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This weekend The GForge Group will, again, be sponsoring HackISU this weekend up in Ames. This is a great opportunity for young developers and engineers to have fun and gain experience working with technology. For our part, we are awarding $750 per team member (up to $3,000) to the team that makes the best use of the GForgeNext API. This is similar to our award from last year but unlike last year we trying to encourage creativity by not giving specific ideas on how to use our API (nor how you might integrate it with other APIs).

So have a look at the GForgeNext API documentation, read our intro to the GForgeNEXT API and let your imagination roam. Any questions you may have ahead of HackISU this weekend can be sent to feedback@gforgegroup.com.

This is a big year for GForge Group — we have redesigned our flagship product, GForge As, and are relaunching it as GForgeNEXT. This Spring we announced that NEXT is now available in free, private beta. Behind the scenes our team of developers has been working many long hours to bring this new product to market. Over the rest of the summer, we will be posting a blog series entitled “Meet the GForge Team.” In this series will be spotlighting each member of our team, their backgrounds, roles, and unique perspectives, so you can get to know the faces behind the software at GForge.

Summer is in full swing and it’s apropos to kick off this summer series by highlighting our interns.

Kyle Goranson
Intern, GForge Group

Where do/did you go to college
Coe College

What is/was your major
Computer Science, Mathematics, and Physics

When did you learn to code
My first formal coding experience (also my first reasonable language) was my computer science 1 class in my Sophomore year of college in which I learned on C++. But my first coding experience was creating programs on my TI-84 calculator in high school, which I figured out myself, and looking back, programming in TI-basic was absolutely horrible.

What is your favorite project you have developed
I’m going to have to go with a group project that spanned a full semester which was building a class registration system in C#. But it’s not the main part of the assignment that makes it my favorite. My group was fairly far ahead so I decided that our registration system would be better if it had a retro arcade hidden within it. So I wrote Pong, Snake, Space Invaders, and Pac Man. All of which I made as close to the original as possible. To get to the arcade, on our login screen you needed to enter your username and then enter the konami code instead of your password.

What are you doing at GForge
I am primarily working on developing an Android app for GForgeNEXT, and I am also expanding test coverage.

What attracted you to work for GForge
I worked with Michael Tutty during HackISU where I was building an app that was integrated with the GForgeNEXT REST API. I really enjoyed the interactions I had with him.

What is your typical day like at GForge
The first thing I do is check to make sure my queue is up to date and then join the standup. When the standup is done, I will move on to working on whatever I have for the day. When I run into issues I will ask a question in chat and this will sometimes turn into a hangout where we figure out the problem. Somewhere in there I will take a break for lunch.

What is your dream job
That is a good question. I have no idea. Definitely something involving programming though.

When you’re not working where can you usually be found where Doing what
I can usually be found at my computer even when I’m not working. I will often be playing an online game with friends, the most common of which is League of Legends.

Last week we rolled out a preview of Git support for GForgeNEXT and we are excited to share the first few working screenshots. Before that, let’s run down the set of Git features supported in GForgeNext:

• Access Git via HTTPS or SSH
• Associate tickets to Git commits via commit messages.
• Change the status of tickets via commit messages.
• Web-based browsing of a Git repository.
• Browse commits and view both in-line and side-by-side diffs.

Before we get to the screenshots of the Git related pages in GForgeNext, we invite you to participate in the GForgeNext Beta Program. Finally, please read on if you are interested in additional Git related features on our development road map.

Git Information

Browsing Git

Navigating Commits

View Diffs

Inline

Side-by-Side

If you like what you see above, check out these additional Git featured planned for GForgeNext:

• Merge Requests – Request and perform peer code reviews right in GForge complete with annotations.
• Better Diffs – Select two different commits and view the diff (inline and side-by-side).
• Chat Integration – Chat will render Git commit hashes pasted into chat giving the user a summary of the commit (e.g. who, when, number of files, number of inserts/deletions) as well as allowing the user to click the commit hash to open up the Git diff viewer.

Again, if you would like to begin working with the features we already you can sign up for the GForgeNext Beta Program.

A quick run-down of the skills we’re looking for, and how we’ll put you to use.

Come and join a world-class company that supports thousands of project teams around the world. We’re looking for folks to fill one or both of two categories:

• First, customer service handling technical issues with customers – sysadmin stuff, configuration, tracking down log entries, etc.
• Second, help with building new features and testing GForge Next.
  

