Summer has really flown by. We’ve been so busy adding features and fixes for GForge 6.3, I didn’t even get to the State Fair this year. As we begin winding down, I thought I’d take a few minutes and share the current list of what’s done now and what’s left to do for our release in October.

Before I get into the features and improvements, I want to remind everyone about our Customer Repositories. As you’re reading about all the great things in 6.3, please remember that you can have them right now, by cloning our customer repository and installing the current version of 6.3 in the customer-next branch. It’s the same code we run every day on gforge.com. Test it out, tell your friends, and let us know your feedback.

Now, on to the changes!

What’s New (right now)

There are literally hundreds of individual changes (link), and that level of detail has never made sense to me as a customer. So for this posting, I’m going to talk less about the exact technical changes and more about how the features help you and your team. Even so, there’s waaaaay too much to wade through. So, I’ll make it easier by listing the topics below.

Tracker	Project	Site/Admin
Tracker Email Integration	Burn-Down Enhancements	Trove is Back
Tracker Extra Fields	Project Ratings and Reviews	Jenkins Integration
Tracker Browse	Project Invites	Security Enhancements
Tracker Item	Project Nav Item Counts	Site Administration
Support Tracker	New “Group Member” Access Control
Commits, Tracker Workflow and Time Tracking

Tracker

Tracker Email Integration

Lots of people (ourselves included) have customers who don’t have the time or inclination to visit a GForge site. Since everyone already uses email, it’s an obvious choice for bridging the gap.

• Want to let your business customers, testers, or users create Tracker Items just by sending an email Now you can.
• Of course, it would be really great if they got a response back, so they do. Want to customize what it says Check.
• Do they want to attach a screen shot showing the problem, a spreadsheet with the right numbers, or the log file you need We’ve got that covered, too.
• Wouldn’t it be nice if folks could add a follow-up to the TI by replying to the email We thought so, too.
• Want to use email on any TI No problem – now, every Tracker Item has its own email address, too.

Tracker Extra Fields

So many neat things to play with:

• Don’t need Start Date, Duration or the other “standard” fields for your Tracker Now you can turn them off. In fact, you can turn off any of the default fields for a Tracker.
• We’ve moved the Tracker Admin options from a separate “admin” page to the regular list of Trackers in each project. Less clicks!
• You can now assign a short (alias) name to each value in a select or multi-select type Extra Field. When used for Status, these aliases can be part of a commit message to trigger workflow on Tracker Items (See Commits, Tracker Workflow and Time Tracking, below).
• You can now change the Open/Closed category for a Status element without having to delete and re-create the element.
• New Extra Field: Member List. This field can show users, site groups or both, and is used to drive “Member Of” access control (see “Group Member” Access Control, below).

Tracker Browse

• Quick Browse & File Export – We’ve cleaned up the Quick Browse and Query area so it’s less cluttered and clearer to use. Also, you can get a one-click CSV, XLS or XML download of the exact list you’re looking at (even for multiple pages), whether it’s a Quick Browse or a saved Tracker Query.
• Grid Updates – You can choose which standard fields (like start/end date) show up in the grid display, just like Tracker Extra Fields. And we’ve removed the “Delete” link from each row because, really, who uses that

Tracker Item

• Submitter Field – We’ve made the Submitter field editable. If you enter a Tracker Item on behalf of someone else, it can still belong to them.
• Edit/Delete Follow-Ups – How often does the discussion around a tough problem change course on you Some of the notes that are left after it’s solved can be downright misleading. So now, you can fix the wording on some follow-ups, and delete the ones you don’t need anymore. These actions are part of the Tracker Item’s change history, so your audit trail is still intact.
• Smarter Activity Logging – We’ve centralized storage of significant events across all Project plugins (e.g., Tracker, Docman, Wiki, Discussions, etc.), so that the Activity feed in Chat, the Activity view on your Project Home Page, and Activity reporting are all identical, all the time.
• Assign to “Nobody” – Automatic assignment as part of workflow is pretty cool. But we ran into some scenarios where we actually wanted a remove any assignees, such as when the Tracker Item is closed. So now, in the Workflow Transition edit page, you can specify a person to be assigned, or Nobody.

