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In particular, I need a more full fledged version of Trac to support robust project management, and task tracking. I went through the plugins and literally found over 50 that looked promising.
My question is to the admins/users of Trac: which ones are indespensible for making Trac feature complete and which ones should be avoided (e.g. stability issues)?
Lots of Trac plugins look promising. Unfortunately only a handful really delivers and even then some of them are not properly supported or maintained. They also tend to conflict sometimes.
I will not recommend anything for project management specifically but these are the ones which made our live so much easier:
TagsPlugin - the most useful one, adds tags support
BreadCrumbsNav - show previously visited pages, saves lots of time
ShowPath - show the breadcrumbs path, useful if you have your pages named hierarchically
CaseInsensitiveWiki - allows entering case-insensitive URLS
Stratistics - show Wiki/SVN statistics
WikiRename - allows page renaming (does not work well with the Tags)
0.10
WebAdmin - pre-installed in 0.11 but before you need to get it separately
My Favorites:
General:
Better editor WYSIWYG: http://trac-hacks.org/wiki/TracWysiwygPlugin
TicketCalendar Macro: http://trac-hacks.org/wiki/WikiTicketCalendarMacro
AccountManager: http://trac-hacks.org/wiki/AccountManagerPlugin
Scrum
- Agilo: http://trac-hacks.org/wiki/AgiloForScrumPlugin
This is the place to watch http://trac-hacks.org/
Besides those already mentioned here, I also found the following necessary:
Announcer - very flexible notification scheme
AutocompleteUsers - handy while typing (existent) user name
AutoLinks - automatically make words not conforming to wiki naming rule but matches existent page name a link
CustomFieldAdmin - make manage custom fields easier
Redirect - handy if you constantly need to make short-hand name wiki pages (like HTML redirects to HyperText .....)
TicketDelete - make deleting, if at all needed, easier
WikiRename - must-have for wiki refactoring
Below are good-to-have:
S5 - directly render wiki pages as slideshow in S5 format, could be really useful for using Trac as the source for presentation
FullBlog - add blogging support to Trac
Vote - cool add-on feature for big team
TracWikiToPdf - transform wiki page to pdf dynamically (however the effect might be all that satisfying)
TimingAndEstimation - neat for tracking time and/or estimation
I really like the BatchModifyPlugin that makes it easy to change more than one ticket at the time.
MasterTicketsPlugin is quite useful for ticket dependncies.
I would recommend against Bitten for CI (Continuous Integration) (see Martin Fowler on the subject) although I am using it.
The task force behind Bitten doesn't seem strong enough to process the remaining tasks. Simply look at the age and the number of posts in Bitten tickets
I don't admin our Trac, and I don't know all the plugins we use. But I co-developed a GUI we use to navigate the tickets and to track time spent on specific ones. It uses the xmlrpc plugin to query ticket information and to write some information back. Extending Trac is really easy this way.
my must-have list of plugins:
http://trac-hacks.org/wiki/AccountManagerPlugin
http://trac-hacks.org/wiki/GitPlugin
http://trac-hacks.org/wiki/TagsPlugin
http://trac-hacks.org/wiki/BatchModifyPlugin
http://trac-hacks.org/wiki/TicketDeletePlugin
http://trac-hacks.org/wiki/XmlRpcPlugin
some may be part of trac since 0.12
and a script:
https://subtrac.sara.nl/oss/email2trac
Apache Bloodhound is a collection of plugins bundled with Trac. It includes some of the individual plugins suggested in earlier answers, like the AccountManagerPlugin.
The major plugins developed as part of Bloodhound are a very robust Multi Product implementation, full text search (based on Whoosh) with better navigation.
Ticket relations have also just been added.
Bloodhound keeps integrating newly released trac versions quickly, and all plugins interoperate as expected because they're purposefully bundled. It's also still compatible with most trac-hacks.
What plugins you will consider must-have depends heavily on your use case.
