less time
• View popup opens faster now with lazy loading

v.2.24: Global search, prioritize restrictions, network diagram

New tp3 features appeared in v.2.24 release. Some accounts are already upgraded, On-Site customers will have an access to the download in 2-3 days.

Global Search

We spent a lot of time creating and really fast search. This new global search usually returns results in a second.

Prioritize Restrictions

Many people complain that it is too easy to change priorities on boards. Indeed, it is true. We've implemented a setting that makes it harder:

Now you can completely disable prioritization or demand a special gesture (pressed Shift key and mouse cursor) to change priority. It will make boards safer and Product Owner will sleep well.

Network Diagram

Relation network diagram shows all dependencies for selected stories, bugs, features and other entities. 

Click Reports tab and find this new report here:

You can filter entities easily to focus on interesting data.

Quick Add in Views

Minor improvement that helps you to add things faster from Views:

Other Improvements

• It is possible to add up to 60 custom fields for every entity in every process now
• REST API gives you an access to state changes history
• Performance improvements
• Better confirmation messages

v.2.23.17: Reports, Performance, Boards Magic

This release makes targetprocess3 significantly better.

Reports Improvements

Reports menu was changed, Lead and Cycle Time Distribution diagram added, Burn Down Chart added into menu.

Reports Menu

Reports menu was changed to include most interesting and new reports. Old TP2 reports are in Other Reports section.

Lead and Cycle Time Distribution 

Lead and Cycle Time Distribution diagram is very handy to forecast a probability when a user story or bug will be completed:

You can apply various filters and have distribution for various cases. For example, you want to extract all user stories with 8 pts effort. Now if you have new user story with 8 pts estimate, you can use cumulate distribution line to forecast how many days it will take to complete it with desired probability.

Views Improvements

Convert action added, People tab in Project View added. 

Convert action

Now it is possible to convert various assignable entities. New convert action preserves as much information as possible (custom fields, comments, attachments, similar properties, etc). Only ID is changed.

People Tab in Project View

Somehow this tab was missed in the initial tp3 launch. Now you can see all people that have access to a particular project. You can add new people or remove existing people as well:

Board Improvements

Automatic properties setting with Quick Add, Board Access tab.

Automagical set properties based on selected board filters

Let's consider a situation when you have a board that shows just user stories and bugs from the current release. Then you add new user story right on the board and... it disappears. Fear no more! With new release it will be automatically assigned to the current release. 

The algorithm is quite clever and it understand filters like 

?Iteration is Current

?AssignedUser.Where(it is me) and Iteration.IsCurrent == True

?Release is Current

EntityState is 'Open'

?Project.Name is ‘Green planet’

?Feature is ‘Save the whales’

If you mix similar filters with AND condition, several rules will be applied. 

NOTE: If you use OR condition in the filter, automatic assignment will NOT work (in this case there is ambiguity we can't resolve)

Board Access

There were two levels for board visibility: Public (everyone can see the board) or Private (only you can see the board). We've added Custom visibility level: you can select Teams and Projects which will see the board.

Let's say, you created a board Design Work and gave access to team Designers. Then only people in Designers team will see Design Work board.

Columns Resize

Now you can set and change columns width. Put mouse cursor near the edge of the column and wait till resize control appear. Click on arrows to increase or decrease column width. Note, that only this column will be affected, all other columns will stay as is. Also note that this changes are for you only, other users can tune boards as they wish.

Performance Improvements

We spent significant effort on performance improvements. In general, you should experience less than 3 seconds open time for any board (except boards with many many cards or teams/projects cards). 

The chart below shows Board Open Time day by day. As you see, large boards with many cards loads on average in 4 seconds. Smaller boards usually below 3 seconds. 

We will continue to work on better performance, we believe that subsecond performance is what will make the real difference and make you happy.

What's New in v.2.23.16: Clone Board, Templates, Custom Fields Filters

v.2.23.16 has several major changes in tp3. It will be available for download early next week.

Clone Boards

Sometimes you can't change board settings. Clone board is a good workaround. You will have a new private board with exactly the same settings in a single click

Board Templates

You can quickly create a new board from predefined template. 

If you are not satisfied with the results, just try other templates

Admin can create new templates and delete existing templates. To do that, admin can just create required board configuration and save it as a template:

We believe templates simplify board creation process. With custom templates this can be a company wide repository of useful boards easily searchable and filterable. 

Custom Fields Filters

Now you can filter cards (and swimlanes) on boards by almost any custom fields. Not implemented custom fields filters are: URL, TargetProcess Entity Type.

Release Lane Displays Effort and Quick Burn Down Access

See assigned and completed total effort on every release. Click on small icon to see Release Burn Down Chart. The same icon is displayed for Iteration and Team Iteration lanes as well.

Team Iteration Burn Down Chart 

This report is accessible via TP3 Reports link now and you can select Release, Iteration or Team Iteration.

Process Control Chart: Control Limits

Now you can see lines that shows warning and control limits. Thus you can easily identify stories, bugs, features that had some problems.

Board Access

Board Access management moved into the new tab. Soon it will be extended with per-Team and per-Project access level (we are already working on it).

Some minor changes

• Board colors are changed to improve contrast.
• Quick Add [+] sign moved to the right corner. It partially resolves a problem with cards overlap.
• 6th zoom level expands as much as possible, so it takes all free space now.
• View and Report popups expands to take more space.
• No more than 43 small cards are visible in collapsed cell. This improves data density problem for boards with many rows.
• Performance improved (and we are still working on it).
• Entity View popup: assigned user in active state is highlighted
• Entity View popup: If you put a link into Description field, it will be automatically converted into actual link on save