Elastik / News: Recent posts

As well as the features noted previously, it now works on MySQL 5.5.

You can download a copy at http://sourceforge.net/projects/elastik/files/Beta

We have started a new branch for Elastik 0.5 and are testing it on our own servers.

New features (from memory, I may have missed some):

• Your current ticket search is remembered, so when you go a ticket then back to the search page it's still the same.
• Next and Prev buttons are on tickets, and they act on the last search; so you can search for open tickets and then cycle through them without going back to the search page.
• Can drop and drag to rearrange items on your dashboard.
• When looking at a ticket, can expand some side boxes to get more info.
• When editing status schemas, can create transitions from all status to a single one (or vice versa) in one go.... read more

We'll release version 0.4.2 soon, hopefully next week.

• Printed pages will look nicer.
• Added a list of all file attachments on a project (FileAttachments module).
• Added a nicer way to switch between Clients and Projects - http://twitpic.com/4ni4g2
• Friendlier welcome emails.

And a bug that sometimes stopped emails being sent when a new error was filed has been fixed (ErrorReportingService module).

We are pleased to announce the release of version 0.4.1 of Elastik!

This fixes several security issues in Elastik
* users without the permission to edit tickets could still edit them in some places.
* forgotten password reset tokens lasted for ever.

A new feature: you can pick how many tickets appear on a search results page.

And many small fixes and improvements.

You can download a copy at http://sourceforge.net/projects/elastik/files/Beta ... read more

We are pleased to announce the release of version 0.4.0 of Elastik!

For details of new features, please read:
* http://sourceforge.net/news/?group_id=317819&id=298255
* http://sourceforge.net/news/?group_id=317819&id=298523

We have also done almost all of work on the Error Reporting Service we intended to do:
* https://sourceforge.net/news/?group_id=317819&id=297722

You can download a copy at http://sourceforge.net/projects/elastik/files/Beta... read more

Normally Ticket trackers come with all kinds of views or reports; tasks assigned to you, open tasks or tasks in various statuses, critical bugs, that kind of thing. But one of the consequences of a completely flexible system is that you can't do that: as your users can set up the process at will, you can't write reports for them.

For instance, one software company I worked at had the original programmer do the work then a 2nd programmer check the technical details of the work. Then finally whoever requested the modification would check the work to ensure it matched the specifications. A system to model that process might have 3 "Assigned To" fields, and who was actually responsible for a ticket at any given point would depend on what it's status was. Its impossible to pre-plan views for that.... read more

We have started a new branch for Version 0.4 in Subversion, and I wanted to post details of the new features.

Can Delete Tickets

The plan is that admins can delete things. They will be marked as deleted in the database and users will not be able to find them. Then after a certain number of days they will be deleted for real. This gives administrators a window of time to correct any mistakes.... read more

This weekend, I went to PHP Unconference Europe ( http://www.phpuceu.org/ ) and gave a talk on dealing with errors. It was well received and I got lots of suggestions, so I wanted to announce the big features in the roadmap for the ErrorReportingService module.

1) Searching errors by File, Line, Function, Class, $_SERVER variables and more.

2) Reopening tickets. If an error comes in and you deal with it and close the ticket, what happens when the error reoccurs later? You should be able to specify to reopen the ticket or make a new one.... read more

This fixes 2 small bugs to do with searching for tickets, and other small changes.

If you search for tickets with a user in a user field then try and clear it it wouldn't work.
If you put a saved search on your dashboard not all the search parameters you specified would be used, so the search results would not wrong.

It is also a security fix if you are using the ErrorReportingService module: any logged in user could see any error report, even if they did not have access to that report.... read more

We are releasing this for security reasons. In prior versions, existing users who could access a client or any project of that client could make themselves client administrators.

Download from http://sourceforge.net/projects/elastik/

We are pleased to announce version 0.3.1 of Elastik!

The changes are a reworking of the UI, and improved error collection and display in the ErrorReportingService module.

Download from http://sourceforge.net/projects/elastik/

We are pleased to announce version 0.3.0 of Elastik! For details of the changes, visit http://sourceforge.net/news/?group_id=317819&id=296190

If upgrading from an earlier version, delete all php files from the includes/templates_c folder.