Must-have plugins if you need more power in creating advanced wiki pages:
GraphvizPlugin
WikiExtrasPlugin
Must-have plugins if you like IDE-style auto-completion and indentation features in the text editor:
TextareaKeyBindingsPlugin
WikiAutoCompletePlugin
Must-have plugins if you use many Mercurial repositories:
MercurialPlugin
HgDirManagerPlugin
Must-have plugins if you ...
... want to archive emails: MailArchivePlugin
... want to track time spent on tasks: TimeTrackingPlugin
... want to plan your week: WeekPlanPlugin
... want to drag cards between stacks: CardsPlugin
...
But if you don't have these use cases, you will not find the plugins valuable.
Related
I need the following plugins for Trac (if exist):
Diagrams: Gantt and other;
Export to MS Excel;
Dashboards: control panels, monitors
Some pointers in order of your request with some remarks, citations from the plugin description or own experience if applicable:
for Gantt diagrams there are actually multiple choices (in total absence of own experience roughly in order of likelihood of usability):
TracJsGanttPlugin by jsgantt, computed % completion, actively maintained
GanttCalendarPlugin - manually set % completion, month view for tickets, maintained
FlashGanttPlugin based on FusionCharts Free - just for milestones, not for tickets, seems unmaintained
SchedulingToolsPlugin, early beta, definitely unmaintained
GanttChartPlugin no dynamic, just YAML text block to Gantt markup processor, seems unmaintained
ExcelDownloadPlugin - using this myself: works great, there's even i18n support on the way
WhiteboardPlugin - not totally convinced here
More generally I recommend TracStatsPlugin to you for making a nice bundled view with navigation to sub-pages on topics (repo, ticket, wiki). It looks tidy and useful, and it has a responsive maintainer.
There is a great site called Trac Hacks. A quick search here will show you many different plugins for handling Visualizations. Here is a quick list of plugins that do visualizations.
As for an export to Excel, what are you trying to export? For Tickets and reports, at the bottom of each page, there is an option to export to a comma or tab delimited Text file. This can be opened in Excel. If that is not enough, here are three plugins that will export to Excel
ExcelDownloadPlugin
ExportImportXlsPlugin
ExcelReportPlugin
I hope this helps.
Josh
I wish to create a document repository for my company. Reason is because my company have many documents and they did not have a version tracking in place. This means everyone is using different version all the time.
Plone is something new to me and i got to know from a good friend of mine. And too bad he is not around anymore to answer my question. I believed in him and i wish to materialize his idea, to use Plone as a document repository for my company.
I have install Plone and manage to view the default Plone page, add all company's username and change the logo to my company's logo. And now the biggest question is, how to setup the document repository? What i have in mind was to create a "page" for the user to add files, download files, search for files and read its description.
Any lead for me to go about?
Reusable,
Same problem here. We started to use Plone as our main DMS 4 weeks ago (inserting existing docs at present).
For working copies, we use iterate (insert plone.app.iterate under eggs in your buildout.cfg).
For versioning, Products.CMFEditions. I believe this worked out of the box.
For creating new workflow, look into plone.app.workflowmanager and read the docs.
In a previous question we asked, we were still looking at Dexterity which has alot going for it but eventually we decided on adapting an existing content type based on Archetypes.
As for inserting files, as long as the description is ok, they will be found through the in-built search functionality, but you might consider using Iterate mentioned above to make sure that nobody is using the same file twice.
As your new, as I am, the docs seem hard at first but are actually quite good.
And this book is still giving me the foundation we need to keep adding functionality.
Good luck
I think, you should get pretty far with vanilla Plone installation, without developing your own extensions or other customization add-on-products. Therefore, I'd recommend you to start with Plone 4 User Manual to find out everything you could do out-of-the box.
As #Speediro mentioned, versioning support comes built-in for the main content types (and you don't actually see CMFEditions mentioned anywhere), but it's not activated for file uploads. Although, as briefly mentioned in the manual: Content items can be configured to have versioning enabled/disabled through the Site Setup → Plone Configuration panel under "Types".