What we’re looking for:

1. Work from home 12-20 hours per week, Monday through Friday. Specific start and end dates are very flexible.
2. We’re pretty flexible on schedule, as long as the results are right.
3. For support duties: A moderate amount of knowledge in Linux/Web systems administration. Stuff like:
   • Linux basics (ps, grep/find, sed/awk, top, iostat, etc.)
   • Package mgmt (e.g., yum, apt-get, rpm, etc.)
   • Scripting (bash, php)
   • Apache httpd setup and config (conf files, modules, etc)
   • Version control tools like CVS, SVN, Git.
   • Bonus points for SQL and Postgres!
4. For GForge Next development duties:
   • Programming experience in PHP (or Python)
   • SQL basics (bonus points for Postgres)
   • Familiarity with HTML5 and CSS
   • Some Javascript programming experience
   • Extra bonus points for Angular 1.x experience.
5. Great customer service attitude. Especially when they might have done it to themselves.
6. Last and most important: willingness to learn a lot of cool stuff, and share what you know every day.

Responsibilities of the Job:

1. Make customers really happy by fixing their problems.
2. Research issues that don’t have an easy answer.
3. Willingness to dig into code to possibly give a better bug report to our engineering team. Maybe even dig in and fix the bug yourself.
4. Work from wherever you like, but be productive and respond quickly during working hours.
5. Lean on other GForge staff and share knowledge whenever possible.
6. Stay in the loop – email is a given. We also camp out together in chat all day and have an informal daily standup, usually on Google Hangouts.
7. Document solutions that can be re-used.
8. Depending on how busy things are, we may even ask you to help test out new features and bug fixtures.

Last week we announced that we’ll be sponsoring HackISU this weekend up in Ames. This is a great opportunity for young developers and engineers to have fun and gain experience working with technology. For our part, we are awarding $3,000 to the team that makes the best use of the GForgeNext API which we also recently discussed. Ahead of this weekend’s event, we wanted to share a couple of ideas for teams looking to use our API.

Mobile is king these days and because we’ve been spending so much time working towards getting GForgeNext out of beta we haven’t had a chance to tackle anything related to mobile. There’s a couple of fairly straightforward ideas in the space worth considering:

1. A mobile application that works with GForgeNext tickets.
2. A messaging application that brings the existing GForgeNext chat functionality to mobile device.

We should have prefaced that these are just two ideas and both are specific to mobile but you may be able to come up with your own ideas after you look at the GForgeNext API documentation. Feel free to let your imagination roam. So dive into these two ideas a bit more.

Working with Tickets

At the core of GForgeNext is the ability to work with tickets. Tickets can represent just about anything but in IT they are used to manage a workload. For example, we use GForgeNext internally as a place to plan which features and bug fixes will go into our releases and then to assign that work out. Taking this a step further, GForgeNext also lets individuals manage their own todo list. Basically as work (often across multiple projects) is assigned to someone, they can add that work to their own todo list in priority order. Here are a few screenshots from GForgeNext showing the existing functionality:

So basically we are looking for similar functionality from a mobile application. To help we think these features would be great:

1. Authentication (logging into GForgeNext)
2. Viewing your list of projects
3. Switching between projects
4. Viewing tickets for a specific project
5. Adding a new ticket
6. Updating an existing ticket
7. Searching for a ticket (regardless of project) by ID.
8. Logout

If that much can be accomplished then here are ideas for extra credit:

1. View your todo list
2. Edit your todo list (move in/out of list, change order tickets within queue)

Again, these are just features we came up with but we definitely encourage teams to consider other features they might find useful.

GForge Chat

Chat in GForgeNext is a critical feature because it allows project teams to collaborate on their work. We are often asked the question, “Why would I want yet another messaging application cluttering up my workstation or mobile phone “. Indeed, there are a lot of ways to collaborate on projects like email, SMS, instant messenger, IRC. However, the utility of GForge Chat is rooted in the fact is it completely integrated with your projects. Before I get into those specifics here is the chat window in GForgeNext:

This shows how chat will work in GForgeNext. The left shows that whenever you are viewing a page specific to a project you will see the embedded chat window. Eventually you will be able to pop the chat panel out into its own window into something that looks like the image on the right (which is our standalone chat in our current product).

