We’ve been working on a really simple feature we’re calling DoneDone Digest. It’s a live feed of the issues you’re working on across all of your projects. Each time there’s a change, a new notification drops onto the page.

For those of you who hate emails, you’ll love this feature. Leave it open while you’re working, and you’ll have the same notification feedback which email provides without all the, er, email.

What about emails? You’re still going to get ‘em for a couple of weeks. We want to get this feature right before we excuse everyone from emails. Once we get some feedback from you all on how you’re liking things, we’ll add in the ability to disable emails on a per project basis.

Wait for it! Waaaaiiiit for it.

We also have a little excitement here at the shop. We’re about to cross the 1000 active accounts mark. We’re modest little mice so this is a cool milestone for us.

1000 accounts.  We  should dust off the confetti cannon in the closet.

To mark the occasion, we’re going to release DoneDone Digest on the same day as our 1000th account is opened. It’s a big win for everyone. Kind of like the time that guy from Texas won a Toyota 4Runner on Wheel of Fortune. Only bigger and international.

Enjoy. And for those of you who can’t wait to get rid of email, please give us some feedback.

API Wrappers: C#, Python, PHP

A couple of weeks ago, we embarked on an excursion to create scripts in various languages for folks to import issue tracker data from other services. How devious, I know. We’ll, we’ve run into a few snags. The quality of the data from other services leaves lots to be desired. So, we’re approaching it from a different direction.

One good benefit of our mistrial, however, is that our new team member, Daniel Chen, coded up DoneDone API wrappers in C#, Python, and PHP. We’ve posted all that goodness up at GitHub and we’ve also added some beautiful documentation to use them on our API page.

DoneDone API wrappers on GitHub

View multiple images as a gallery

If an issue has multiple images as attachments, you can now click through them all via the image viewer instead of having to close out, click another, and on. It turns out the jQuery plug in we’re using made it pretty easy to do, so why not. It’s a slick and super helpful way to compare screenshots. Or jogging puppies.

View multiple images as a gallery

We follow the same general conventions other issue tracking services have followed in the past in that you’ll be using some simple syntax in your commit messages, the contents of which are sent over to DoneDone via webhook by the respective service.

While we’re cooking up more formal documentation for both services, we wanted to get some preliminary instructions for getting DoneDone speaking version-controlese.

What you can do

• Change an issue’s status
• Change an issue’s Fixer
• Add a comment to an issue
• Add tags to an issue

Information you need to get started

• Your DoneDone API key  - This is located on your own Profile page (screenshot)
• Your DoneDone URL - You’ll find this, eh hmm, in your browser’s address bar provided you have DoneDone open.n (screenshot)
• A DoneDone project’s ID - This is the number right after the *.com/ if you’re on a project’s landing page. (screenshot)

Why don’t we put this info on the Project Settings page? Good idea. It’ll be up this Friday, January 27th

Setting up Beanstalk

First, log into your Beanstalk account, navigate to the repository you want to integrate with a DoneDone project, and select Setup > Integration > Web Hooks. For the URL, enter the URL tied to your DoneDone project’s integration endpoint. For Beanstalk, it looks like this:

https://user:APIKEY@[account].mydonedone.com/issuetracker/hook/process/[projectID]/beanstalk

Once integrated, Beanstalk will post data to DoneDone each time you commit something to your SVN repo or each time you push something to your Git repo. If you’re interested in a bit more help, there’s a good article on the subject over at www.BeanstalkApp.com.

Setting up GitHub

To integrate with your Github repository, you’ll need to add a post-receive URL to the Service Hooks settings of any repository at GitHub. They’ve got some pretty simple instructions for how to do this up at http://help.github.com/post-receive-hooks/. As for providing a URL endpoint for DoneDone, you’ll need to create something as follows:

https://user:APIKEY@[account].mydonedone.com/issuetracker/hook/process/[projectID]/github

Creating your message to DoneDone

Regardless of whether you’re using Beanstalk (svn or git) or GitHub, when your repository receives a commit or a push from a developer, it will send a message describing what happened to DoneDone. This message, in essence, is a formatted comment included in your push/commit. The syntax DoneDone expects to see is as follows:

Your general commit comments would go here. This will be inserted
as a comment in DoneDone for the issues you specify below.
  [#ISSUE_NUMBER tags:"QUOTED,LIST,OF,COMMA,SEPARATED,TAGS"]
  [#ISSUE_NUMBER reassign:VALID_EMAIL@OF.DONEDONE.USER]
  [#ISSUE_NUMBER status:VALID_STATUS]

If you want to include several edits in a single action, it would look something like this:

[#ISSUE_NUMBER status:VALID_STATUS tags:"QUOTED,LIST, OF,
COMMA, SEPARATED,TAGS" reassign:VALID_EMAIL@OF.DONEDONE.USER]

Valid Edits

Each action tag must begin with a pound sign (#) followed by a valid issue number after which at least one (and up to all three) of the following actions (case-sensitive):

• status
• tags
• reassign

Valid Statuses

The status action, if provided, changes the status of the issue and valid values for this key are as follows (case-insensitive):

• Ready For Next Release
• Closed
• Fixed
• Open
• In Progress
• Not An Issue
• Not Reproducible
• Missing Information
• Pushed Back
• Ready For Retest
• Fix Not Confirmed

Tag additions

The tags action, if provided, must be a comma separated list of tags wrapped in quotes.

Reassigning Fixers

The reassign action, if provided, must be the valid email address of a person on the DoneDone project to whom you wish to reassign the issue.

A note on limits

You can add a total of 10 of actions in a commit (for SVN) or push (for Git). If you provide more than 10, only the first 10 will be processed. This is an arbitrary number in place to prevent overuse while we ensure the service is in healthy shape under normal usage.

It’s also important to mention that DoneDone maps users via their email address, so the email address you use with Github or Beanstalk needs to match the email address of your DoneDone account.

Examples

Example A

I fixed the weird glitch with the font that happens in IE7 and IE8.
I also fixed a javascript bug. Lastly, I stubbed in an image for
the new graphic we want to use so that the designer can create
a new one.[#19 status:Fixed tags:"ui"]
[#20 status:Fixed tags:"javascript"]
[#23 reassign:designer@wearemammoth.com tags:"graphics,ui"
status:In Progress]

In DoneDone, this will mark issues #19 and #20 as Fixed and add the tags “ui” and “javascript”. Issue #23 will be reassigned to designer@wearemammoth.com, the tags “graphics” and “ui” will be added, and the status will be set to In Progress. The comment describing the changes to these issues will be “I fixed the weird glitch with the font that happens in IE7 and IE8. I also fixed a javascript bug. Lastly, I stubbed in an image for the new graphic we want to use so that the designer can create a new one.”

Example B

Sped up the issue detail page by 10%.
[#22]

In DoneDone, the only thing that’ll happen is the comment “Sped up the issue detail page by 10%” will be added to issue #22. 

Wrap up

This should get the party started for now. We’ll be working on the experience a bit, by adding some preformed URL endpoints under the Project Settings page in DoneDone. Hopefully, the good fellas over at Beanstalk will help get DoneDone-specific updates refined on their end of things.

If you’ve got any questions or issues, please holler. Either here in comments or via www.getdonedone.com/support if it’s urgent. Otherwise, enjoy, and happy committing.

NOTE: There will be a bit of downtime, probably about 30 minutes. We’ll be posting an in-app alert as a reminder, and will otherwise update via Twitter (@getdonedone)

Drag & Drop your files directly into DoneDone

Adding a file to a website the old way is a time suck. You click “upload a file”, navigate to the file, select it, then upload it. Then, you do it again if you’ve got more than one to share. You’ll now be able to drag multiple files from your desktop directly into DoneDone. That’s it. They automatically upload and you can preview them right then and there. This feature is available anywhere you can upload a file: creating a new issue, adding a comment, or editing either.