Support Tracker

This one is pretty big – Tony has already written an entire post about it. We been using an outdated, open-source system for tracking customers, license keys, support tickets and knowledge base articles for a long time. Like, multiple Presidents ago. Many of the features listed here were things we needed to bring all of that support directly into GForge. Starting soon, you’ll be able to open and reply to support tickets via email, get your license keys, and see all of the support incidents for your organization through gforgegroup.com and gforge.com.

What’s really great is that everyone can take advantage of the same features to provide support for GForge, or for your GForge-based projects just like we do. If you provide support of any kind, to internal or external customers, you should take a good look at Support Tracker. Or, just ask us for a tour.

Commits, Tracker Workflow and Time Tracking

GForge already lets you tie files changed in your SCM (CVS, SVN, Git and others) to the Tracker Item you’re working on. That kind of traceability is huge for code reviews, change management and quality control. But I’ve always been a little envious of Github’s ability to close issues with a commit. For developers, it means you commit your code, and don’t have to go back and update a web page, which is a real time-saver. It’s such a great feature, with one little problem: in what world are developers allowed to close bugs Plus, as much as agile is wonderful and fun, it is still a great idea to know how much time something really took – another area where Github’s approach really falls short.

So we’re going to go Github one better – well, THREE better, if you’re counting:

1. Branch Name -> Tracker Item – Putting the Tracker Item ID in the commit message is cool. For the first two or three messages. But it gets boring pretty quickly. How about putting #12345 in the branch name instead, and we’ll associate all of the commits to that Tracker Item. More than one TI (like, fixit_#12345_#23456) Not a problem. Have #12345 in the branch name, and need to point one commit to #23456 Do it, we’ll handle it for you.
2. Commit Message -> Workflow – Usually there’s a step or two after you’ve done the work – testing, customer evaluation, staging for release, all that. If you define the workflow for a Tracker, you can use the status aliases in your commit message to set the next status for a Tracker Item. When you push that commit to the GForge repository, it will automatically move the Tracker Item along. For example, add [#12345,test] to the message, and we’ll set #12345 to status “Ready For Test”.
3. Time Reporting – No one likes reporting time, because you always do it after the work is done. Like the next day, or a week later. If you could report time to a Tracker Item right when you did it, not only would it be brain-dead simple, could it actually become….accurate Try this in your commit message: [#12345,test,1.5] to tie your commit to #12345, AND move it to “Ready For Test” status, AND log an hour an a half of working time to it.

Project

Burn-Down Enhancements

In 6.2.1, we added Burn-down charts for open/closed Tracker Items associated to each Release. And that was pretty cool. For 6.3, we’ve improved the graphing algorithm to give more accurate predictions on velocity and completion date. We also made it possible to add burn-down charts to your Project Home Page, by adding the %%BURNDOWN%% keyword. You can add as many as you like, and put HTML DIVs around them to customize the layout and size.

What’s more you can also choose any Tracker Query for the data source. This Week’s Work, Jeremy’s Bugs, whatever you want, on the front page of the project.

Project Ratings and Reviews

Now your users can leave 5-star ratings on projects, and also add short text reviews. Ratings and reviews are viewable as part of the project information, to anyone with read permissions. The average rating can also be part of search results when looking for Projects.

Project Invites

A simple but powerful feature that we’ve been asked for several times – Project Admins can now invite users to join a project. Enter a list of email addresses, and GForge will send the invitation with a link. You can invite existing GForge users and new ones in the same batch. You can even pick the Project role for those users when they join. One step, done.

Project Nav Item Counts

Different projects use GForge differently – some need lots of mailing lists, some have lots of News/Blog postings, and so on. To make it easier to see where the good stuff is on each project, we’ve added item counts to primary elements in the Project-level menu (left-side nav). You’ll be able to see how many Releases, how many root-level Documents and Folders, Blog Postings, and other things you’ve got, without having to click through to each area of the project.