In GForgeNext, because every project gets its own chat room we can leverage features that won’t exist using other messaging applications. For example as activity is happening on a project, it is streamed into the chat room (e.g. user joining chat, an updated ticket, a new wiki page being created). Additionally when discussing tickets in chat you can create auto links to ticket by using #-notation (e.g. typing in #1234 into chat would be rendered in chat as a link to ticket #1234).

With that in mind, here are a few features we’d like to see in a messaging application:

1. Authentication
2. Viewing your list of chat rooms (projects)
3. Switching between chat rooms
4. View the messages in a chat room (including project activity)
5. Viewing users in the chat room
6. Submitting a new message
7. Auto linking to tickets using #-notation
8. Auto completing @-notation of users to mention them (see yellow messages in screenshots above)
9. Logging out

That’s a pretty aggressive list of features but some extra credit ideas might be:

1. Deleting one of your own messages
2. Push notifications of messages you are @-mentioned in.
3. Uploading an image

We know you aren’t new to messaging applications so, again, we really encourage you to only use the ideas above as a starting point and we definitely welcome other ideas you can come up with.

Heading into Friday

This is a lot to digest but we really do want teams that use our API to hit the ground running so please definitely read up on the API, feel free to register for a beta account by submitting your email on https://next.gforge.com and if you have any questions before this weekend’s HackISU event send an email to feedback@gforgegroup.com

We are happy to announce we are sponsoring HackISU by offering over $3000 in prizes in several different categories. Plus internships. And swag. HackISU is a Hackathon that will be held on the Iowa State University Campus on February 19-21. This is a great opportunity for budding geeks to hack software, hardware and network. As sponsors we are providing a couple of incentives for participants to learn, use and even hack GForgeNext.

Best GForge API Application – $2400 ($600 per team member)

Build something great using our API – like a mobile version of Team Chat, a Task/Queue manager, a Team Status Wall, or whatever else you come up with.

We’ll be around for nearly all of the HackISU event, ready to demo the API, answer questions and provide any other assistance that’s legal. Check out the live API and docs right now at https://next.gforge.com/apidoc

GForgeNext Beta Users – $1200 ($100 per person, up to 3 teams)

Use GForgeNext to store your code, manage tasks, and stay connected using integrated project chat, for free. We’ll pick up to three teams, and give everyone $100 each.

Even after HackISU is done, you can keep using GForgeNext. We’ll keep it free for academic use, even after the full product goes live.

Instant Interviews for Paid Summer Intern Positions

Got a resume handy Bring a copy for us and we’ll do a quick interview on the spot. Our summer interns get paid real-world money to build real-world software. Interns turn into part-time and full-time GForge employees on a regular basis.

GForge-Branded Swag, of course

We’ve got t-shirts, stickers, all kinds of stuff. Find a reason to talk to us, and we’ll give you something cool.

For more about the GForge Group: https://gforgegroup.com

Any questions prior to the HackISU weekend feedback@gforgegroup.com

GForgeNext is the newest incarnation of our long-lived project collaboration tool. It ties together all of the most important features that teams need to deliver big things – like task tracking, team chat and integrated source control. And in the next several months, we’ll add a lot more.

Next employs a Single Page Application (SPA) front end, and relies on our public REST API for all of its functionality. Everyone can now build great tools and integration points with GForge using the same REST API that we do.

On that topic, then, let’s explore the API and build an example or two.

REST Basics

There are plenty of good, detailed tutorials about REST. Here are the basics you need to get started with ours:

• REST deals in resources. In our case, things like users and projects.
• REST uses the HTTP verbs you already know to get things done. GET, POST, PUT and DELETE are the most common.
• REST also uses the same HTTP response codes that web pages use. 404 That record doesn’t exist. 400 You submitted something invalid. 500 You broke it.
• REST uses the normal query string and request body that HTML pages use.
• Data is typically exchanged (submitted and returned) in JSON format, which is easy to handle on most platforms.
• Our REST API also accepts regular FORM POST format, so it can be called even from static HTML pages or libcurl.
• All of the resources, methods and parameters for the API are documented in our API Docs.

Logging In

GForge has very deep and flexible access controls, and the data you receive from the API will usually depend on the user requesting it. You can submit a separate user ID and password with each request, or get a session ID (from the /usersession endpoint).