Here’s now it looks:

Now for the Microsoft disclaimer: If you’re using Internet Explorer, well, you’ll get the old experience. This feature is available for Chrome, Safari, and Firefox browsers with acceptable support for HTML5.

This will save you time. Pure and simple. The only thing missing now is an integrated screenshot tool. Eh-hmmm, any takers?

Update issues via Beanstalk SVN & Git commits

One of the biggest requests from developers aside from a comprehensive API has been integration with Git and Subversion repositories. We’ve taken the first step with our friends at Wildbit by integrating with their Beanstalk service. Now, developers will have a full range of DoneDone commands they can include in their Git/SVN commits, such as changing status, adding comments, re-assigning, and so on.

We’ve gotten the basics done, and will be working with the crew at Wildbit to brush up presentation in their management application over the next couple of weeks. Once we’re up and running, we’ll publish some documentation on how to get the two working nicely. Next up for version control integration? Likely GitHub, Bitbucket and Codesion.

A few design tweaks

Finally, there’s a few improvements to our UI.

Status bars

The status bar notifications you see at the top of the page when you create an issue, pay an invoice, add a user, and so on, were a bit dry and the color strategy was wonky. We warmed things up a bit, and made a more intuitive color scheme.

Wow, that’s green.

In our last release, the dashboard got pretty green. It’s a bit much honestly, so we’ve introduced a couple of other colors to help those tired eyes pick the page apart.

A bit less green, a bit more blue

Minutiae

If you use an iPhone to access DoneDone you know that there’s no mobile version of the site. Well, that’s still the case, but we disabled the default capitalization from the sign in page so at least you’ll spend less time with validation errors, and more time inside the app.

As always, if you have any questions or concerns, you can get in contact via our support page, or directly at support@mydonedone.com.

A new Issue Filter design

Lot’s of users have been glancing over a rather important feature of DoneDone, that of the Custom Search & Filter utility, because of it’s rather subtle design. It’s available from beneath the project title on a project’s landing page. Here’s a shot of the old design.

The old Issue Filters dropdown

The new design is more inviting, as is the Create New Issue Filter button which allows you to create your own filters. We also dropped the word “Search” from describing the feature. It’s a filter of a project’s issues, so now it’s just called the Issue Filter feature. In an upcoming release, we’ll also be cleaning up the actual Create new Issue Filter screen, or what we lovingly refer to as ‘the checkbox farm’.

The new Issue Filters dropdown

Default an Issue Filter to show every time you visit a project

In addition to the design updates, you can also now designate a Filter to be the default issues you see when you visit a project. Just click the little link next to the ‘Filter issues by drop down’ and boom!, that’ll be what loads the next time around. This also works with tags. Click a tag from the right-hand column, click “Set as default”, and ka-pow!

Default an Issue Filter on a Project landing page

Testers & Fixers can now edit an issue

Little known fact, but until this week’s update, Testers and Fixers had to lean on a project administrator to make edits to an issue, such as adding tags, editing a description, etc. Well, now Testers and Fixers can move the battlefield to the Edit state of an issue. Won’t that be fun? Do note, folks, that any edits to issues are documented in an issue’s history.

Various UI updates

Finally, we spent a bunch of time refining the periphery of DoneDone’s pages.

A few updates around the neighborhood

1. Global Header

We gave the header bar quite a bit of polish. It’s not only prettier, but it saves quite a bit of vertical space, getting even more primary issue content front and center in your screen. This, in addition to seeing your lovely avatar when you click your name in the upper right, should make you a pinch happier than you were before.

2. Cranks become pencils, and ‘books’ become ‘plus’ symbols.

The crank icon which used to denote “edit” on an issue page, is now a “pencil” icon. Brilliant! Also, the ‘create a new …’ button style has also gotten a bit of lipstick. We opted for a more conventional “+” icon and gave it the control a bit of color.

3. More of you. And more of them.

We cleaned up the Tester & Fixer area in the right-hand column quite a bit. We got rid of the icons, and opted for the words “Tester” and “Fixer”. It’s simpler that way. We also added email addresses and phone numbers. Sometimes it’s better to just call someone instead of duking it out in DoneDone.

What’s next?

One very exciting feature we’ll be releasing soon is the option to drag and drop files into DoneDone. This gesture is a huge time saver, and allows multiple files to be selected, dragged, and dropped in one, fell swoop.  We’re also hot on the trail of integrating with Git and Subversion.

Sign in to DoneDone from GetDoneDone.com

Go ahead, forget your domain, I dare you. And delete the bookmarks. Then google DoneDone. Now, click the 14th result. There you go, up in the right-hand corner, click that link which says “Sign In”. There ya go, that did the trick. Finally, you can sign in directly from GetDoneDone.com.

Sign in directly from www.getdonedone.com

Tags, you’re not so hard to read anymore. Good.

A couple of weeks ago, we tried out a new graphical treatment for tags when we released the “Delete Tags” feature. It looked good, and read better, so we’ve applied the same treatment to the rest of the app. It adds a bit of weight to the page, but it’s worth it as Tags have really become an important utility across the userbase.

The new tag treatment. Now, with more pill.

Accountability is a scarcity

Accountability is hard to come by at work, but most people want it. I’m no good at economics, but I think that makes accountability a scarcity in the workplace.

The accountability missing most is what I’ll call transactional accountability. Or, giving a shit because you know that’s what your employer would want. It’s the process of identifying and remediating a problem through learned, professional empathy.

The accountability missing most is what I’ll call transactional accountability. Or, giving a shit because you know that’s what your employer would want. It’s the process of identifying and remediating a problem through learned, professional empathy.

There’s various reasons for its scarcity. An overbearing management, too much software between employees and the customers, or too little insight and belief into a business’ objectives.

Think of all the bad experiences you’ve had at government agencies, restaurants or online and ask yourself whether the person helping you just didn’t give a shit or were they in a position where they’re excused from accountability? With the exception of the occasional sociopath working at an airline, my hunch is the latter.

A big reason for the discontent is that employees don’t feel accountable for the problem the customer is experiencing. Think of the airline service rep whining to you that the airplane is late. Or the unapologetic waiter who wasn’t the one who screwed up your order.

A big reason for the discontent is that employees don’t feel accountable for the problem the customer is experiencing.

But with a bit of empathy, and a few ways of saying sorry, it’s often a simple fix. What would make that wait for a plane a bit better? Here, how about some free wifi, dude. Oh, yeah, you’re absolutely right, that chicken does smell like fish. How about this, we’ll buy a bottle of wine for you, because you probably don’t want to eat here any more.

Granted, these are trivial examples. But the process of making an employee recognize their accountability and educating them on how to patch things up is a crucial component in succeeding as a business.

How to feel accountable

It’s not always in your control to be accountable. It’s certainly not in your control to be ‘held accountable’. Here are a few considerations and exercises to help.

Who are you accountable to?

Write a job description. Not a resume. A wordy description of what you do day in and day out. Include a list of all of the folks you’re accountable to and why. Customers, developers, clients, investors, etc. Review this with a peer, manager, or boss. The meer act of writing and discussing this is a feat of accountablity in itself. Accountability may, in this case, breed more accountability.

Identify common pain points

Find the top 5 most popular problems your team encounters. Now, agree on a practical, memorable way of dealing with them. An example with our team is doing release builds on short notice for clients. We almost always screw them up. So, we’ve made the decision to do release builds at the same time every day. Our team then knows when to quit coding and begin testing. Our customers feel we’re more accountable because the quality of the code we release is better, and it comes at a predictable time every day.