Working Copy Support (plone.app.iterate) should also be there already waiting for activation on Site Setup's add-ons-panel.
Yet, before the Plone Collective (=community) Developer Docs or Professional Plone 4 Development, I'd recommend Practical Plone 3. It has a bit outdated graphics (because it was made for Plone 3), but it's great next step after the user manual. E.g. how to define content rules to send e-mails notifications for content updates (still through the browser without coding). Or how to create custom forms using Products.PloneFormGen.
When you really need to write your own code, it'd be time for Professional Plone 4 and the Collective Docs.
If you can't have a developer to manage your stuff, I would recommand to stay on official Plone, no custom code and use only widly used addons.
I mean:
stay on the default theme (sunburst)
use the default plone content types
only customize the logo
activate plone.app.iterate in the addon controlpanel
do not play with workflow because they need to know what you are doing. by default a file has the visibility of it's folder. It mean if you can see the folder you will be able to see all files inside. You can just activate default worklfow for files under the ZMI.
Use collective.quickupload addon
Your database will going really fast to a huge size because Plone is doing indexing and indexing means lot's of spaces. So you will have to handle this as system adminstrator;
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JIRA is a very extensible bug/task tracking tool. As such, newcomers feel lost as to what plugins they should install.
Please share your thoughts what plugins (both free and paid) that you consider a "must-add" for JIRA!
Here are the plugins I couldn't live without:
Timesheet report - Summarizes any user's time spent over a weekly period: http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/JIRAEXT/Timesheet+report+and+portlet
Charting plugin - Generate charts from any issue navigator: http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/JIRAEXT/JIRA+Charting+Plugin
Subversion plugin - Link and view subversion commit history to a JIRA issue: http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/JIRAEXT/JIRA+Subversion+plugin
Labels plugin - Lets you tag any JIRA issue and search on tags: http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/JIRAEXT/JIRA+Labels+Plugin
We use JIRA Labels plug-in, which allows to add a "tags" field: http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/JIRAEXT/JIRA+Labels+Plugin
Plugins that stand out the most (paid and free) are mentioned on Atlassian's plugin page:
https://plugins.atlassian.com/search/by/jira
And the company I work for develops JIRA Client, a desktop client for JIRA (paid unless you're open-source): http://almworks.com/jiraclient
We use Tempo Plugin extensively for time tracking, project management, planning and billing.
We are also big fans of Greenhopper for project management (Scrum/KanBan).
We use quite a few extra JIRA plugins; the charts for visualizing find/fix ratios etc., Release status plugin for a nice visualization of how each release stands, the SVN integration, Linker and Activity Stream plugins for integration with Confluence, and the Firefox search portlet that lets you use JIRA as a search engine option in Firefox.
Some of our developers also like the Eclipse plugin for JIRA that lets them manage their list of issues direct from the IDE.
The only paid plugin we tried out was Greenhopper, since we are an agile shop, but we didn't find it useful enough to be worth buying.
We really liked the following:
Create and Link: Allows us to create an issue, then create another issue that automatically gets linked to the original
JIRA Suite Utilities: Incredibly useful plug-in! The most helpful feature was it's ability to make field's required after a transition.
JIRA Misc Workflow Extensions: multiple useful conditions and validators for work flows.
To integrate Jira with Saleforce or SugarCRM you should consider Go2group CRM plugin
We use ScreenMail for JIRA as it lets us create screencasts to our issues. It removes the need to write long descriptions of specifications or bugs. Screencasts makes it possible for me to record my screen and talk whats on my mind to my mic. Anyone who has access to the issues can watch the video later.
This has given me more freedom to work whenever as I do not need to call a meeting always when something more complicated has come up. Work with overseas partners has also been easier as I am able to work in my own timezone most of the time.