New “Group Member” Access Control

Remember that new “Member List” Extra Field I mentioned before Member List fields can be used to drive access control to the Tracker and Tracker Items based on the value. For example, you can put users from Customer A in one site group, and users from Customer B in another site group. Then, using the Member List field (let’s label it “Customer” for kicks), you can ensure that only users in Customer A see Tracker Items with that group selected in the “Customer” field.

Member List fields automatically show up in Project Admin’s Role Edit page for Trackers where they are added.

Site/Admin

Trove is Back

Yes, we’ve brought back the Trove system for categorizing projects across many different subjects. Site administrators can create whatever categories your enterprise might need, for technology, project phase, geographical area, business unit, compliance – anything you’d like. Project admins can select the right values for their projects, and update them over time.

In 6.3, we’ve made several improvements to Trove to make it more useful for cross-cutting concerns like PMO/budget/performance management, architecture and regulatory compliance, licensing and component re-use, etc.

• Searching for Projects now includes Trove categories in the search. Use the category names and find projects with the matching Trove entry.
• Search results can include selected Trove categories in the result table. Site admins can define the specific categories to be displayed. So now you can have Project Phase, Business Unit, or whatever other important information shown right away.
• Site admins can now set access controls on Trove categories, for information that needs to be managed outside of the project. We have a customer using this feature for rating the re-use potential and readiness of their individual software projects. Other orgs may choose to rate project performance, architectural, process or regulatory compliance, or even project success/failure (if there is such a thing!) – anything that might need to be evaluated by people outside the project itself.

Jenkins Integration

We’ve updated our Jenkins plugin code to the newest versions of the Jenkins API, and improved the information we send back to GForge about builds. You’ll now see activity records each time the build starts and ends, as well as each build result. Turn on the Activity feed in your Project Chat and see builds happen in real time!

Security Enhancements

• Better protection against frame-based click-jacking
• Removal of server info from the HTTP response
• Protection against bot-based account harvesting, site admins can choose how much user profile info to expose to anonymous users and registered users.
• When updating your SSH key (for SCM access), users will now be required to enter their password as part of the update.
• Site admins can set accounts to lock after n bad attempts. Use 0 to disable this new feature, the default is 5. Admins can re-enable accounts through the GForge Site Admin pages.

Site Administration

• Site Admins can now find orphaned and dead projects with some new search criteria. Click on the “Projects” top-nav tab to see the criteria and search. Then select a set of projects and mark them all for removal with one click. Don’t worry, we’ll still ask if you’re sure first.
• Did your SVN repository get out of sync with GForge commit history/messages We’ve got a script for that. Run the re-parse script to go back through SVN commits and rebuild the corresponding data in GForge.

What’s On The Way (6.3 final)

Well, we’re not done yet. Here’s what we’re going to finish in the next few weeks.

• Search Stats – We’ll keep track of popular keywords, and show the top searches to help users find what they’re looking for, and help site admins understand what’s hot.
• E-Mail Project Members – Project Admins will be able to send email to all members of a project.
• Generated robots.txt – GForge will automatically offer up a robots.txt, to make sure that search engines don’t choke your server
• Executable cronjob scripts – A minor enhancement to make manually running the occasional cron script a bit easier.
• Tracker Browse w/GET – By putting all of the filter params into the URL, you’ll be able to easily copy and paste exact searches to share or bookmark.
• Tracker Query on Tags – Users will be able to filter Tracker Items by tag values
• User Stories Tracker Template – A first-class implementation of Use Cases/User Stories that you’ll be able to clone into your own project. All set up and ready to, uh, agile.
• Centralized “@”-mentions – Being mentioned in live chat, discussions, Tracker Items or even commit messages will go to your Message Wall, your Chat window, the Notifications list, or the Growl-style notifier, depending on how you’re available at the moment.
• SCM Access Control from GForge Database – Instead of generating files for Git access control, a hook script will query GForge users, roles and project memberships in real time. No more giant ACL files for large installations, and no more running the ACL cron manually to repair them.
• CKEditor Update – The latest version of the greatest embedded WYSIWYG editor. Some great new features and sweet visual design (See more at http://ckeditor.com/about/features)

