activeCollab blog

activeCollab 2.3 - Now with Invoicing and SVN Integration!

Ilija Studen — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 05:58:20 CDT

It's been a long beta (mostly due to summer and holidays - we need some rest too!), but here it is: activeCollab 2.3. This new release is available to everyone who had valid Upgrades and Support plan when beta was started (June 25th). Download package is available on your activeCollab profile pages, as usual:

This release is built on top of activeCollab 2.1.4 and brings two new modules to Corporate edition:

Invoicing module lets you prepare and issue invoices. This module is built right into activeCollab and does not require any external invoicing service (and therefore no additional monthly fees);
Source modules adds Subversion integration to the system. Now you can add as many Subversion repositories to the projects as you want. activeCollab automatically connects commit messages with tickets. You can even complete a ticket with a commit message!

Release notes are available here. Installation and upgrade instructions are same as for beta versions. Just don't forget to install Invoicing and Source modules once you install / upgrade your setup.

Thank you for your continued support!

PS: Hosted demo still runs activeCollab 2.1.4, but we'll have it updated soon ;)

Billings Module for activeCollab, with QuickBooks Integration

Ilija Studen — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 04:32:06 CDT

Folks from Realnets released their Billings module for activeCollab. What makes this module special is that it is designed for companies who extensively use QuickBooks in their business, and want their project collaboration tool to be integrated with it:

This is their first release, based on their own needs as a company so they are also looking for feedback from the other activeCollab users.

Update to Planning Module by appsMagnet

Ilija Studen — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 04:02:49 CDT

Great folks at appsMagnet just released a new version of Planning module for activeCollab. If you are not familiar with Planning module, it's a module that adds features such is outline management of milestone, checklists, tickets and tasks (all from one screen), Gantt charts for one or more projects and much more.

Sounds interesting? Head over to Planning module 1.2 announcement post to learn more about the new release.

activeCollab 2.2.2 is Available for Download

Ilija Studen — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 06:23:25 CDT

We are proud to announce that activeCollab 2.2.2 beta is available for download. This is a third and final activeCollab 2.2 beta release. It brings a lot of fixes to the core (same fixes from activeCollab 2.1.4) as well as a lot of fixes to beta versions of Invoicing and Source modules.

For full list of changes, please check Release Notes. Installation package is available to everyone who have valid Upgrade and Support package, and you can find it on your activeCollab.com profile, as additional download:

Installation and upgrade instructions are available in the Administrator’s Manual. If you have any questions, or need our assistance, please don’t hesitate to contact us.

Thank you for helping us test activeCollab 2.2! We hope that you’ll enjoy improved features and stability in this release.

activeCollab 2.1.4 is Available for Download

Ilija Studen — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 12:41:30 CDT

We are proud to announce that activeCollab 2.1.4 is available for download. This is a bug fix release with a couple of internal fixes that improve stability and usability of the product. For full list of changes, please check out release notes.

activeCollab 2.1.4 is available for download from your activeCollab.com profile:

Installation and upgrade instructions are available in documentation section of the website. If you have any questions, or need our assistance, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us.

Thank you for your continuous support!

activeCollab 2.2.1 Beta is Available for Download

Ilija Studen — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 15:22:12 CDT

We are proud to announce that activeCollab 2.2.1 beta is available for download. This is a second activeCollab 2.2 beta release and it brings a lot of fixes to the core (same fixes from activeCollab 2.1.3) as well as a lot of fixes to beta versions of Invoicing and Source modules.

Installation and upgrade instructions are available in the Administrator’s Manual. If you have any questions, or need our assistance, please don’t hesitate to contact us.

Thank you for helping us test activeCollab 2.2! We hope that you’ll enjoy improved features and stability in this release.

Future of activeCollab and IE6 Support

Ilija Studen — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 09:26:26 CDT

Soon people will stop supporting Internet Explorer 6 no matter what you may feel about this at the moment, just like they did with Netscape 4 a couple of years ago. Some companies have already stopped checking their pages in IE6 (like Apple with MobileMe, or 37signals) and some are still keeping their pages compatible, but recommending users to upgrade or to chose a better browser (Google, Facebook).

All that is for a good reason - IE6 has been with us since 2001, Microsoft has released two major updates since then (IE7 and IE8); it’s insecure, unstable and a real pain to develop for (incomplete CSS support, many compatibility problems, poor JavaScript performance, etc):

Because of all of these reasons, IE6 support is going away from activeCollab as well. The only questions are “When?” and “How?”

“When?” - As soon as we get to the next version of the activeCollab’s layout and its default theme. The system grew quite a bit since it was launched back in October 2007. Two years is a long time for a young product like activeCollab, so we’ll need to improve the application layout to better support all the features that were added since v1.0, as well as all the features that will be added in the next couple of years.

This does not mean that support is going away tomorrow - as long as activeCollab 2 is the latest stable version, full IE6 support will be present. Version 3 and later will require a modern browser. We still have 6 - 12 months until then, but that day will come and we feel that it’s best to announce our plans upfront.

