What's new in TrackStudio 4 ?

TrackStudio is more useable

• Built-in bookmarking. Now frequently accessed tasks and task lists can be bookmarked to a separate tab, and accessed quickly when needed

• Improved search capabilities. You can now specify a search string containing the numbers of more than one task and find them all. TrackStudio first lists any tasks in the current project, and then all the others

• Better support for RSS. Now you can subscribe to an RSS feed that will notify you of any events associated with the tasks returned by a particular filter at any point on the task tree.

• The task and user trees are now updated automatically. No longer do you have to click on the refresh icon and if necessary you can update using F5 or your browser’s refresh button.
• Now, filters and category actions can be organized into menu groups. For example, a collection of filters relevant to bugs can all be made to appear on a single drop-down menu in the user interface by prefixing the name of each filter eg "Bugs / Reported recently”, “Bugs / All deep”, “Bugs / Outstanding”. This makes the user interface clearer when there are large numbers of filters available.

• New ways in which to work with attachments. An additional step is no longer necessary as the user can now attach one or more files as they are creating the task; as each attachment is added more Browse buttons become available. You can also not only attach files to a task, but also to any message associated with that task and that attachment will get sent as part of any e-mail notification. From any point on the task tree you can view all the attachments from that point onwards and download individual files from that view. You can download multiple files in the form of a single zip file. There is now support for large files; with no limit on file size. You can do a search on all or part of the name of a file. Using WebDAV, you can edit the file directly on the server, without downloading.

• When you create messages, you can easily quote the previous messages. You just check the check boxes of earlier messages and their contents and who wrote them is copied into the new message.
• New messages and tasks are highlighted. Any messages or tasks created since the user last logged in are marked with an asterisk.
• The sort order of previous messages can now be changed; either most recent first or oldest first.

• Configurations can now be created. Using a configuration allows the transfer tasks and users as well as system settings from a one server to another. The IDs of all objects are preserved.
• Workflows can be exported and drawn using GraphViz so that states and transitions can be visualised.
• The Assignee dialog has been changed. Now those people who have worked on the task are listed at the top of the list so as they are easily distinguished from the possibly long list of others with access to the task.

• Now the timer can handle multiple tasks simultaneously. Timer remembers how much time a user spent in a given problem, even if it was necessary to temporarily switch to other tasks.
• Using the "Next" and "Previous" buttons you can quickly move between the tasks in the list returned by a filter. For example, you can quickly work through all of today's problems and, if necessary, comment on them.

• You can now easily notify users about upcoming events. This feature will allow you to tell users about the next upgrade or of any planned system restarts.

• Support for Atlassian Crowd and JSSO has been added.
• In addition to CVS and Subversion, TrackStudio 4 supports Perforce.

• A mechanism for importing direct from Atlassian’s JIRA has now been implemented. Now, moving the database from JIRA to TrackStudio has become much easier.

• TrackStudio 4 is compatible with the latest versions of Internet Explorer, FireFox, Opera, Safari and Chrome.
• Now, tasks can be in several initial states. One of these states should be marked as "default" and it's used when creating tasks via e-mail. When several initial states are possible, you can choose one with select box in web interface.

TrackStudio is more flexible.

• There is now the facility to build you own interfaces. There is template-based engine (Freemarker) to alternate standard TrackStudio user interface.
• Scripts can be developed in Java and be compiled to classes. This allows you to use the power of a modern IDE for script development. Furthermore, such compiled scripts run much faster.
• The old report generating engine (JasperReports) replaced by BIRT. Now the List Report supports a variable number of columns and you can control the width of columns.

• A new type of report called “trend” in now available. This type of report makes it possible to view how the number of new, open, closed problems has changed recently. This can be useful to determine the readiness of a product for release.
• Tasks of different categories can now be displayed and made to behave differently. You can distinguish different categories of tasks by giving each a different icon, define the sort order in the tree and the output format of time worked. For example, we can specify that tasks should be sorted alphabetically in the tree, that the time spent on a task should be measured in days, and that when you select a task you are either taken to the task or sub-task view.

• You can temporarily disable an unused category. Users can no longer create tasks of that category until you make it available again.
• Now each user can specify multiple e-mail addresses.

TrackStudio is simpler.

• The user does not need to know about the type of task or operation. With each category or operation the button that initiates it can be identified with a meaningful label such as: "New Project", "Report Error", "Close"

• The selection of filters has been simplified and frequently used filters can be chosen with a single click. You can now also build filters on-the-fly settings and save the filter straight from the page showing the list of tasks that it returns.

• Simplified setting of permissions. You can now, when configuring a specific status, see / specify what rights are associated with all custom-fields, processes and categories. You no longer have to navigate between by categories and operations and to define the rights of the status; everything can now be done in one place. If you set rights incorrectly a warning triangle will be displayed to the category or workflow.

• Easier navigation on the components of your configuration (filters / operations / categories, etc.). In 3.5 the filters page shows a single filter list for the current task and its parents. In 4.0 filters are shown for the current task together with links to the filters that are available in other tasks. This allows you to quickly locate a filter without going through all the tasks.

• Managing the list of fields to be available in a filter and their sort order is now separate from the setting of filter parameters. This has allowed some simplification of the page with the filter parameters.

• CSV Import is now done using a separate application. Scripting for import with 3.5 caused many problems and in 4.0 the process of importing data has been simplified.
• Using the SOAP API is now easier. TrackStudio 4 uses JAX WS instead of Apache AXIS and support for FastInfoSet significantly increases performance.
• All the scripts and templates are now stored as files on disk. This has allowed the "unloading" of the TrackStudio interface and has simplified editing.
• Support for the import of users from LDAP has been implemented.

And nothing superfluous

• There is no longer support for an application server cluster. This capability was limited, was rarely used and made the application’s code much more complex and difficult to maintain.
• The forms that were embedded within and allowed the creation of messages from e-mail notifications have been removed. This functionality required that JavaScript be enabled within the e-mail client and did not work in Outlook or web-based clients.
• It is no longer possible to create a bulk update view that allows one type of message to be created for multiple tasks simultaneously. Instead, you can now use a special type of script that can perform an operation on the selected tasks.
• Removed the facility to control the visibility of tasks, depending on the current state. It was only useful in a very limited set of cases and raised many issues. Previously, we did not recommend the use of this functionality, now it is explicitly prohibited.
• Removed the facility to control the visibility of custom fields, depending on the current state. Now you can control the visibility only depending on the type of message.