Whats important here is that you do not need to install any additional software or rent harddrive space. The plugin does everything for you. Just install the plugin and start recording.
I found the JIRA Workflow Visualization Plugin very useful when first setting up Jira workflows - it gives a pictorial representation of your workflows, which makes it easier to view than the list of steps that Jira gives you by default.
For customizing the way Jira works and adding new features:
Behaviours Plugin
Jira Scripting Suite
With this to you could practically do almost anything. I used it to write Issues 24hrs notifications, sending email from templates that are saved in Confluence, automatic issue moving, closing, cloning and sub-issue creating, and much more...
To complete the last two plugins, some plugins that add special features to make life easier:
JIRA Toolkit Plugin
JIRA Workflow Toolbox
A nice plugin to display external pages:
Jira Custom Content Plugin
For more advanced JIRA reports, charts and dashboards there is eazyBI application with standard JIRA integration as well as installable eazyBI reports and charts plugin for JIRA.
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I've heard a lot of good things about using Mylyn in eclipse.
How could I set it up to give me a taste of how I could use it?
The seminal Developerworks article from the 2.0 release is a great introduction to Mylyn, and still relevant. Written by the Mik Kirsten who is the Mylyn project lead, it is a very clear explanation of something quite unique. Lots of pretty pictures showing it in action too.
Mylyn Part one - Integrated Task Management
Mylyn Part two - Automated Context Management
Simple define tasks for yourself and let Mylyn focus on it.
I'm not able to use the bugtracking connections of Mylyn because we use a non-standard tracking solution at work (home grown and awfull), but the fast task-context switching with Mylyn is very usefull in daily work.
I work as senior developer so many times come orthers to ask something about their part of the code. I have a task for this interrupts, activate it and after they've gone i could simple swith back to my work.
Another tip: start out by preventing Mylyn from actually hiding things not relevant to your current task so it will just shade them gray instead. Hiding used to be automatic (maybe it still is?) and it tended to throw people off. I actually find the hiding more distracting and prefer the graying-out.
I would recommend a two step process if you'd like to start using Mylyn.
Get an overview of Mylyn and its advantages
Configure Mylyn to work with your setup
In order to get an overview of Mylyn consider one of the following resources:
Why Mylyn is Indispensable, blog by Marc Esher
Code at the Speed of Thought, presentation by Mik Kersten (47 minutes)
To configure Mylyn in a way that optimizes your productivity it helps to follow a few simple steps. I would recommend using one of the following as your guide to getting setup:
Getting Started Video Series (one, two)
Getting Started Wizard in Tasktop Pro (screenshot)
Tasktop Pro/Mylyn How-to Series
Hope this helps!
David Shepherd,
Tasktop Technologies Inc.
http://www.vogella.de/articles/Mylyn/article.html is an excellent introduction to Mylyn and is frequently updated
The Developer Works articles serg10 points out are great. Another great way to learn more about Mylyn is to watch the video, "Mylyn 3.0: Code at the speed of thought".
See http://tasktop.com/mylyn/ for the most relevant Mylyn resources.
Connect it to your bugtracker and use "Focus On Active Task".
Good tip, Uri. Recent versions of Mylyn now display a message in the package explorer "empty task context, unfocus or alt+click" when you activate a new task.
As Uri points out, one way to get started is to unfocus using the toolbar button and work on your task normally for a while (with uninteresting resources automatically greyed-out). You can then focus the package explorer when you only want to see relevant resources.
Other users prefer to keep the package explorer in focus mode and hold down the "Alt" key while clicking in the package explorer to add new resources to the active task context. In this way of working, only the interesting resources will be visible, but you can always un-focus to see everything if needed.
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The people writing the user manual are not necessarily programmers, and they need a visual editor. A major issue is the internal format of the authoring tool; it should be readable text/html, so it's easy to compare versions of individual pages checked into version control.