Using curl:

[code language=”bash”]
curl -X POST https://USERNAME:PASSWORD@next.gforge.com/api/usersession
[/code]

Results in:

[code language=”javascript”]
<pre>{
"SessionHash":"e3403h9ldbssr2…o781jne2"
}
[/code]

The POST verb is used to create data on the server – in this case, a new session ID is created if the user and password match up. You can then use the session ID in place of the password for further requests. In a browser, the session ID will also be set in a cookie just like visiting the login page on a web site.

To “log out” and remove this session:

[code language=”bash”]
curl -X DELETE https://USERNAME:SESSION@next.gforge.com/api/usersession/SESSION
[/code]

Result:

[code language=”javascript”]
{"result":"success"}
[/code]

Note that you have to include the session ID for both the authentication and to specify which session to delete.

Get Some Data

Now that we have an authenticated user, we can use it to get data from the API. How about the user profile for a friend

Request:

[code language=”bash”]

curl https://myuser:e3403…jne2@next.gforge.com/api/user/my_friend

[/code]

Result:

[code language=”javascript”]

{"id":99999,"unixName":"my_friend","password":null,"firstName":"My","lastName":"Friend",
"email":"my_friend@email.tld","status":1,"externalId":null,"isGroup":"N",
"ccode":"US","language":"en ",
"img_url":"/images/custom_avatars/99999.jpg",
"details_url":"/api/user/my_friend/details","api_url":"/api/user/my_friend"}

[/code]

What’s Next

Read the API docs, and see what you can get under the /api/user and /api/project endpoints. There are a whole bunch of sub-entities within each one. Then maybe move on to /api/tracker or even /api/trackeritem to see tasks.

For the especially brave, try /api/poll…

Got questions Comments Bugs Leave a comment, or find me on Twitter @mtutty.

Today we are announcing the immediate availability the first GForgeNext beta. With GForgeNext we are taking what we have learned about project collaboration over 15 years and distilling it down to what you need right now.

Who is GForgeNext for

This first beta is just that, a beta. GForgeNext is a redesign of some of the key features we offer in GForge Advanced Server. In other words, it is a minimum viable product (MVP) and it offers the following features:

• The ability to create an unlimited number of private projects and quickly send project invitations to your team.
• Git Support
• A basic ticketing system that supports a kanban view and Git integration. You can quickly attach screenshots and documents via drag-n-drop.
• Team Chat which is integrated with Git and the Ticketing system. Chat also support drag-n-drop of any file including rendering support for images and YouTube videos.
• A REST-ful API
• User’s can manage their own todo list across all their projects.
• The ability to control who has access to various parts of your project.

We are offering GForgeNext absolutely free*, the only thing we require is that you give us feedback on a regular basis. To make the feedback loop easy we provide a feedback button on every page that allows you to report bugs and to share ideas and enhancements.

Ideal organizations will run projects with 5 or more team members and, while not required, we’d love to see some organizations in or around Iowa to open up the possibility of collecting onsite feedback.

Are you interested Please request access now. Those users given access to this first beta will be able to invite other users to their projects. All users participating in the beta, not just the leads, will be able to create their own projects.

Still not sure Further below we share some screenshots of an actual project using GForgeNext. If you still have questions please send them to feedback@gforgegroup.com.

* We really do mean free. The only caveat is we haven’t determined how long GForgeNext will be free but we do know it will be for at least two years and that customers that join us during this first beta will receive steep discounts whenever we do begin charging for access.

Who Shouldn’t use GForgeNext

GForgeNext’s current features are stable and can be used as-is with the expectation these features will always perform as expected. In fact, we are using GForgeNext internally. That said, there are some features we have planned that haven’t been implemented yet. These features will be released throughout the coming year but if you require them immediately then you should not use GForgeNext:

• Workflow support in the ticketing system.
• Peer code reviews via Git
• SVN support
• A document management system
• Team Chat in a separate window with support for multiple projects.
• Custom roles and access control – GForgeNext currently offers the following pre-defined roles: Lead and Contributor but eventually you’ll be able to add new roles and customize their level of access.

For now, GForgeNext is only offered as an online service so customers who require the ability to run GForgeNext on their own, internal network will need to wait until later this year. Current customers using GForge Advanced Server will receive regular email updates on the progress of GForgeNext and we will share the date of the first stable release as it approaches along with guides for planning your upgrade.

GForgeNext Screenshots

Project Homepage

Navigation via MegaMenu

Project Administration

Browsing Tickets

Kanban View of Tickets

Editing a Ticket

Git Support

API Documentation