Remove the layers

Try picking up the phone and calling someone instead of emailing. Preach human contact. CRMs are warehouses for problems, not magic-angry-customer-fixer-elixers. More often than not, simply speaking to someone directly  will elicit empathy on both sides of the problem. Thecustomer will be left with a real human memory, rather than a digital artifact.

CRMs are warehouses for problems, not magic-angry-customer-fixer-elixers. More often than not, simply speaking to someone directly  will elicit empathy on both sides of the problem.

In my last post about programmers being good project managers, I talked about putting the folks doing the work in direct contact with the folks paying for the work. This creates accountability. Put the cushion of account executives and management between the two and poof! There goes both parties’ sense of accountability to one another.

What would ‘she’ do

Learn to think empathetically by imagining what your (presumeably accountable) team lead would do. Through repetition and shadowing, empathy will become a natural reaction and you’ll adopt a style all your own. Maybe you won’t be the snuggly teddy bear your colleague is, but it’ll be genuine, which is more important.

Swim downstream

If an employee trusts that the management team is accountable, they’re more likely to act accountable as well (see above). As a manager, share frustration, emotion, and organizational decision making. No one feels accountable to a heartless robot, it’s the otherway around. Be a friggin’ human being.

Stop with the ‘we’

When was the last time you walked out of a meeting with 20 other people and knew that nothing was just decided and nothing would get done? I’ll bet everyone just “agreed that we really need to decide and take care of this or that”. Take a stand, and just say “I’ll do it!”. Better yet, don’t leave the room until a single individual is held accountable for each of the takeaways in the meeting. By being mutual and saying “we” all the time, nothing gets done. In the end, the individual gets work done.

Beware the chutes and ladders

Which part of the corporate structure screams accountability? There’s associates, juniors, seniors, directors of, vp’s of, senior vp’s of, and it keeps going up and up. What part of working this ladder is meant to make someone feel really accountable? Answer: none. Let responsibility and rank be inherent in the team of characters you hire. This is tough in a larger organization. But aspiring to become a senior art director, or vp creative director doesn’t make you more accountable, it leads you farther from it. Titles are second. Work ethic is first.

Fail utterly and completely. Then fix it.

Screwing up is the best way to become accountable. And more often than not, screw ups get more recognition than the great peformances. Think of it. The last time you emailed the ‘bad’ draft of the client email, or forgot to fix that critical issue. How quickly were you reprimanded and/or spoken to about your behavior? Now, think of the last time you really knocked it out of the park. Crickets chirping?

Trusting your team with big decisions and living with the outcome is a leap of faith, admittedly. But, giving your two cents and then letting the team make the final decision has two primary transactions of accountability. The first is you trusting them. The second is their succeeding or failing on their own. If they failed, then it’s their problem to fix. If they succeeded, it’s their win to celebrate. It’s accountability all around.

Yet, for some god-unknown reason, this highly skilled, highly paid team of programmers has been taken out of the direct line of communication with clients. And the project managers, bless their Gantt-chart-hearts, are left to bridge the gap. And, speaking on their behalf, they have better things to be doing.

So, fire your project managers. Better yet, give the m another job. The job of projects manager. Note the use of the plural. There’s a whole lot of horizontal organization which needs to happen across the business’ portfolio of applications. Change orders, daily stand-ups, staffing, estimates, briefs, calendar negotiation, and so on. This is work a clear-headed organizer excels at. And a note to developers: it’s not easy work and should pay very well.

Now, give that silo-minded group of programmers the reigns to manage the day-to-day activities of the project and the responsibility to work directly with the clients. Specification, request negotiation, issue resolution, and so on. You see, programmers are pressed for time, short on specification, and long on endless lists of additional requests, tweaks, and sprints. So, you can bet they’ll make judicious use of the client’s time.

Programmers are pressed for time, short on specification, and long on an endless list of additional requests, tweaks, and sprints. So, you can bet they’ll make judicious use of the client’s time.

Also. Give ‘em Basecamp and an issue tracker and make sure the clients use it. Yes, they need to be on the hook to communicate clearly and regularly with the clients. If they’re doing daily stand ups, then invite the client to listen in. And, of course, they need to ‘socialize’ all fundamental decision making. Ask them though if they’d prefer to do this because they’d be better at it (stroke their ego), and they’ll probably be happy to do it.

My hunch is that your project manager won’t mind being excused from the duty of ‘mouthpiece of ye heralded programmers’. And the programmers won’t mind speaking the truth to the client. If you’re afraid of developers and clients sharing truths, then this message will self-destruct in 20 seconds. Run.

Things to think about

Designate a Developer Lead

Every undertaking needs an owner on the technical team. Call it the Developer Lead. Above being responsible for a lion’s share of the programming and delegating tasks to others, they’re the mouthpiece of the entire production team, responsible for direct communications with the client regarding specifications, schedules, and build notes. They are the truth. Not a light responsibility.

The project manager services the Developer Lead

The traditional project manager services the Developer Lead by noting decisions, creating documentation, and performing any other operational duty the team needs to stay focused. They’re just as much a part of owning an application and determining it’s fate, but again, they’re not the go-between for clients and developers. And account executives? Not sure what to do with them.

I’ll also add that the project managers start their work in advance of the development team. There’s plenty of up front prep work to take care of in advance of a development team rolling up their sleeves.

Define a convention for communications

Style doesn’t matter, but grammar does. Most people take the short cut with their writing styles online (read: pm’s and devr’s). Clean it up. With just a bit of enforcement, the entire team can be taught to take and extra 30 seconds to add a salutation and a closing in each email, issue, or basecamp message. For lengthier communications like build notes, create a template. In short, formalize the communication by making a convention of it. This goes a long way towards winning social trust between production and client teams. Plus, it’s simple.

Accountability

Above all, instill accountability. When the developer team hears directly from the client’s mouth that there’s a problem, they take it at face value and aren’t given the chance to blame poor communication on the account team. Likewise, the client will learn a bit of empathy for the development team, which provides good incentive to prioritize. Win/win.

Please be in touch with any questions, comments, or shouts!

Edit a comment

You can now edit a comment if it’s within 30 minutes of creating it. If you’re curious, yes, you can also remove/add attachments while editing. A long time coming, and now it’s here. I believe Bruce Springsteen sang that at some point. Note: only the comment’s author can edit a comment, and once the 30 minutes has passed, that’s it, it’s written in stone. 

Edit a comment for 30 minutes. Then, it turns to stone!

Alert system

Our in-app alert system will allow us to communicate site downtime & updates to the entire DoneDone userbase. We could’ve done this using regular email, but this is cleaner, and less spammy. In addition to global alerts, we’ll also be able to send communications to specific users and accounts. We will not be using this as a platform to discuss my fascination with ‘real snail mail’, which is real by the way.

Alerts for maintenance, system downtime, etc.

Remember me? Well, do ya?

Click the Remember Me option on the sign in screen. It’s simple. DoneDone will remember you. For 20 years. We removed it a few weeks ago to work out some session/cookie kinks which seem to have gone the way of the dodo. And good riddance. It’s back again, and should be stable. We’re sorry it took a bit.

Forget those pesky usernames and passwords. Click "Remember me".

Developer’s fatigue occurs when the programming team hits their deadline. But no one else does.  Now, they’re chained to their desks servicing an endless number of tweaks, requests, and bugs with no formal expectation of when they’ll be out of the woods.

For all the contempt that programmers have for short timelines, they need ‘em. In fact, they should insist on them and require they be held to by their clients too.

A good timeline indicates a point in time when the team expects to be done with a set of tasks and ready to move on to something else. It tells a team how to ration their energy, their workday, their private lives, and so on.