Download from http://sourceforge.net/projects/elastik/

As version 0.3.0 of Elastik is being tested on our own server (we use Elastik to organise tickets for all our projects) and we hope to release it next week, I wanted to list the big new features:

New Field Types
* Multiple Select - select one or more pre-defined options
* Multiple User - select one or more of the users who can access the project
* Float
* WYSIWYG text - allows you to add simple stylings to your text.... read more

Elastik has a new module to collect information from Subversion repositories.

There are 2 ways to collect information, a post-commit script in the repository or a regular remote scan of the repository for those that can't alter post-commit scripts.

Once in Elastik, commits can be linked to tickets.

You can put a message like “Ticket #1” into a commit log, and the ticket will then be linked to the commit automatically.... read more

This includes
* UI improvements
* more documentation
* a bug fix: Users who had permissions to write tickets but not comment on them could still comment on them when changing status.

Basically, I wanted to get the best code released before the holiday period as I know some people said they would look at it then. Happy holidays!

Download from http://sourceforge.net/projects/elastik/files

This release is a bug fix release:
* mainly dealing with UTF-8 Issues. If you have an Elastik install that was created before 0.1.7 you will need to run the script /includes/scripts/makeTablesUTF8.php once after upgrade.
* "User" fields were putting HTML into exported CSV's.

We also made some of the forms in the administrators interfaces work better, and the "User" field display more useful information.... read more

8 months and 2 days after the first code on this project was checked in, it's time to start Beta releases.

We have put our documentation into docbook format, and we plan to write much more in the near future. Currently, it's hosted at http://book.elastik.jarofgreen.co.uk/

New features:

• Gravatar Avatars are used.
• Can list, add and remove system administrators.

Bug fix:

• Users who were project users then became client administrators still had the admin interface for editing project access rights, even thought that would have done nothing.... read more

Notes on databases

In MySQL, we now run in InnoDB. This will be set up automatically for new databases, but to upgrade your existing database, please run includes/scripts/makeTablesInnoDB.php once after upgrade.

New features:

• Project administrators can specify fields as optional or compulsory
• Can remove users from Clients and Projects

Bug fixes:

• Integer fields currently at "0" could not be set to no value.
• Digest Emails were not being sent!... read more

Notes on databases

Microsoft SQL Server support has been dropped, leaving MySQL as the only option for the database. We were not using SQL Server ourselves, and it was to much work to maintain. If someone else wanted to maintain it (or any other DB engine for that matter) it may return.

In MySQL, we now run in utf-8. This will be set up automatically for new databases, but to upgrade your existing database, please run includes/scripts/makeTablesUTF8.php once after upgrade.... read more

The Error Reporting Service module will be included in the next release of Elastik. This allows you to collect errors from other PHP applications and have them logged in Elastik, creating new tickets automatically for staff to respond to. Staff can also be emailed with full details so they can start debugging instantly.

One small file is included in the PHP application with several lines of configuration, and from then on errors will be picked up and reported by HTTP POST to the Elastik API. No additional storage or tasks are needed in the reporting application.... read more

I just found and patched a security hole in Elastik (SQL Injection) when using a MySQL server.

This effects all versions.

Please upgrade to the new version 0.1.6.2 immediately.

Downloads are at http://sourceforge.net/projects/elastik/files/

I just found and patched a security hole in Elastik (SQL Injection).

This effects versions 0.1.2, 0.1.3, 0.1.4, 0.1.5 and 0.1.6.

Please upgrade to the new version 0.1.6.1 immediately.

Downloads are at http://sourceforge.net/projects/elastik/files/

New features:

Users can edit comments for a certain amount of time after posting.
Can delete saved searches.
Can choose how many tickets from each saved search to show on the dashboard.
Can reorder ticket fields in drag and drop interface.
Minor UI changes.

Bug fixes:

Administrators can now allow no file types to be attached to a project.
Email alerts were being continuously sent until you looked at a ticket, now only sent once.
When filtering tickets, bug effected how search terms where shown on page - but they were used properly. Fixed. ... read more

Improvements include:

A better Theme API - see http://elastik.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/elastik/trunk/includes/docs/writing-themes.txt
Lower memory use
Can change the order fields appear in a project
Can page Tickets

Download from https://sourceforge.net/projects/elastik/files

I will give a short 5 minute talk on Elastik - it'll be a basic introduction and a live demo. It'll be filmed and put online to for those who can't make it.

It'll be on Wed 9th Jun. For more see http://techmeetup.co.uk (the details of the June meeting aren't up yet) or http://groups.google.com/group/techmeetup/browse_thread/thread/14a05520615bcb32/4462244aa9afffdc