News

The release candidate of WebIssues version 1.1 is available for download. It adds a few very interesting and long awaited features:

• Global lists of issues, displayed under the “All Projects” item, display all issues of a particular type (for example all bugs or tasks) in a single view, regardless of their project and folder. You no longer have to switch between folders if you have lots of them.
• Anonymous access, which, combined with public projects, allows unregistered users to access selected issues in read-only mode without registration. User self-registration now has a special mode in which administrator's approval is not required and new users have immediate access to public projects.
• Public alerts, which make it easier for system and project administrators to set up alerts and notifications for all users or project members. The schedule of summary notifications can now be configured separately for each alert.

This release also fixes several bugs, both from the previous 1.1 versions and those found in the latest 1.0.5 release. Although it's still a development version, it can be considered relatively stable, so you can already start updating your environments. The final version will be released in about two weeks from now.

Important Note: WebIssues is currently looking for translators to take over and update the no longer supported translations: French, German, Dutch and Chinese. New translations are also welcome. We are now using the Transifex online platform so no special tools are necessary to become a translator. See the WebIssues project page on Transifex and the Translation page in the WebIssues Wiki for more information.

Today the second development version of WebIssues 1.1 was released. It introduces two entirely new features which allow better integration between WebIssues and email:

• Email inbox receives emails from selected email account and automatically creates issues based on these emails, and creates comments and attachments for existing issues.
• Subscriptions make it possible to watch individual, selected issues for change. An email notification is sent to subscribers when someone modifies the issue in any way, for example by editing its attributes, modifying its description, adding a comment or attachment.

The email inbox and subscriptions can be used together, which makes it possible to set up two way email communication with the WebIssues system. It's even possible for external users, who don't have a WebIssues account, to communicate with the WebIssues system in this way.

You can download the newest server and client packages for testing from the Development version page.

The first development version of WebIssues 1.1 is available. The most imporant feature introduced in this version is the support for issue descriptions. They are similar to comments, but they are displayed in a distinctive way in the issue details and they can be entered directly when creating an issue. When updating from version 1.0, the first comment is automatically converted to a description. Also projects can now have a description, which can be edited by the administrators and viewed by all users when the project is selected in the tree.

Both comments and descriptions can now use a new format of text with simple markup. It allows changing the font style, for example bold or italic, and creating simple formatting, for example bullet lists, quotations and code blocks with optional syntax highlighting. A toolbar above the text fields can assist in entering the correct markup.

You can download the new server and client packages from the Development version page. This beta version should not be used for production purposes, but I encourage everyone to test it and report any potential problems and suggestions for improvements.

Version 1.0.5 of WebIssues Server and Client is a bug fix release which fixes the following issues:

• A crash in the Desktop Client when a view or report has more than 16 columns. It occurred most often when exporting a list of issues to CSV file with all system and user columns, and the issue type had more than 10 attributes.
• Some issues with truncating text and recognizing links were fixed. URLs starting with file:// and \\ (UNC paths) are now also recognized by the Web Client (though many browsers block access to such URLs, so you may need to user copy & paste).
• A workaround was added to the Desktop Client to prevent problems caused by incorrectly configured mod_security module on the server. Note that using mod_security with WebIssues is not recommended as it may block legitimate requests.

By the way, work on version 1.1 has recently started. The first beta version will be released in April or May. One of the main features introduced in this version will be issue descriptions. It will also be possible to use simple text formatting in both comments and description. You can read more about it in this blog post.

Version 1.0.4 of WebIssues Server and Client contains the following bug fixes and new features:

• Uploading and downloading attachments stored in a PostgreSQL database was fixed. Because of that this patch is highly recommended if you are using PostgreSQL.
• Issue history is presented in a more compact format. In addition, it is possible to select the order in which history is displayed and the default filter (all changes or only comments and attachments), both globally in server settings, and individually in user preferences. Finally, attributes with empty values can be removed from the issue details view.
• It is now possible to define the initial view for each type of issues. This view is selected by default when opening a folder instead of the All Issues view. The initial view can be defined in the View Settings of the selected issue type.
• The drop-down calendar when editing date attributes now contains a Today button which sets the current date (and time, if present).

Also note that the official binary packages for Windows are now digitally signed with a certificate. This should prevent security warnings from both Windows and anti-virus software.

Updated on 2012-12-14: Version 1.0.4-1 of the WebIssues Server was released. It fixes a bug in the installer which caused server settings to be incorrectly initialized after installing the server. If you already have version 1.0.4, you don't have to update, unless you're planning to install a new instance of the server. If you installed the server using version 1.0.4 and an error occurs when opening an issue, simply go to Administration Panel, open Server Settings and click OK to update the settings.