So, what should we persevering souls at the tail-end of the project foodchain do to stave off the disposal of the due dates we’ve honored?

Work for yourself

Don’t work for other companies and stay true to your own commitments. This means, obviously, that you’re not doing work for hire anymore, rather, you’re likely building a product or something along those lines. If your bread and butter is consulting work, this doesn’t apply. Likewise, if you don’t organize yourself and stay on the ball, you’ll get a swallow of your own bitter pills and, worst off, not have a finished product which pays your bills.

Don’t launch. Release. Now, do it again.

There’s a whole lot of money, angst, title promotions, and organization  tied up into one big event, your launch date. With the exception of major multi-channel advertising events though, i.e. the Superbowl, you have more than one opportunity to hit the mark. Thus, you should insist on the ability to release more than one build of a site. It’s healthier that way and promotes prioritization and teamwork. Trying to squeeze out a perfect app in one try doesn’t work, and more importantly, clients fail to prioritize their requests, treating everything with equal importance.

You should insist on the ability to release more than one build of a site. It’s healthier that way and promotes prioritization and teamwork. Trying to squeeze out a perfect app all at once excuses clients from prioritizing and they end up treating all requests with equal importance.

Lift and shift project schedules

Instead of working between start date x and end date y, create a calendar based on the days required to get the work done. So, instead of agreeing to start on January 1 and launch on February 1, insist to the client that you need 30 days to do the job right once full production begins. This way, when the client gets you started late and asks you to deliver early, you can point back to 30 days in your agreement, rather than hard dates your team will have to swallow. As part of your own due diligence to your client, make sure you define what dependencies must be met prior to getting the project into production, i.e, design files, copy, functional specs, and so on. Live by the sword, die by the sword.

Enforce discipline through contracts

If a client insists on a ‘one chance to do it right’ project, then contractually obligate your client to hold their end of the bargain at each crucial milestone. Ensure that your work agreement specifies validity only between start date and end date. And don’t guarantee staffing if that date comes and goes with out a cadence.

Change orders, rush fees, and lift and shift timelines are all administrative controls to keep the broader team aligned.

Stay disciplined as a team

Over the years I’ve observed a tendency for teams to abandon process the closer they get to a launch date. To use the travel metaphor again, it’s like second guessing the itinerary you put together before leaving the house .

When regular fatigue sets in a couple of weeks prior to your launch, make sure everyone continues to use the bug tracker, impose change orders, sketch before implementing, and hold daily calls. This applies to your team and your client.

Fact of (the developer’s) life

You can’t always avoid developer’s fatigue, but you can deal with it. And keep in mind that your team is well-tuned and more disciplined than any other. That’s because you’re carrying projects to the finish line time after time. So, if anyone tries calling you out for not finishing strong, let ‘em know you’re happy to discuss it later. Then schedule them via Outlook  for a 2 am call with your dev team when you’re all making up for their lost time.

Edit a comment

One customer writes “For the love of God, why can’t I edit a $%@#ing comment!”. Well, admins and comment authors will have a distinct period of time, probably 20 minutes, to edit a comment before it becomes hardened testament to your grammar (or potty-mouth).

Alert system

We’ll be releasing an in-app alert system which we’ll use to notify the broader DoneDone userbase about maintenence events, updates, and so on. Until now, we’ve only been able to communicate with account owners. In addition to global alerts, we’ll also be able to send communications to specific users and accounts. We will not be using this as a platform to discuss my fascination with ‘real snail mail’, which is real by the way.

Remember me? Well, do ya?

Now that everyone has permanently remembered their username and password for DoneDone, we’ll add the Remember Me option back into the sign in screen. We removed it a few weeks ago to work out some session/cookie kinks which seem to have gone the way of the dodo. And good riddance.

On the horizon?

Here’s a couple of items in the hopper to be released in the coming couple of weeks:

User reports

We’ll be adding an additional report into the Dashboard which currently is codenamed, well, User Reports. Eh-hmm. You’ll be able to select a company to see active issues across all active projects and users. Currently there is no way to easily see, let’s say, how many critical issues Ka Wai Cheung has across all of the projects he’s working on without visiting each project specifically.

Performance upgrades to user experience

We’ll be speeding up the issue detail page quite a bit by leaning on jQuery to avoid full page refreshes wherever possible.

UI updates

The good & plenty captain of industry, Anthony Bruno, will be implementing several updates to DoneDone’s design. All good things meant to increase prominence and hierarchy on the big-three pages: Dashboard, Project Landing, Issue Detail.

Siri, can I delete tags in DoneDone?

Well, you dreamed it, we programmed it. You can now get rid of tags across your projects. Note that once you remove a tag, all issues and custom searches which had that tag will get updated.  Now, who’s the poor soul on your team who will click over to Project Settings, scroll down, and get rid of all those erroneous tags? Goodbye Fwance!

Delete tags under /Project Settings

Last week’s tag updates extended to Create Issue and Edit Issue screens

In last week’s release, we added some better sorting to the tag collection in the right-hand column of the issue detail page. Well, gosh it looks good, so we went ahead and applied the same UI to the Create Issue and Edit Issue screens. Tag spree!

Wrap up of email re-styling

Last week, we released a more flexible and legible layout for all issue-related emails from DoneDone. Well, we rounded out the suite of emails this week. Now, all DoneDone emails use the same layout. That means emails like Forgot Password, DoneDone invitations, Release Builds, and so on. They’re cleaner and adapt better to the various devices we all use. They shall read it!

Invoice dates from the future

In some cases, our new billing system was inserting bad dates into invoices. If the invoices were correct, some customers would have paid $15 for using DoneDone for -1 days. This has been addressed. The space-time continuum continueth!

Oh my, that’s a lot of people

Once you get a couple of companies working on a project, the Tester and Fixer dropdowns in the Add New Issue screen start getting, well, verbose. We’re now sorting the contents of those dropdowns to help distinguish companies. Boom!

Fixer/tester dropdowns now sort by company

My response is simple. Assign a task to a group of people, everyone will stand around watching. Assign a task to a single person, efficiency will ensue. If you ever saw a group of men gathered around a construction zone while one guy digs a hole, you know what I mean.

Assign a task to a group of people, everyone will stand around watching. Assign a task to a single person, efficiency will ensue.

Sure, teams are good for something. People are social creatures and can collaborate and execute amazing things. Lord only knows what this team accomplished in the Gobi desert. But, every big accomplishment is composed of single tasks completed by individuals, and therein lies the premise that the individual will always be more productive than the team when it comes time to get your hands dirty.

Every big accomplishment is composed of single tasks completed by individuals.

So long as human nature and org charts exist, DoneDone will only accept a single user as a Fixer or Tester. If a team is needed to accomplish a task, it’s a project. Break it down, sort it out, and make assignments. You’ll be done quicker than the management team can come up with a name for the product, I promise.

Have a question or suggestion you’d like to discuss here? There’s plenty of ways to get in touch, including leaving a good ol’ fashioned comment here.

Update to Email Notifications

We released a new email layout for DoneDone notifications. The primary reason for the update was to make the layout read better across different devices. The old layout was a fixed width which made issue emails look like Chicago does from 15,000 feet in the air.

How DoneDone emails looked this morning

In the new emails, we removed most of the visual styling in favor of allowing the text to flow freely. We tried to improve the relevance of certain elements, such as the ‘what happened’ text and the What’s Next? links. Now, regardless of how you’re viewing the emails (iPhone, PC, etc.),  the experience will be cohesive and more legible.

