What's New at Caravela

Bug navigation enhancement

I've often found myself browsing through bugs within a tag or search. Until now that meant opening bugs in a separate tab or going back and forth between the search results and the bug. A small usability enhancement now makes that a lot easier.

Bug_nav
When you view one of the bugs from a search or tag, you will see a navigation strip beneath the bug number that allows you to move to the previous or next bug in the list. It also displays the total number of bugs in your search and where you are now (for example, "4 of 11 bugs"). And if you click that then you will be returned to those search results.

Filter My Bugs by Tracker

Just added a small enhancement on the My Bugs page. If, like me, you are involved in multiple projects with separate trackers, your My Bugs page can get pretty busy. To help with that, a row of buttons representing each Tracker you are a member of now appears above the list of bugs. Click any of the icons to toggle the display of the associated bugs in the list. And click the power icon on the far left to toggle all of the trackers in the list.

Bug export and import

Caravela has always had the ability to export and import bugs. The link is at the bottom right corner of each bug tracker's dashboard (if you're an admin). Today I've just added the ability to filter the exported bugs by one or more tags. Only bugs with all of the given tags will be exported. This can come in handy if, for example, you decide to move a whole class of bugs into a separate tracker. Export just those bugs by their common tag and import them into the new tracker.

This closes Bug 368 in the Caravela tracker. If you find any problems, please let me know by adding a comment to that bug. Thanks!

Add comments by email

One of the purposes of a bug tracking system is to capture all conversation about a bug. All of the discussions and decisions about a bug should become part of the official bug history. That allows anyone to go back to the bug later to see why a certain decision was made. To make that process easier, it is now possible to reply directly to bug comment notification emails.

When you are subscribed to a bug, you will receive an email notification whenever anyone else adds a comment. You will see a line that reads "Reply above this line to add a comment" at the top of those notifications. To add your comment to the bug, simply start a reply email and add your comment to the top of the message. Your comment will be added almost instantly (as quickly as the email is received).

This is a new feature and may have a few rough edges. If you find any problems (such as your comments not being added or extraneous text being added to your comment), please let me know by commenting on Bug 741 in the Caravela tracker. Thanks!

Tag autocomplete

If you use tags as much as I do, then the new tag autocompletion feature (bug 647) will save you a lot of time and help you avoid typos. When you type in any tag field, suggestions will appear based on the tags you've used for other bugs. Select one by using the mouse or keyboard (up/down arrows and enter key). Press the ESC key to cancel.

Tag page pie chart

Caravela_piechart

It's a small thing but I've added a simple visualization to the tags page. The pie chart shows at a glance how many bugs you have for each tag. It's a quick way to see how your work load is distributed. Naturally, your mileage may vary depending on how you use tags.

Burn down charts

Burndown_chart

What's a burn down chart, you ask? A burn down chart is a graphical representation of work left to do versus time. Burn down charts are useful for seeing how much work has been completed and how much remains. They can even be used to help predict when work on a project will be completed.

How do they work? A burn down chart is dynamically generated for every tag. Go to your tracker's Tags page, click a tag, then click "View burn down chart" at the top of the page. Some tags will have more interesting charts than others. To get the most out of this feature, I recommend that you tag groups of bugs with a unique tag that represents a complete deliverable or milestone. For example, if there are a set of bugs you know must be finished before you can ship version 2 of your product, then you could add a version2 tag to each of those bugs. The burn down chart for version2 will then give you an accurate picture of how much work is left before you can ship.

Take a look at the pretty screen shot above. This is the burn down chart for fictional project milestone1. There were 26 open bugs on April 23. Four bugs were closed on April 26 and 8 bugs were closed on April 27. Progress continued until May 3rd when the last 2 bugs were closed and work on milestone1 was completed.

I hope you like this new feature. As always, your suggestions are welcome.

Attachments for all

Caravela has four user roles: Anonymous, User, Worker, and Admin. Prior to today, only Workers and Admins could upload and delete attachments. Now Users can as well.

Users (people who are not Workers, Admins, or Anonymous) can now add attachments. They may also delete their own attachments but not anyone else's. Workers and Admins can still delete attachments from anyone.

Attachment ownership is displayed in the tooltip when hovering over an attachment. Attachment uploads are also now shown inline in the comments to make it clear when attachments were uploaded and who uploaded them.

If you find any problems with this feature, please let me know by commenting on bug 490.

Time zones!

It's long overdue---sorry!---but you can now set your time zone. Just go to your profile and choose a city in your time zone. After that, all dates and times you see should be converted to your local time. If you find any problems with this feature, please let me know by commenting on bug 478.

New/Closed bug notifications

Caravela used to email all Workers and Admins whenever a bug was created or closed. As of right now, the New bug notification emails have been removed and Caravela only sends Closed bug notifications to users who are subscribed to the bug.

The reason for this is that the New/Closed bug notifications were getting spammy. I don't need to know about every bug being opened and closed by other people in trackers I am a member of. Changing the Closed notifications was a no-brainer--it's much better to only notify subscribed users. Removing the New bug notifications was a tougher choice...

I thought about making New bug notifications a tracker-level option for each user. I may still do that. In the meantime, you can still get notifications when bugs are created with certain tags by subscribing to the tags you are interested in. For example, I subscribe to the tag "john" in all of my trackers and everyone knows that to get my attention they just need to add the "john" tag to a bug.