DocBook
(source: docbook.org)
Microsoft HTML Help Workshop can be used to create good quality professional CHM help files. All you need is a bunch of HTML files. The tool "compiles" all these and bundles into a single Help file.
The HTML files can be generated using Microsoft Word/Frontpage or even Dreamweaver. You might want to consider source controlling these HTML files.
Latex. Lyx provides WYSIWYM for writing latex files.
At my old job they used a tool by madcap software called flare.
It seemed to work really well.
There are other professional products which allow help file writing and they have support of "context ID" which makes context sensitive help possible. Doc To Help and RoboHelp are these type of products.
A good combination to consider is Subversion, DocBook and Publican.
Version control = Subversion
Content Authoring = DocBook
Publishing = Publican
Optional WYSIWYG = Serna
At the moment, this is one of the toolchains in use by the world's largest provider of open source solutions, and the name behind much of the world's use of Linux-based operation systems in the enterprise market. Most (and close to all) of Red Hat's official documentation is created in such a manner. Same goes for Fedora.
The major "pro" here is that these are freely available tools, with a strong overlap in the market of technical writers. All of which will be able to (but might not want to) write in XML, and picking up DocBook is like picking up HTML in the 90's. Subversion is a very common version control tool, that like DocBook is relatively easy to implement and use. Publican is a great publishing tool that can take DocBook XML, and publish it to PDF, HTML, HTML-single, etc. Obviously your writers can use a WYSIWYG like Serna, but I use snippets in Geany (on Fedora) or TextMate (on OS X) personally.
The major "con" is the perception of technicality. Your writers might want WYSIWYG (and can have it), and depending on your documentation needs, this might be what you end up using. As you would know, there's a market out there for "Technical Writers" who specialize in fixing Microsoft Word styles (and markup), so the arguments for separating "authoring" from "publishing" are based on proven but distinct use cases for organizations that require documentation to be held up to the same standards of the engineering/programming/source production.
Some of the extreme advice you will get comes from people and companies that have been exposed to the value of XML documentation, and especially those in the realms of DITA, where certain multi-nationals have a reputation for acquisitions that are influenced by the format and availability of the product knowledge. there are also the arguments that locking your documentation into a "sticky" or closed format doesn't help the future maintenance requirements. This is where the open source options gain support on a corporate level. Plus, obviously, it's free.
You can use Subversion and MGTEK Help Producer. Help Producer makes help files from Word documents. TortoiseSVN comes with scripts to compare different revisions of Word documents, in Word itself (Word has a version compare tool).
Your users are going to want a visual diff tool that resembles the one they are editing in. If they are just slightly not-technical, DocBook or Latex aren't going to work (I've tried giving my users both, and I even tried Epic Editor as a DocBook editor which is very expensive but didn't work out very well after all). Sticking to something they know (Word) will prevent you many headaches.
I was very reluctant to go this route at first too, because I wanted a solution that was more 'technically perfect', but I realized over time that having happy and productive users was more important. Just saying that I know where you're coming from, but try the Word route - it works much better in practice than all the 'pure' text-based solutions that are out there. Regular users don't like markup based editing.
If you're using Visual Studio, take a look at SandCastle - http://www.codeplex.com/Sandcastle.
There's also a couple of tools that help you build sandcastle files, try searching "sandcastle" on codeplex. One of them is SandCastle Help File Builder (http://www.codeplex.com/SHFB), but I've never used it so I don't know if non-technical users will be happy with that.
Mapcap Flare is the best commercial tool around. Written by the ex-developers of Robodoc
I created a documentation system called Mandown (Markdown/Html/Javascript/file-based relatively linked documents for portability) which would easily go under version control. The visual editor part you would have to figure out separately - I sometimes use HTML-Kit which at least has a preview feature.
See What is the best way to store software documentation?
Here's another tool to check out: Xilize
We are using APT. It integrates well with the CI (standard build artifact) and is more alive than for instance word document. It is also possible to generate PDFs and other formats when needed.