How DoneDone emails look this evening

A final tweak to the design is in the convention we use for the email’s subject. In the old email, we used the convention: #123 – Project Name – Action. The new format is a bit more declarative and follows the format [Action which happened] Project Name #123. The added benefit is that the most important information is at the front of the subject so devices with limited real estate, such as mobile phones, will present the most useful information first.

Issue Activity

Also in this build is a streamlining of the Issue Activity layout. We split the contents of a activity update into three columns (from two), by placing the event’s order number (#1, #2, etc.). You’ll also notice that some of the text formatting and layout within an event has been updated to improve scanability. Finally, editing an issue no longer creates bloated entry in Issue Activity. We took all of the ‘changes’ and put them into a toggle-able summary which is collapsed by default.

How Issue Activity looked this morning

How Issue Activity looks this evening

Update to how tags are sorted

Lastly, but not leastly, Tags in the right-hand column got a bit of an update too. Now, we’re showing the top 5 tags by default, and by clicking “view all tags” you’ll get an alphabetical listing of all tags used across the project. Hooha!

An updated tag sort

Now, we’re five weeks deep, and we’ve fully concluded the transition of customers, billing platforms, servers, all with the help of email, email campaigns, blog posts, and twitter. Some of the communication was good, other stuff didn’t hit the mark.

Here’s a few thoughts on customer service I’ve been banging on the past couple of days as I reflect on a busy couple of months.

# A few numbers & facts

We’re 5 weeks into the ‘new DoneDone’, and in that time, we’ve doubled our customer base. We also lost 50% of our pre-October paid customers due to passive subscribers who were paying for the service but haven’t (yet) continued with the service. As of November 1, more than 6000 people are using DoneDone from across 63 countries. On a typical day, we will handle between 5 and 10 customer support emails.

# Technology doesn’t replace heart

I believe that direct communication with users brands our service with a human touch. While I’m proud of the number of people using DoneDone, it’s not big enough to warrant a layer of software to mediate between me and our customers. Anyhow, the tools I’ve used and checked-out all feel like 2 inches of bullet proof glass is stuck between me and our customers. Maybe we’ll build something better. For now, I like that people just write to us. And I write back. I call it … email.

# Pride in the service is imperative to good support

If the person doing support doesn’t believe the service they’re supporting is great, then their commitment to helping customers will not be genuine. I’ve felt both. I didn’t believe the old DoneDone was great. Nor did I feel that, even with the best of intentions, my commitment to our customers would be rewarding for them as the inflexibility of the system kept us from improving it. I experience this malaise with a lot of services these days.

If the person doing support doesn’t believe the service they’re supporting is great, then their commitment to helping customers will not be genuine.

The new DoneDone is, well, much better. It’s not great. It will be though. And I love that every email is an opportunity to correspond with a customer who knows what it takes to make the service better. I admit to being an inbox junky hoping for that next chance to get someone’s thoughts. But, with a wife, 3 children, and a consulting business to run, believe me when I say it’s not just cuz I’m lonely.

And, should you be on the hunt for a few crafstmen in the trade of customer support, Postmark, CheddarGetter, and Gravity payments all get it right.

# The power to make it right

Having a flexible system and a great billing solution (CheddarGetter) puts a few controls in my hands. In tandem with good communication, I know we can improve the tool per a customer’s suggestion, when appropriate, and I can always credit a customer’s account when Donedone has treated them wrong. And if nothing else, drop a gift in the mail to say thanks.

# Assume nobody reads

Short and simple is the only thing which gets people’s attention. I am really good at acting in direct contrast to this truism. The journalistic approach of making sure the title says it all, though, is the best method to ensure even the most time-pressed customer gets the gist of the message. If the user wants to read on, fill in additional content only after the core message is communicated. I am working hard to swallow this oblong pill. It should be noted that my 4 year old daughter calls me Chatty Cathy.

# Response time, over time

Getting back to a user within a certain window of time is great. It needs to be consistent, though. If it’s within a day, great, always make it a day so that the expectation is clear. In our case, I try to hit the 2 hour mark. We have a lot of international customers though, so it’s with the disclaimer that it’ll take a bit longer if it’s 2:30 AM in Chicago.

Also, while initial response time is great, providing the same with follow-up communications is greater. I may be writing the 5th message in a string of emails on the same topic, but still strive to keep the response time consistent. This is hard work, and probably a place technology can help.

# Good customer support is a two way road

The quality of DoneDone the tool should be carried through in our support communications. Simple rules like always using a salutation, doing some quick proof reading (try reading it backwards!), and making sure I sign off in a respectful manner are easy techniques, and get a lot of points. The person on the other end knows they’re dealing with someone who cares.

Simple rules like always using a salutation, doing some quick proof reading (try reading it backwards!), and making sure I sign off in a respectful manner are easy techniques, and get a lot of points.

Furthermore, it engenders reciprocity. Customer emails we receive tend to be really well-written. Most everyone takes the time to express their thoughts, use proper grammar, and when needed, be responsive with their own feedback to us here at DoneDone. That’s amazing in itself and goes a long way towards maintaining the morale of the support bloak (me). I suppose we’re blessed in that regard.

# Customers aren’t always right, and don’t want to be

The adage that ‘the customer is always right’, isn’t right. At least not in the world of services like DoneDone. Most customers are very happy being offered an alternative means of accomplishing their goal without a new feature. And most ask questions rather than make demands which is a healthy invitation to teach, rather than sell.

In cases where their request matches a larger quorom and we plan on implementing it, I’ve enjoyed discussing the design of the enhancement directly with the customer. For obvious reasons, the design is in a better place because of it.

# Support is therapy

Sometimes, I think, users just want to be heard and vent a bit. I want our support to come with a little bit of therapy included. I try to give a little something extra to each response in the hopes that it occasionally curls someones grin and adds a bit of dimension to the service we provide.

I want our support to come with a little bit of therapy included.

# Customers are the best testers, and should be thanked for it

No matter how well we test our systems, there will always be an issue we don’t discover which a paying customer does. This truth should be eaten between two slices of thank-you bread with a heaping side of modesty. With crowds of users comes endless combinations of browsers, corporate firewalls, intellect, and experience; all the ingredients for a perfect pool of testers. And to boot, every issue they discover comes prepackaged with a sense of urgency we might not otherwise have here were it just us tweaking the app.

With crowds of users comes endless combinations of browsers, corporate firewalls, intellect, and experience; all the ingredients for a perfect pool of testers.

# Find a rhythm and stay warm

Lastly, a rhythm. Sometimes I feel connected to our user base. Other times I feel disconnected. Does the fact that no one is sending in problems or feedback suggest we’re truly disconnected? Isn’t no problems a good problem to have? In the lulls, I’m trying to conceive a regular interval of other communications to make. Reading recommendations, techniques for project management, jokes, and so on. Whatever lets our users know that, hey, we’re here, ready to talk, anytime. I’m not there yet. I hope to be soon.

## What a load of BS, right?

I’ve been at the helm of a consultancy here in Chicago for 5 years now and I’ve learned a whole bunch about direct client services, financial responsibility, and the essence of building a successful business. Hopefully, a lot of it rubs off on DoneDone. Somehow, though, providing direct customer support feels inherently different, albeit completely natural. Maybe it’s the Chatty Cathy in me. Whatever it is, I want to be good at it. And per chance I skip a beat, please send a well-formed email my way and I’ll give it another try.

1. Make sure you’re explicitly signed out of DoneDone

In your browser’s address bar, type in https://youraccount.mydonedone.com/security/logout,  replacing “youraccount” with whatever name your account is using.

2. Now, clear all DoneDone related browser cookies

Next, we need you to delete all cookies since the beginning of time. This sounds draconian. But, most modern browsers give you the option to remove cookies from ‘the last day’, ‘last month’, and so on. We need you to delete ALL cookies. If you’re reliant on cookies for other sites, then most browsers will allow you to remove cookies specific to domains. In that case, you’d only remove cookies from the *.mydonedone.com domain.