Okay, that was a long list of stuff. I hope you found some interesting things to check out, and some really good reasons to update. But for many of you, there is one more reason to consider…

End of Support for 5.x

With all of these new features, and the roadmap we’re planning for 2014, something’s gotta give. We’ve been making noise all year about the end of support for GForge 5.x, but this time we mean it. With the release of GForge 6.3 in mid-October, we will no longer provide direct support for 5.x installs. If at all possible, you should make plans to upgrade, like, now. Go get the 6.3 snapshot from the Customer repository, fire up a VM copy of your GForge instance and go through the upgrade process. Let us know what questions, problems and tricks you come across, because we want the upgrade to go smoothly when it’s time.

GForge Advanced Server already provides your projects issue and bug tracking, wikis, live discussions, document management and source code management. Starting with the release of v6.3.0 we will leverage many of those pre-existing features in a way that provides all the tools you need to deliver outstanding support to your customers and stakeholders.

Before we dig into what sort of support features you can expect, let’s give a bit of a history lesson. To this point, we have been providing our customers support through an outdated system that no longer meets our needs. As we discussed what we needed out of a new support system it became obvious to us that, with just a few tweaks, nearly all those features already exist in GForge. Since that realization we have made most of the tweaks needed and in the coming weeks we will be migrating all of our existing tickets into GForge. So what does this mean for your projects

Beginning with v6.3.0 we will introduce Support Trackers. Support Trackers work just like any other GForge Tracker but it includes the ability give your customers access to only their support tickets. Furthermore, customer groups can be created allowing all individuals belonging to a customer group access to all their organization’s support tickets. And we didn’t stop there. Support tickets can be created by simply sending an email to a preconfigured email address (e.g. support@example.com). All the subsequent interactions between a customer and your support team can happen via email or through the web interface.

Going forward, we also plan to expand the existing live discussion (chat) feature allowing you to, optionally, provide live chat-based support to your customers. This will include an HTML widget you can embed into your projects that allow customers to launch the support chat window from within your own web applications.

Support is a key success factor to any organization delivering products and services and we are excited that in our quest to itch our own scratch we were able to turn this into something all of our customers can benefit from. We’d love to hear what you think of this feature, if you would use it and to answer any questions you might have. Let us know what you think by posting a comment below or by sending email to feedback@gforgegroup.com.

 

The GForge Group has an open contract position for a PHP developer to help with improving GForge Advanced Server and providing customizations for our customers. This position is expected to last just over 3 months. All submissions received at opportunities@gforgegroup.com on or before July 12th, 2013 will be considered.

What We are Looking For

• Work from your home or office. Iowans will get an extra look but we are open to candidates living elsewhere in the United States or abroad.
• Knowledgeable in Linux/Unix system administration including Apache+PHP installation and configuration, scripting (bash, etc) and package management.
• Serious programming chops. While qualified candidates must be proficient in PHP, the best candidate will have real-world experience in additional web-based languages. The candidate must also be solid with SQL (PostgreSQL a bonus), JavaScript (jQuery a bonus), Git, REST, SOAP. ORM experience would help (Doctrine or Propel a bonus).
• Open Source Advocate. Most of the software we work with is based on open source technologies. We want candidates familiar with using open source development tools and prefer people who are or have contributed to open source projects.
• Someone who embraces teamwork and can keep up in a face-paced environment. Must be able to stay focused, yet knows when to ask questions.

Responsibilities

• Work will include roughly 70% backend PHP development and 30% frontend work.
• Perform code reviews (pull requests).
• Attend weekly, online sprint planning meetings (Mondays).
• Attend daily, online stand-up meetings.
• While we expect you to be working roughly 8am – 5pm CST, Monday-Friday we can be a bit flexible.

