New features in CollabNet TeamForge 8.1

JIRA integration

TeamForge 8.1 supports integration with JIRA. The TeamForge Orchestrate JIRA integration enhances further the extensible tool-chain model of TeamForge by offering association and traceability between JIRA, TeamForge, and various orchestrated third-party tools. The TeamForge Orchestrate JIRA adapter enables JIRA as an alternative tracker for use with TeamForge by detecting and storing associations between JIRA issues and TeamForge managed SCM activities, like commits, builds and so on. For detailed information, see JIRA adapter.

Kanban Board and TeamForge User Avatars

Kanban Board

The Kanban Board is an agile project management tool, which gives you a snapshot of the statuses of work items within a planning folder, how your project teams are placed in terms of work distribution and helps you to re-distribute the tasks to ensure optimal resource utilization. This is accomplished using the kanban methodology which comprises the following concepts:

Value stream mapping: This is an end-to-end mapping of the flow of activities (tasks/work items) from one state to another, starting from conceptualization to delivering the product to the customer on time.
Work-in-Progress limits: These are constraints (minimum and maximum) applied on each point or state (Planning, In Progress, and so on) in the value stream to ensure optimal WIP. This defines the minimum and maximum artifact count that ought to be present in each state so that if these constraints are violated, your kanban board flags the issue for you to fix the bottleneck.

For detailed information on kanban board, see Kanban Board and Manage your project workflow with Kanban Board .

TeamForge user avatars

The new user avatar, which is either your profile picture or the first alphabet of your TeamForge 'user name', is displayed throughout TeamForge, wherever appropriate.

Native code browser

A new native source code browser, which is specific to Subversion and Git repositories is available as part of the TeamForge user interface. As a site administrator, you have an option to turn on this feature to let your users view the code in this internal code browser. The salient features are:

A modern look and feel
Offers integrated traceability across tool-chains through the display of event associations (which come from Orchestrate) including JIRA trackers, builds, code reviews and so on.
Branch view for Git repositories using which you can view and compare all of the branches with the default (master) branch.
Automatic rendering of readme files while browsing a folder
Improved performance with faster loading of historical data

Software requirements for using TeamForge code browser, if Subversion or Git is running on a separate server: Subversion Edge 5.1.0 and TeamForge - Git integration 8.4.4 and later. For more information on how to turn on and use this feature, see Internal code browser and Get the code.

Reports

New SCM activity reports are added. These reports are powered by data from the Orchestrate's event data store. Here's a list of new reports in TeamForge 8.1:
Custom defined tracker fields are made available for filtering in tracker reports.
Ability to query the datamart and write your own custom reports.
Ability to generate reports on custom-defined tracker fields as they are now loaded to datamart and can be used to filter.
Ability to drill one level down on some of the activity reports that use column charts to dive deeper on the data points of your interest.
Improved Project Statistics component.
'Group By' and 'Summary Statistics' filtering criteria added to the Tracker Table report.
Improved site activity report (using highcharts) on the TeamForge login and home pages. The Project Statistics component also uses highcharts.
Ability to add cross project reports to your project dashboard. While adding reports to your project dashboard, you can now select the project that has the report of your interest.
Project-level SCM reports are now enabled for TeamForge SCM mode users.

Documents

Ability to delete document versions. Delete document versions to save some disk space.

Ability to lock your documents to prevent parallel editing or downloading by others. See Lock a document and Can I lock a document in TeamForge?

Planning folder

Ability to filter artifacts in Planning Folder List view. You can filter and view artifacts based on their status using the Status drop-down list. For more information, see View the right planning folder artifacts.

Ability to export ranked artifacts. From the list view, click RANK before exporting to have the artifacts ranked in the exported file. For more information, see Export planning folder artifacts.

Boards

Retain planning folder and team selections: Using the new 'sticky' view, the selection of a planning folder and a team is now retained when you move between the list, task, and kanban board views as well as across browser sessions. Similarly, in the Planning Board, multiple planning folder and team selections are retained when you navigate to other pages in TeamForge and return to your planning board. For more information, see List, Plan, Track and Kanban views.

Auto-assign tasks in Task Board: It is now possible to assign any unassigned task to oneself while moving the artifact card from one status to another. For more information about this auto-assigning of tasks, see Auto-assign task.

Teams

Filter by artifact status: The Teams list view allows you to filter and view artifacts based on their status alone using the status drop-down list. For more information, see Filter by artifact status.

Tasks tool

"Tasks" tool has been disabled by default for any new projects created in TeamForge 8.1 and later versions. If required, you can enable it from Project Admin > Tools. However, "Tasks" tool would be obsoleted altogether in TeamForge 17.1 release. You can create a Tasks tracker, if required.

Others

Time zone setting: While creating the user account, you can now choose the time zone as well. You can modify it at any point in time from the Edit User Information (My Workspace > My Settings) page. The chosen timezone overrides the timezone set by the site-options token, DISPLAY_TIMEZONE and reflects in all the email notifications and TeamForge pages excluding integrated application pages.

Better session handling: Log in again and continue where you left without losing your unsaved changes.