If you’re new to the world of clearing out cookies, here’s a quick overview for the most common browsers: http://www.wikihow.com/Clear-Your-Browser’s-Cookies

3. Try signing in again

After you’ve completed #1 and #2 above, you should be in the clear. Most users who’ve taken these steps has had good success.

This is a an inconvenience for you all, and we apologize for that. The only analogy I can think of is that of Elvis the Alligator guarding Crockett’s boat cabin-door in Miami Vice. This is exactly the wrong signal to send to our customers. We appreciate your patience while we resolve the issue.

If you’ve done the above, and you still can’t get in, please write us directly at support@mydonedone.com, noting your specific accounts domain. We are more than happy to work one on one with you to get you up and running.

Regards,

The DoneDone team

In this weeks edition of FAQ, FYI, and WTF we’ll leave out the screenshots and focus on how DoneDone has been performing, what our Pre-October customers need to do before October is over, and what we’ve been up to over the past week.

If you’d like me to explain any specific features or expound on our decisions for doing X, Y, or Z, please let me know. I love words and have never hesitated to spit out thousands of them at a time. Especially when it’s in the name of issue tracking.

Weekly round up

DoneDone has broken its previous record of being used in 53 countries. Over the past week, 3 more sovereign states started pinging the app. Singapore, welcome. Laos, what’s up? Bolivia, there you are!

Overall usage of the app has steadily increased as well. We’re paying close attention to how our servers are handling things, especially on the database tier. Pretty soon, we’ll make a couple of preemptive upgrades to accommodate the growth, but so far, we’re looking pretty good.

Pre-October users, October is about over.

If you’re coming over from the old version of DoneDone, first off, thanks for sticking around. As we’ve communicated a few times via email, blog, and good ol’ shouting, if you’re in any of the paid plans, you’ll need to get your billing information entered prior to next Monday, November 1st.

You’ll be getting an automated reminder a couple of days prior. Should you forget to enter your info? No biggie, but your account will be on hold as of November 1 until you do so. It’s also possible this guy will silently protest by not bathing during that time.

Whats new since last time

Tags

The tag listing in the right-hand column has been cleaned up significantly. It’s reading left-to-right and showing the top ten used tags. You can click to view ‘em all, though. Sweet.

Files

Per some healthy requests, we added an All Files display on the right-hand column. This collects all files in the issue and also links you to the comment or amendment where they were uploaded. Boom.

Release Builds

If you use Release Builds, then you probably wish that the Previous Release Builds page linked you to a listing of all issues in that Release Build. The emails already did this, but now the app does too. This is handy so you can check progress and not have to keep track of emails.

Clicking from the Dashboard to Project Landing pages

If you link from the Dashboard page’s default view to a project landing page, DoneDone now shows only issues that are waiting on you. Before it was “All your active issues”. This new tweak will make a connection between the issue counts you see on the Dashboard and what you see by default on the project landing page. Small, but mighty.

Existing users being added to new accounts

When existing users are added to a ‘new’ DoneDone account, they get an email linking them to the new account. The language in that email wasn’t quite clear that they should sign in with their existing username and password. We cleaned this language up a bit to help with that “blank stare”. Makes sense.

What’s next?

The biggest update you’ll see this week is a new format for emails. The existing layout doesn’t read well on mobile devices. So, we’ve allowed the text to flow to 100% width of the device, which is an incredible improvement. We’ve also dramatically cleaned up the organization of emails so they read more coherently. This will help get your iPhone back in your pocket before your spouse yells at you.

Wrap up

Can’t say this enough, though you may think I have already. The feedback and responsiveness from all of you has been great. I hope it’s clear that we really want to be good at this. We’re proud of what DoneDone is today, but we’re frothing with excitement at what it can be in 6 months with your continued involvement and participation. Frothy. That sounds gross, I know.

Have a great week and thanks for using DoneDone.

Regards,

Craig & the DoneDone team

Alright, now, here’s an overview of what’s new.

Account Settings

Account settings page under Manage Account

The Manage Account section is available only to account owners, and each account can have only one of those. If, at any time, you’d like to change account owners, you can do that from the Account Settings page. Do note though, that you’ll also need to update your Billing Information. If you’re no longer the account owner, you’ll need the new account owner to make this update.

You can also change your account’s sub-domain at any time, provided the new one is available. Do note that any existing DoneDone emails will no longer point to the correct URL. Needless to say, all of your users will need to be aware of the domain change. DoneDone does not currently notify users of this change.

Update Plan

Update plan page under Manage Account

The Update Plan page allows you to change your plan, which in turn, determines how many active users and how much storage you have available. Depending on your case, you can upgrade to a bigger plan or downsize to a smaller one. If you’d like to downsize, but none of the plans are available to you, you’ll first have to remove a few users from your projects. More on that at the end of this post.  

Payment History

The payment history page under Manage Account

This page is blank for every customer at this time, except for the “Your next scheduled payment …” bit. As soon as the end of October rolls around, and provided you’ve entered your credit card details (under Billing Information), you’ll be able to view and print your invoices from here.

Billing Information

Billing information page under Manage Account

DoneDone accepts all major credit cards, and American Express will be up and running within a couple of days of writing this. You can update your payment details here at any time.

Prior to October 31st

If you choose to enter your payment info prior to October 31st, that doesn’t mean you’ll be charged before then. You still have the remainder of the month to evaluate DoneDone.

Cancel Account

Cancel account page under Manage Account

It’s the feature we hate the most, but here it is. We wish you’d stick around, but there’s nothing holding ya back from deleting your users and data. Do know that what’s done is done, though. Your subdomain is immediately available for other customers, and your data and user profiles are permanently deleted.

Active users and changing plans

An account alert in DoneDone

In the new DoneDone, pricing is based on the number of active users in an account. An active user is someone who has access to at least one active project. For example, if you’ve added 10 people to a project but only 2 of those users have issues, you have 8 users who are technically active, although they aren’t creating or fixing issues.

There are a few events in DoneDone which will let you know you’ve maxed out your current plan.

1. When you add a new user
2. When you assign people to a project
3. When you unarchive a project which has users assigned to it.

Remember that not only account owners will see these messages. Users in your company who are also account admins will also get these prompts, as they’re able to add/remove people and so on. Do note, however, that they cannot change your account’s plan, nor do they have access to Manage Account pages.

Wrap up

This concludes the initial release of the new DoneDone. Phew. It’s been a busy, but extremely satisfying few weeks. What’s next? We’re on to improvements. Not everything that’s new is better. So, we’re combing through feedback from both customers and our own team and will be making small, myriad improvements to the application. If you’ve got some ideas, as always, we’re glad to hear ‘em.

Cheers,

The DoneDone team

The new release will have all account functionality enabled. So, you’ll be able to see which plan you fit into, enter payment details, cancel your account, and, ultimately, view payment history.

Don’t reach for the wallet quite yet. Everyone still has the rest of October to use DoneDone for free. If you signed up after October 1st, your 30-day trial will still be active. Of course, if you’d like to get your billing info entered and approved, go right ahead and that’ll ensure your account isn’t suspended on November 1st.

Some specifics

All customers who signed up prior to October 1st

You’ll need to re-enter your billing information anytime prior to November 1st. On November 1st, if you still haven’t entered your billing details, your account will be suspended and no users will be able to sign in until you do so. You’ll receive an email reminder to enter your billing info on or around October 21st.

