A few small bugs that we fixed last week…

1. Free accounts could see Timer buttons

Since this functionality is disabled for free accounts we removed the display of the following links/buttons:

a. ‘Add Time’ form on the Time Sheet page
b. ‘Start Timer’ button on the Time Sheet Print Preview page.

2. Time log entry link navigation

Clicking on the Time Added action entry of any previous dates on the Dashboard or History section would always navigate to Today’s time sheet page. Now, it will navigate to the correct date’s time sheet page.

3. Adding time linked to a Milestone

Add time to a task (by using the Start Timer) that is linked to a milestone. Then go to that Time Sheet page. Here the Milestone name would not show up. This has been fixed.

4. Adding time to FreshBooks

Add a time linked with a FreshBooks task and without refreshing that page update the time again. The newly updated time was not reflecting on the FreshBooks page. This is fixed.

A few small fixes…

Fixed: Monthly recurring tasks date issue
Tasks were not recurring on the set monthly deadline. This is because we were calculating months as a fixed 30 days so this issue came up when months had fewer than 30 days (Feb) or had 31 days. Now, if a monthly recurring task has a  deadline of 31st October then the new recurring task will be 31st December and not November - this works the same way as Google Calendar monthly recurring events.

Fixed: Upload Files in the Issue section
Files are properly uploading to the issues section of each project. Earlier, there were issues with certain file types and names.

Fixed: Wrong deadline for GMT -5
For this timezone the deadline would come back 1 day earlier.  This has been resolved and tested with other time zones as well.

Fixed: Adding time to Tasks
The time clock icon would not show up when time was added to a task unless a page refresh was forced.

Fixed: Google Apps login help
We have added some more help and informative error messages on the login window for the Google Apps login.

That nasty bug on a new integration project refused to be found and we were fried at the end of the day. We felt lost and defeated. Leaving the office seemed hard to do but coming back the next day with a fresh perspective was equally important. I think I was in my own world that night. I sent a text message to our team: “I believe nothing is impossible. I hope you think the same”.

We assembled early on Tuesday morning. I think we spent the night thinking about what could have gone wrong. Starting fresh we decided to take a step back and work the basics. This would help us incrementally build our confidence again and find the error(s).

Step 1 - Downloaded new code libraries from the vendor site and went through the tutorials and how-tos. Were we missing something?

Step 2 -  Made sure our server had the correct requirements. It was important to double-check just in-case there was an incompatibility.

Step 3 - Kept the terminal window open and used the ‘tail -f’ command on the error log file. This would help us squash bugs incrementally as we progressed.

Step 4 - Setup the code and made sure that the most basic example ran. It gave us a few fatal errors that we couldn’t make sense of. After searching the vendor’s site, there were others who had the same problem. We applied these patches. At last, the basic example ran properly.

Step 5 - This gave us confidence to add our code and made sure it ran too. After some minor modifications, this ran too and we were well on our way to complete the integration.

Looking back, we figured it was some old libraries and something buggy in our code that returned empty session values and broke the processing. We could have probably commented our code in the first place, but we opted to start from scratch.

This process is something that all developers go through. Though, what we learnt was very powerful and will stay with us for a long time:

a. Take up a challenge positively cause it ain’t going away. If you are going to face it, you might as well give your best.
b. Going back to the basics helps. Building on stuff that works always helps.
c. Control your mind when faced with a challenge. It will wander and get excited. Calm down.
d. Keeping everyone motivated and encouraged as you will be working with people with different stress levels.

That same morning, I came across a quote from one my twitter followers:

Keep your fears to yourself, but share your courage with others.”–Robert Louis Stevenson

Deep inside, I knew it would be our day.

I’ve been working with a few companies in the MVP portfolio on their Product Alpha Releases. The past month specially, has been busy with testing the functionality, usability, and other related aspects. Managing multiple projects, test cases, filing bugs and usability issues, and tracking to them to ensure they are fixed is one hell lot of a task, especially when teams work remotely.

I started my collaboration on email initially, moved on to google spreadsheets, but soon felt things were all over the place. Then I decided to file issues and bugs on a spreadsheet and upload them on DA. Until one fine day, I discovered that DA actually has an Issues section where I could have filed and tracked the bugs and issues from the start!

DA defines Issues as something that needs to be resolved during a project.

Once I chanced upon the Issues Feature, I figured out that I can now file all my observations related to that particular project right on that DA account. This was not just true to me, but the companies could use this method with their entire test team. Here is what we went about doing:

1.       Uploaded the test cases document on DA Docs: This helped testers refer to what to test and what the expected behavior was.

2.       Gave access to all members of the Test Team on the companies DA account. These guys who were testing were friends and family besides remote tech. testers.

3.       All people who were testing used the Issues Feature to note their observations by adding a new issue. You can add:

a.       Summary

b.      Description

c.       Link the Issue to a Milestone

d.      Priority

e.      Due Date

f.        Assign Issue to a particular person

g.       Specify who all can see that particular Issue

4.       Once the Issues were filed all associated users tracked the status of the issues, found out if the assigned person had accepted and started work on the issues, and users interacted using the comments option for each issue.

5.       Teams also exported the issues to an excel sheet OR printed the issues table to pass them onto users who were not on DeskAway.

This not just made tracking Issues easy, we also saw that things were more organized and we got issues resolved faster.

Currently, what’s missing is that we can’t attach images / files to an issue, add categories to issues or tag them. I spoke to the DA team about these things and they have promised me that they are adding these functionalities very soon. They are also soon going have this cool feature, where I can add Issues, attach files to issues and do everything else via email.

Guess this is what Simplfy Team Work really means! Or is that my Xmas wish coming true?