Tuesday, October 26, 2010

New release (1.0.1586) - Working offline is easy peasy

This new release includes the ability to work offline using an issue cache. At the moment, you can switch filters and log work. To work offline, simply click the "Use cache" checkbox in the top-right of the screen:

If you do this, you will be asked to synchronize filters. If you choose not to synchronize all filters, then a cache built up while you were working will be used. This is usually enough.

While you are working offline, all the JIRA worklogs will be collected in the "Pending Worklogs" tab so remember to submit them once you are back online!

In addition to these changes, Worklog Assistant now supports Ubuntu 10.04 LTS as the base. Support for 8.04 LTS has been dropped.

Check out the release notes for more.

Thanks for your time!


Thursday, October 21, 2010

Custom scripts: that's freaking awesome!

When I initially put out the custom scripts feature in the latest release (documentation), I was a bit worried that no one would be able to see it being useful. No one had asked for it except me! Upon release, I got some very good feedback but nothing that made me too confident.

Today I was pleasantly surprised. Doing the usual customer support rounds, I came across a feature request from "t" which was a bit particular to his/her requirements: the ability to copy a specific JIRA field to the clipboard. I usually try and keep from implementing such specific requests because it clutters the application.

So the first thing I suggested, just because I thought t's workflow was similar to mine, was to do what I did and use custom scripts to do all the checking in/out of source control.

S/he had other things in mind:

sudo apt-get install xclip

and than:

echo $JIRA_Key | xclip

perfect!!! thx

Just to clarify, t realized that s/he could install xclip (the first line) and use a custom script to copy it to the clipboard using xclip (the third line). I could only think of one response:

Haha, that's freaking awesome!

When I added custom scripts, I really wanted to empower the users to do stuff that I wouldn't or couldn't for whatever reason. I'm glad to see that promise fulfilled in this little way. Great job "t"!


Tuesday, October 12, 2010

New release (1.0.1531) - improve efficiency by customizing

This new release has a few new features and improvements. One is an improved update experience which has been a long time coming! There are also some JIRA worklog and time tracking-related improvements. You can find more in the release notes linked above.

The biggest, something I've been itching for myself, is the capability to extend Worklog Assistant by adding your own custom commands. In a nutshell, you can attach and execute a shell script against any JIRA issue and Worklog Assistant passes down the issue fields as environment variables. For example, the key is passed down as the "JIRA_Key" environment variable. Custom fields are also passed down and spaces are replaced with underscores.

You can see an example of a custom script I use in the screenshot below (configuration dialog is pictured):

This script optionally creates and switches to a new branch. You can also see the custom scripts in the context menu for the selected issue (right-click on selected issue):

This is useful for me because I usually create a new branch for each issue. This extension makes it more likely that I will keep up that very good practice.

Like it? Hate it? You can send me feedback about this or other things, I'm always happy to hear it.

Happy time tracking and have a good week!


About this blog

We strongly believe that tracking your time properly is the first step to deterministic software development. If you feel that you have been guessing or you can't be bothered to remember to log time, Worklog Assistant might be for you!

Give it a try!

Please download a free 30-day trial today by clicking on the link below: Download