Customers who signed up for a paid-plan on or after October 1st

You’ll continue to have free access to DoneDone until your 30-day trial is up. At that time, you’ll be prompted to enter in your credit card information. You’ll receive an email reminder to enter your billing info approximately 10 days before your trial is up.

All customers who signed up for the Moonlighter plan

So long as your account has 3 or fewer active users, you will not need to pay to use DoneDone after November 1st. Of course, if you and your entire company have fallen madly in love with the app, your account may fall into one of the 4 paid-plans in which case you’ll be prompted to enter in your billing information at the end of your initial 30 days of free use.

Your plan may have changed

It’s possible that your account now fits into a different plan than you originally signed up for. For example, if you signed up for Max, but only have 4 users, you’ll be placed into the Basic plan. Beginning November 1st, though, accounts will no longer move automatically between plans. You’ll be notified when you need to  upgrade to the next tier. Likewise, you can always make a few users inactive if you’d like to move your account to a smaller plan.

What’s on the horizon?

Once we get this account functionality out the door, we’ll be fine tuning user experiences across the entire application. Longer term, there’s a few ideas we have. Additional languages, integration with version control systems (Bitbucket, etc.), public projects, and a few others. Where would you like to see DoneDone excel in the next few months?

We’re here

We’ve got a whole lot of new users and we’ve got a whole lot of users who made the transition over from the old DoneDone. Everyone has had great questions and feedback thus far. Please, continue to let us know your thoughts. Your feedback really does help.

Cheers,

The DoneDone team

Support? Visit www.getdonedone.com/support or come holler on twitter.

This week, we’ll start with the dashboard, Cc’ing your team, switching accounts, fixers & testers, and custom search. Let us know what you’d like us to write about next week at @getdonedone. 

The Dashboard

How the two views on the dashboard work

In the old DoneDone, there was a single listing which showed all projects regardless of whether there were issues or specific updates you need to know about.

In the new Dashboard, we cleaned things up a bit. The default view shows you only the projects with issues which are waiting on you for action. It doesn’t show you projects where you have issues which are not waiting on you.  You’ll notice that if you click through to a project from this view, the project’s landing page will display _all of your active issues_, not just the ones waiting on you.

The second view, All active projects, is made specifically for project managers or account admins who need a birds-eye view of activity and priority across all projects in DoneDone.

Recent Project Activity

This feature is pretty simple. It shows the 3 projects where _your issues_ were updated most recently. We poll for the first 3 issue updates, which by the way, could all come from the same issue.  Click the eyeball which, may make some queasy, and you get the 10 most recent updates.

Cc’ing people and getting rid of emails

One new concept which is an evolution of an old feature is the notion of CC’ing people on issue updates. In the original DoneDone, you could one-off CC people on comments only. Each comment you added, you had to re-select the people to notify.

In the new DoneDone, if you select a person to CC, they’re added to the list, and will be automatically CC’d next time around. This works on comments, and other issue updates such as status changes, or re-assignments. Now, how about users who don’t like that extra email? There’s a link in the email which let’s them opt-out of future communications on that issue.

Do note that Testers and Fixers currently can not unsubscribe from issue notifications. Don’t be sad. Because longer term, we’re exploring how best to allow all users to manage their notification preferences on the issue, project, and account level. Would love to hear thoughts on this one from anyone who’s got ‘em.

Switching accounts

There are a few of you out there who have more than one DoneDone account profile. Well, now you don’t have two profiles. You have one. And once you’re signed in to any DoneDone account, you can toggle over to any other account you’re a part of. See that little icon next to your account’s name in the upper-left? Click it and let the magic overtake your body.

If you want to set up different emails and other info on a per-account basis, you can still do that. Just click over to Profile on any account, and you can personalize your contact info for that specific profile.

Whew.

Fixers & Testers

What the heck is a Fixer! What’s with Testers? Well, here’s the thing. In v1 of DoneDone, there were only two people on an issue: the issue’s creator and the person assigned to ‘do the work’. Well, this made a lot of sadness for a lot of users. One perk, though, was that it was simple. Now, anybody can create an issue and assign both a Tester and a Fixer . If you’re like me, I assign both roles to other people which completely and utterly absolves me from any further responsibility.

Why the names? Well, it’s an issue tracker, and as such, most companies use DoneDone to do quality assurance & testing towards the tail end of a project. So, we wanted to have some very explicit titles for these roles.

What’s that?  You use it for task management during the entire project? That’s awesome. So do we. Huh? You don’t even build web apps? Also cool. We get all kinds. Publishers, construction workers, designers, medical equipment engineers, and so on. And hopefully for you all who don’t have web-guts, the titles don’t get in the way too much. If they do, what do you think they should be called?

Custom Search

In the old DoneDone, the search feature on the Project Landing page did the trick, albeit, in some incomplete ways. You couldn’t do some simple things, such as deleting erroneous searches, and it was hard to predict what your results might be because the list box half-empty half-full effect.

In the new DoneDone, the new search utility can be found on your project landing page, right under the project title:

You’ll notice we’ve populated the list with the most widely-used searches. You can also create your own by clicking “Create New Search”.  That’ll give you a nice long page of all the different criteria you may want to search by.

Once you’ve created your search, give it a name, and it’ll be saved as a custom search, accessed via the same component above. And of course, with custom searches, you can edit them or remove them via those pretty little icons next door.

Wrap up

So, this isn’t all that’s changed, but they’re a few of the big ones. If you have any questions about how anything else works, please let us know. And, of course, if you have any suggestions for how to improve any of this newness, we’re all ears.

Text formatting with Markdown (or not)

There’s been a few questions about how Markdown renders older content, but also a few issues with how it renders ‘new’ content. The following updates apply to the issue description and comment text input fields.

• Autolinking URL’s – there was a bit of bug-ness with urls being turned automatically into hyperlinks. Now, URL’s with query strings will render properly (http://www.cnn.com?isthisnews=nope). We’ve also patched up underscores in urls, and those should also render properly now.
• We added in a formatting guide. If you click “preview” underneath the text input box, on the lower right, you’ll see a link to the guide which will help you use Markdown.
• Note that: Blockquotes and Code formatting are included in Markdown as of last night. See the formatting guide for info on how to use these slick features.

The smallest big update yet

Yes, this how you access Custom Search from the Project Landing page. An admittedly shy feature before, this little-tiny graphic stepped in to help users know they’re just a click away from slicing and dicing their data.

The database genie visited

His name is Mustafa Shabib. And he worked on some of the larger queries in DoneDone today as part of an ongoing effort to speed up performance. We’ll be doing this quite a lot over the next several weeks. So you’re aware, this type of work really, really makes him smile.

Comment numbers

Since Wednesday’s build, you’ll notice that comments and issue updates have their beloved number next to them again. A popular feature we didn’t realize would be missed so much, it’s back, now with hot-permalink action too!

Wrap up

We’ve also been cranking on our next big release, which will be accounts and plan pages. If you’ll recall, these are due to be wired up and released on October 15th. Between now and then, we’ll be continuing to make these small, incremental updates to the UI and database. Small steps, but solid ones. As always, please send some feedback, questions, or issues to us. We’re here. Seriously.

- The DoneDone team

Tagging feature update

Tags are now automatically lower-cased when created. Previously, if you entered “isSue” and “issue”, it would create 2 distinct tags. Note: all old tags with case-ignorance will remain.

CSV output

There was some bugginess with a few special characters in the CSV output feature. We’ve addressed most of these issues, but have not spent any time on non-english characters, so there may be a few remaining problems in non-english descriptions.

Added numbers to issue comments/history (not complete, but better)

Back by popular demand, we added  a (quickly designed) numerical value next to each update in the Issue Activity area. So, each comment, status change, etc. is now noted with both a number and permalink.

Where the $*&# are my issue auto-links in comments and descriptions?