Warning to Consulting Shops

This isn’t our first rodeo. We are looking for a first-round draft pick so help us by not wasting our time with junior level candidates. Please send us no more than two candidates from your company. We have a long memory so we will remember who sent us serious contenders and we will definitely factor that in on future opportunities.

This summer has been full of non-stop action as The GForge Group released v6.2.1, started work on v6.3.0 and began planning a major release in v7.0.0. We’ve been keenly aware that our documentation, blog and social media interactions have lagged behind so we’ve hired a new intern to help us in those areas, Olivia Treu

Olivia will be a junior at Huntington University in Indiana. Treu, an Iowa native, was a biology/pre-med major but has since changed her major to mathematics. “I have always loved math and had a natural talent and curiosity for it, until this past year I hadn’t thought of it as a career option”, says Treu. Trust us, she *is* a first-class geek.

“I like puzzles, problems that needs to be solved, especially when no one else can figure it out. I think I love math so much because it is a platform for me to solve problems. As I have gotten into higher level math courses it is all about finding the right method for solving a problem. My dad is a computer geek so I get my interest in technology from him. I am not very far into my Computer Science classes but I find it all intriguing.” Olivia has also dabbled with Linux distributions and in her free time is a Trekkie…she particularly likes the Voyager series. When Olivia isn’t geeking out, she is taking care of her new kitten, Nish, painting, watching TV & Movies, and playing video games with her brothers.

Olivia is wrapping up her third week here with The GForge Group and says, “I really appreciate how friendly and welcoming the GForge team has been to me. One thing that I really like about [the team] is that a main concern is always to ask what can we do for our customers How can we make this experience better for them, what tools and features can we offer them that no one else can ”

We couldn’t have said it better ourselves. Please keep an eye on our blog where Olivia will be posting regularly this summer in addition to sharing screencasts on specific features of GForge Advanced Server. You can also expect to see her work front-and-center with the release of GForge v6.3.0 which will include updated documentation delivered right inside of each GForge AS instance!

With the release of GForge AS 6.2.1 work has begun on version 6.3.0 and we have started planning the next point release, 7.0. The GForge 6.x series has been live for two years and in the meantime we’ve continued to support the 5.x series. We have realized we can’t effectively plan for version 7.0, continue development on 6.3.0, and maintain support entire 5.x series. Therefore, after October 1st, 2013 we will stop providing patches, fixes, or customer support for the 5.x series.

If you’re using any of the 5.x versions, make plans to upgrade to v6.2.1 as soon as you can. There have been a lot of improvements from v5.x to v6.2.1 so be sure to checkout the ChangeLog, and you may download v6.2.1 of GForge AS from here. If you need help planning your upgrade, let us know by visiting https://gforgegroup.com/support.

If you have questions or comments contact us anytime at feedback@gforgegroup.com.

 

Today we are happy to announce the immediate availability of GForge Advanced Server v6.2.1. This release is primarily a bug-fix release with a few minor, but powerful features added in. Here are some of the key updates to v.6.2.1:

Download GForge Advanced Server v6.2.1 Now!

Improved Git Integration

Git integration prior to v6.2.1 was pretty good but we’ve improved it in many ways:

• Work Branch Tracker Integration – Use #-notation in your work branch name to ensure all commits on that branch are tied to the given tracker item. For example, if you create a work branch in Git called bug-fix-#10001, once you make some commits to the branch to push it back to GForge all the commits will be tied to tracker item #10001.
• Improved Commit Tracker Integration – While you can use the #-notation in your Git work branch as shown above, you can still tie individual commits using [#XXXX]-notation in your commit message (e.g. #> git commit -m “[#10001] Addresses CSS issue in login DIV”). You could already do this but we’ve improve the commit hooks in GForge so you will see feedback from GForge letting you know the association(s) were actually made. Also, this particularly feature works in CVS and Subversion as well.
• Git Pushes on Multiple Branches – Prior to v6.2.1 there was a bug where GForge only successfully processed the first branch it saw in the push. This has been fixed to include all updated branches in the push.
• Require Tracker Item IDs On All Commits – Under the left navigation under Git->Admin you can now configure your Git repository to require a tracker ID either in the work branch using #-notation or in the commit message using [#XXXX]-notation. Prior to v6.2.1 this only worked for CVS and Subversion. When enabled, pushes that fail this check will receive a user-friendly error letting the user know the Tracker Item ID is required.
• Client-Side Pull Requests – We will be adding server-side pull requests to next generation of GForge Advanced Server. In the meantime we have included a script, /opt/gforge/tools/git-scripts/git-process, that provides users on Unix/Linux/MacOSX a similar workflow. The script takes the work branch and destination branch as arguments (e.g. #>git-process bug-fix-#10001 master). This will produce a DIFF and then launch the pre-configured DIFF tool (located in ~/.gitconfig). Once you are done reviewing the DIFF it will then ask you if you want to merge and push the changes back to GForge.