“How?” - One of our most important jobs is to make sure that activeCollab make you look good and professional. Completely dropping support for IE6 would make our users look bad to their customers who are forced to use IE6. Because of that, we'll work to make system usable in Internet Explorer 6, but some of the features that require modern browser will be disabled.

To summarize - sometime during 2010 we will stop to fully support Internet Explorer 6 in activeCollab and we will limit the support to basic features only.

Illustration by John Martz.

activeCollab 2.1.3 is Available for Download

Ilija Studen — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 11:52:46 CDT

We are proud to announce that activeCollab 2.1.3 is available for download. This is a bug fix release with a couple of internal fixes that improve stability and usability of the product. Most important fixes are:

Editor expander works well in Google Chrome
Native mailer options are configurable
Administrators can select which headers will be set by activeCollab when email notifications are sent

For full list of changes, please check out release notes.

activeCollab 2.1.3 is available for download from your activeCollab.com profile:

Installation and upgrade instructions are available in documentation section of the website. If you have any questions, or need our assistance, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us.

Thank you for your continuous support!

Evolution of Invoicing Module, so far

Ilija Studen — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 10:01:07 CDT

Software engineers mostly agree that one of the best ways to write quality software is to start with something simple and than improve it through several iterations, based on the feedback you get from the users. The result of the each iteration is an operating version of the software. As people use the software, its strengths and weaknesses are revealed so developers can use gathered information to build the next version. Then this cycle is repeated.

One feature that was created as a result of such approach is Invoicing module. We shipped a public beta a couple of days ago and here’s how the story goes so far.

Invoicing module has started as one of our learning modules. When we hire a new programmer, we give him a module to develop so he can get familiar with activeCollab platform and to produce something that our customers are asking for. The original idea was just to get the model right (how module works internally), and then to build the interface on top of it later.

The initial list of the features included just a support for unlimited number of invoices that can be issued in multiple currencies. Each invoice could have an unlimited number of items and the support for specifying different tax rates. Here in Serbia, for example, we have two different VAT rates - 8% and 18% - if you sell a computer to a customer, CPU, mother board, etc. then your VAT would go at 8% rate, but for monitor and printer it's 18%.

The idea to work on a model separately and to build interface later didn't work quite well, so the interface was built together with the model.

At the same time Goran suggested that we should add the support for generating PDF-s instead of HTML invoices. Even though I was originally against the idea because it would delay the module release, he convinced me that it’s not a big deal and developed a PDF generator in just a couple of days.

Soon after that, we started to use the module internally. One of the first remarks we got was from our accountant - why the invoice has been issued in English language to a Serbian company? It was fine for billing foreign customers, but not for local companies. She insisted that future invoices to local companies should be in Serbian. That's how we added the support to select the language of each invoice, so now you can bill your clients from France or Germany and have the invoice generated in their native language, even if it isn't the default language of your activeCollab setup.

At that point, we were ready for private beta - first (and probably the last) beta that we did with isolated group of users. The users did great, but having private beta is just too much work for us. The worst thing is that, at some point, you have to start rejecting requests from honest customers who just want to help.

The feedback received from beta testers was great! Here are just a couple of things that people suggested and that eventually ended up in the module:

Option to specify the price of the item, either as pre-tax or post-tax, and have the other value calculated automatically based on tax rate that you select.
Create an invoice based on all time records logged to the specific ticket and to all of its sub-tasks.
Support for predefined invoice items (the user is selling hosting together with design service, and there were couple of hosting plans that were always the same).
Support for items that had price set to 0 or negative value. Somehow, it never crossed our mind that people actually give discounts or offer free services, and that they want them to be included in the invoice.

Goran has also added a page where you can configure invoice colors. He worked on Unicode support, polished the invoice form, improved the performance in cases when there are a lot of items on the page, and much more.

The Invoicing module is now available as public beta. Anyone with valid license and Support and Upgrade plan can download activeCollab 2.2 beta from their profile and take Invoicing and Subversion modules for a spin. Because it went through private beta, both modules are already pretty stable and we hope that we’ll have a final 2.2 shipped very soon.

Thanks everyone who helped to shape Invoicing module into what it is now. activeCollab is finally a project collaboration tool that has well integrated system for preparing and issuing invoices. Now you can use activeCollab alone to have all things covered, instead of using multiple services (at additional monthly fees!).

All suggestions, comments and questions are welcome, as always!

activeCollab 2.2 Beta is Available for Download

Ilija Studen — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 06:44:44 CDT

We are proud to announce that activeCollab 2.2 beta is available for download for everyone who has valid Upgrades and Support plan:

This release is built on top of activeCollab 2.1.2 and brings two new modules to Corporate edition:

Invoicing module lets you prepare and issue invoices. This module is built right into activeCollab and does not require any external invoicing service (and therefore no additional monthly fees);
Source modules adds Subversion integration to the system. Now you can add as many Subversion repositories to the projects as you want. activeCollab automatically connects commit messages with tickets. You can even complete a ticket with a commit message.

Release notes are available here. Installation and upgrade instructions are same as for previous version. Just don't forget to install Invoicing and Source modules once you install / upgrade your setup.

We hope that you'll find these additions useful and that you'll join the beta test and help us get stable releases out of the doors as soon as possible. Thank you for your support!