We got this back in today. We’d left this out initially because of the Markdown addition. It’s really helpful though, so it’s back baby. If you type #333 into a comment or issue description, it will automatically create a link to that issue page. Longer term, we’ll likely add additional shorthand for linking to directly to comments and issue updates in the Issue Activity area. That’ll look something like “#333.7″, where the “.7″ refers to the 7th update to an issue.

Markdown improvements

There were a few issues sent in regarding adding clear text urls, underscores, and other strangeness w/ Markdown. We spent some time some massaging our implementation of Markdown.

• #xxx syntax working again (as noted above) to link to issues. You’ll note that using the # sign for headers still works well. 
• You can copy and paste URLs directly into comments and descriptions, and they’ll link up. 
• If you have a URL with an underscore (“_”) it won’t make the world explode. It’ll just work. 
• We also enabled Blockquotes. NOTE: there is no styling as of yet, but we’ll get that up soon. 

• The “Edit Issues” feature on project landing page was giving you options you may not have a need for. For example, it now doesn’t show you an option to move issues to another project if you only have one project.
• There was a logic problem with importing empty companies from Basecamp and/or not selecting anyone to import from a Basecamp project. 
• Speaking of empty companies, if you manually created a company and left it blank, it got inserted in the database, but it was nowhere to be found in the UI. So, now even empty companies (not of the Basecamp flavor!) will show up in the Companies & People listing.  
• There was a bit of Latin placeholder text left in a tertiary page. It said something along the lines of “Well if that pizza was meant to be eaten, it certainly didn’t belong under the mattress now did it”. We decided this text has no place in an issue tracking app. 

Other than that, we verified some issues folks were having such as sensitive spam filters and a few quirky behaviors with some transitioned data. Not much to do there except be aware and keep watching for patterns. None today, though.

What’s that? You have questions? Well, then, head over to www.getdonedone.com/support and choose a way to get in touch. Or just leave a comment here. Or, twitter is nice too (@getdonedone.com).

Have a lovely evening and/or start of the work day, should you be somewhere between here and Mumbai. If you’re in Melbourne, it’s cookie-break time.

-The DoneDone team

As for feedback, we’ve been getting plenty of it from folks finding those little crevices of DoneDone which eluded our QA. Everyone’s been super cordial. If you’ve been in touch today, thanks very much for the well-written feedback, the prompt responses, and the fact that you’re not sending white-hot pitchforks at us via our inboxes.

 At first I was perplexed that everyone was giving such nicely written feedback. Then it dawned on me, “of course, everyone uses DoneDone and knows the value of well-written feedback when dealing with tired, hungry, and occasionally smelly programmers”.  It’s a good business to be in when everyone takes the time to communicate well.

What’s on tap?

Per the above, we’ll be getting a build up this evening after some good QA.  After that, and for most of this week, we’ll continue watching feedback and, of course, critical issues. We want to ensure everyone gets up and running before we head further on down the road.

After that, we’ll be finalizing our account pages and functionality. This, you may recall, is due out on October 15th. Finally, we’ve got a nice healthy list of performance enhancements, UX/UI improvements, and a few new features which didn’t make it out the door this weekend. Plenty to do. And as always, if you have thoughts or suggestions, send it our way. Here, on twitter (@getdonedone) or via support.

Thanks, and have a nice evening.

- Craig, and the DoneDone team.

If you’re reading this, you’re probably signed in to the new DoneDone and thinking “What the $#%! happened to my DoneDone”. Then you’re thinking “Oh, right, this is the newer, faster, cleaner DoneDone I got 13 emails about.” Finally, you’re looking for some kind of primer on what’s actually new besides the design and the new .ico in you’re browser tab . Well, here ya go. Put that cold cup of coffee in the microwave for a minute, sit back down, have a read. Then, go get fixin’.

Hey, first, here’s two reminders

Your old username doesn’t exist anymore.

The first time you (and your users) sign in to the new DoneDone,  use your email address instead of your old username. Because of changes to our authentication model, we couldn’t bring the old ones with. Once you’re in, you can click over to Profile to re-enter that old username if you’d like.

DoneDone is free for October. You quite literally can’t pay for it.

While you’re busy getting busy using the new DoneDone, we’ll be busy getting our new billing platform into place. For the entire month of October, every DoneDone account is unlimited everything. Around October 15th, we’ll be releasing  a final build of the accounts section of DoneDone, and from then on, you’ll be able to see which plan you’re in, upgrade, downgrade, cancel, and get a sense for how things work now with active users.

What’s new

The Dashboard

In the old DoneDone, you saw every project by default. Even the ones with no issues in ‘em. We’ve created two new views on the Dashboard in v2. The default view is of projects with issues you’re participating in. The secondary view, for project managers, gives a birds-eye view of all active projects, regardless of ‘your participation’. You’ll also notice a Recent Activity feed at the bottom of the page. This looks at three most recently updated projects where you’ve got issues.

Email-to-ticket attachments

You can now email attachments to an issue, both on comment replies and adding issues via email.

CC people on an issue

In the new version, you can CC yourself or other people on an issue. This means you’ll get cc’d on all issue updates. This might be nice if you want to bring someone in for an opinion without having to reassign the issue. You can also bring others onto the conversation by cc’ing them on a comment, reassignment, etc. Oh, and in case you’re not interested in the issue, you can excuse yourself directly from the email.

Markdown support

All description fields in V2 support Markdown. This means you can make bullets out of asterisks, and bold and italicize as well. You can write HTML in there as well if ya’d like. If you’re new to Markdown, it’s easy. Here’s a primer.

Testers and Fixers

In V1, the person that created the issue was also the one that tested the issue. We got around this by doing a weird “create an issue on behalf of someone else” thing. V2 makes it more straightforward. When you create an issue, you pick both the fixer and the tester. So, Craig finds a browser bug on a project. He creates it for Bruno to fix and Lindsay to test. Simple.

Tagging that isn’t horrible

V1’s tagging auto-suggest was awful. We’ve made it better now. You can open up a list of tags on that project and click them to add it. Edit the issue to get rid of ‘em. No javascript magic. Just simple UI which won’t leave the browser wheezing.

Custom issue searches

In V1, once you created a custom search, you couldn’t edit or delete them. Now you can. I call this a feature enhancement.

Bulk Edits

You can now edit a group of issues in bulk from a project’s landing page. Change priority levels, testers, fixers, statuses, or even move a set of issues to a different project.

Uploading attachments on any action

In V1, you could only attach files to a comment. If you wanted to reassign the issue or change the status while attaching a file, you had to do it in two steps. In V2, any action allows you to also attach files.

Add notes to release builds

You can now add some additional notes to release builds that will get stored in your release build history.

Ready for Retest always available

In V1, if a project had release builds enabled, you could only mark an issue “ready for next release” when you were done fixing it. It then had to wait for a release build. In V2, you can also mark them as “ready for retest.” It’s nice for those one-off bugs you push, or pushing up issues you may have forgotten to bundle in a release build.

Wrap up

Whew, that’s a lot of new. We expect there’ll be varied reactions to some of the changes we’ve made. It’s a completely new user interface. It’s simpler and more legible, yes, but it’s new. There’s going to be some effort involved in relearning some of the actions we all grew accustomed to in the original DoneDone. We think the new experience will pay off though. Alas, nothing is perfect, so please send your feedback, critiques, problems, or compliments. Finally, the new DoneDone is just the start. The application you see today was built to evolve. So, the more you make your voice heard, the more DoneDone will become an issue tracker built around how you work.

Have a great week, and thanks for using DoneDone!

The DoneDone team

Support? Visit www.getdonedone.com/support or come holler on twitter.