Various UI Improvements

GForge AS v6.2.1 also include a few user-interface updates that will make working with GForge more enjoyable.

• Wiki Improvements – The old wiki tabs have been moved to the top of the page and now more resemble a MediaWiki-style interface. Also, if you happen to navigate to a non-existent Wiki entry and your account has edit privileges, you will be presented with the Wiki editor immediately.
• Tracker Item Browse Page – One of the most used features in GForge is the Tracker Item browse page so we’ve improved this a bit. We now allow you to choose a pre-defined Tracker Query or select “Quick Filter…” which allows you to customize the search criteria the browse page uses. Additionally we’ve added the total record count to the Tracker Item browse page so you always know how many Tracker Items matched the current query or filter.
• GForge Specific 404 Page – Instead of giving the traditional Apache 404 error page, GForge v6.2.1 now gives a stylized 404 page that allows users a chance to search for whatever it is they are looking for.
• Improved Left Navigation Bar – Long project names never did fit well in the project left hand navigation bar. This has been fixed by moving the title of the project to the main content area.

Notable Miscellaneous Improvements

There are also a few other improvements that warrant a quick mention:

• We’ve improved the Project->Reporting->Project Activity page to allow you to filter all activity by project member. This will prove useful in agile shops in preparing for their stand-up meetings.
• Project->Reporting now includes a burn down report. While not explicitly a velocity report, this gives project members a good feel for the velocity of the project and can give you a rough ETA on the completion of the current sprint/version.
• Tracker Item Follow-ups are now included in exported Tracker queries.
• We’ve replaced the confusing “Assignee/Admin” role with a simple “Assigner” role. This will be much less confusing for project administrators.
• The GForge Jenkins plugin got a minor refresh. It is now integrated (partially) with project chat. Organizations exploring continuous integration and build automation can leverage Jenkins immediately for their GForge projects which includes the ability to create new tracker items on failed builds (e.g. failed unit tests or builds that fall below the pre-configured code coverage standard)
• We’ve added the ability for Discussion Administrators to delete messages from Live Discussions.
• The GForge Eclipse Plugin now works with latest version of Eclipse.

BugFixes

As we said already, GForge v6.2.1 includes a number of bug fixes…too many to enumerate here so please have a look at the Complete GForge v6.2.1 ChangeLog

Download GForge Advanced Server v6.2.1 Now!

This week has been exciting for us a The GForge Group. We’re wrapping up work on GForge AS v6.2.1 and have broken ground on v6.3.0. However, more exciting news that we’ve hired our first ever intern, Rick Button.

Rick is a freshman at Purdue University. I can’t begin to tell you how surprised we were to find a candidate as qualified as Rick with less than a year of college under his belt. He’s always been a geek, having dove into problem solving and programming at a very young age which made the decision to work on his computer science degree a no-brainer. When we bring on new talent, we make it very clear we are after problem solvers, willing to work a variety of technologies towards a solution. Rick has already picked up Java, PHP, Ruby on Rails and has just started giving Rust a test spin. In fact, Rick’s obsession with technology spills over into his free time where he likes to learn how to build decentralized systems and he admits to surfing osdev.org more than is probably healthy.

He is only 4 days into his new role with us but he loves being able to work while attending college and (thankfully) loves the chat feature in GForge which has allowed us to hook him up with our entire support and engineering teams. Based on the number of support tickets he has fielded and the handful of commits he has already made, we’re sure he’ll be making some great contributions.

Finally, we’d be remiss without giving a special shout-out to Mark Zieg. Mark, though not a customer, has been following our blog and we found Rick when Mark posted the internship opening on Reddit. Thanks, Mark…that gesture was tremendously humbling!

As I write this we are putting the finishing touches on GForge Advanced Server v6.2.1. I’ll share a few of the things you can expect from that release in a separate post, however, I wanted to share our plans for v6.3.0 which our engineering team started on today.

Like any software shop, we take support very seriously. Our ability to help customers iron out any issues and to get the most out of GForge is closely linked with our success and while we have done a lot to improve the initial quality of each GForge release (as noted in Quality Improvements on Untestable Code) we haven’t improved our support system. We decided this growing problem had to be addressed and to do this we not only wanted to improve how we deliver the best support possible, we wanted to provide our customers the same support tools we use as part of their GForge projects. For this to happen, we will have to change a few things.

We are currently using an open source product that we’ve customized over the years to provide support. This product is missing a number of key features like the ability to search existing tickets, the ability to send out reminders to tickets waiting for customer feedback or the ability to send email reminders to our support team on open tickets still requiring action. As we thought about how to solve these problems, it didn’t take long for us to realize that with a few tweaks, GForge’s Tracker feature could do all of this. With that said I wanted to share the key features of the support system we are implementing inside of GForge:

1. Support tickets should be able to be opened by simply sending an email to (e.g.support@gforge.com).
2. New and existing support tickets with attachments should have the files tied to the ticket.
3. Customers should be able to access, search and update any of their tickets .
4. Customers inside the same organization should be able to access, search and update any tickets tied to their organization.
5. Customer should be able to respond to tickets by simply replying to the support updates sent from GForge.
6. Customers should receive email updates when one of their tickets is updated by our support team.
7. Our support team should receive email updates when a ticket is updated by a customer.
8. Customers should receive regular updates on tickets awaiting feedback from them.
9. Support engineers should receive regular updates on tickets awaiting their action.
10. When a ticket waiting on feedback from a customer reaches a configured age, the system should email the user letting them know if nothing is done the ticket will be closed.

Not only do we want to provide our customers these features, we want to expose these updates to all GForge projects so our customers can take advantage of them on their own projects. And this is just the start of what we have planned or GForge v6.3.0. Once the support implementation is done, we will be using it as our primary support tool from gforge.com and begin working on some other initiatives, most notably the addition of a new REST API.

While the existing SOAP API in GForge has served us well, it has proven fragile, frustrating for our customers and it limits our ability to bring bigger and better updates in the future. The GForge REST API will scratch a few key itches for us:

1. Our REST API will, for the first time, include a complete test suite allowing us to ensure as we improve GForge that we are aren’t breaking anything.
2. The REST API will allow us to give GForge a much needed user interface overhaul.
3. Integrating other tools with GForge will be easier for customers who use REST instead of SOAP.

This is an exciting time for our team because soon we will be able to give customers better support and with the REST API we will finally have the foundation needed to bring some significant features to GForge in the future. If any of you have any questions or comment please feel free to post it here or to send an email to feedback@gforgegroup.com

 

GForge Group is looking for a part-time college intern to provide first and second-level technical support to our customers. Come and join a world-class company that supports thousands of project teams around the world.

What we’re looking for:

1. Work from home 12-20 hours per week, Monday through Friday. Initial term will be through the end of the spring semester with an option to be extended through the summer.
2. We’re pretty flexible on schedule, as long as the results are right.
3. 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. Programming experience preferred (PHP, Python)
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.
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.

This sounds amazing! Where do I sign

Whoa, hang on tiger. Send us a note at intern@gforgegroup.com. Include stuff like your name. Make sure we’ll understand how awesome you are. We will interview you and a few other people (just to make it look fair), and go from there.