technical
New Visualisation and collaboration features in tBits
We have recently few great features. One of these features help users view the various formats in browser.
Now, users dont have to download and install various softwares for seeing common files. At the moment it can view approximately 450 formats.
Users can also discuss and collaborate in real-time with other users.
This feature is specially targeted towards the Engineering companies where most the time of meetings goes in telling the customer to view at a certain area of drawing. Our customers are really excited about this feature.
Users can also do the redlining of the drawing. It stores this markup information in a separate file not in the drawing leaving the drawing intact.
One of the features with which I am really impressed with is comparing between drawings. User can compare the drawings side by side. And in the third portion of screen, it would only show the differences.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )Daily Reports
tBits now sends the daily report to each user in a neat format.
This daily report essentially comprises of various upcoming tasks, overdue tasks and tasks without due date assigned to me.
So, everyone gets an email every day about their to do list.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 1 so far )tBits gets outlook/Lotus notes plugin
The biggest hurdle any tracking system faces is getting the data into system. That was the reason why we integrated incoming mails. So to create an issue all users have do is send an email.
But how would a user specify assigee, category etc? For this, we devices EUCs (Email update commands) which look like this:
/category: xyz
/assignee: abc
/dueby: 01/01/2009
But do you think it is userly possible to specify these strange commands?
So, finally we deviced outlook plugin. While you compose an email, all you have to do is check “Track” checkbox and select category and assignees and click “Send”.
So, it becomes a breeze to track communication.
You got a task from customer and you want to delegate it to someone. All you have to do is click forward, say “Track” and Send. And you are done!!!
We have written a lotus plugin too on the similar lines!
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )Uh! Mail relay limitation
We are running tBits instances for our customers on our servers which are dedicated hosting from one of the biggest hosting provider.
This hosting servers had limitations on email Id’s. Some 50 relay per day. Urgh! thats crazy.
So I installed my own mail server (james – an amazing server written in java. I am really thankful to these guys. Will definitely donate once I start making profit.). It still has to go through their server but they told me that there is no relay limitation this way and I didnt believe them so I sent around 600 mails. It worked. I was happy.
But today I discovered that there is a limitation of 1000 relays. One tBits instance can’t send more then 1000 mails in a day!! Strange!
I need to figure out a solution. If you have any idea, kindly post a comment. It will be really a great help.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 2 so far )Red Screen Death by bugzilla
Happened to visit bugzilla. After facing the scary advanced search page, I clicked on ‘Search’.
I was slapped with this error message.It felt like committing a suicide.
New way to look at tBits
While we are busy preparing for next release, one customer called us for discussion.
Here is the transcript of our discussion:
Customer: We can see that your product is quite generic. What was the idea when you started designing it?
tBits Team: We started with a simple issue tracking system. Then people wanted it for bug tracking, ticketing, CRM and other workflow. So we had to rewrite it to make it generic. The idea behind it is to Keep the whole organization on same page.
C: Can it be used for workflow management?
t: Like what?
C: I want people to send mails to hr@xyz and it should be recieved by a person A who will route to concern department deciding upon the type of request.
t: Simple.
First define a department called HR and then define categories in it.
Define a rule like this:
“If it is first append, make person ‘A’ as assignee.”
Now, the mail will go to person ‘A’ who will then change the category depending on type of request.
C: Great! Do you provide an editor for editing these workflow rules?
t: No. Not at ths moment but will be there in future releases.
C: Not a problem.
C: Can I used it for the resume management? I can see that it has an efficient search which even searches within attachments.
t: Please elaborate on process details.
C: For example, a person will send resume which we will categorize. Then as an when requirement comes, we will make updates on resumes. We will need a powerful search.
t: Got the picture. Now I can say it can be efficiently used for resume management.
C: The search will not be slow?
t: No. We keep on indexing documents and request details that makes it faster. We use powerful search engine called Lucene for indexing.
C: How about 70,000 resume. Do you have any matrix?
t: I dont think that would be a problem but we will you give you matrix.
We are preparing a matrixdetailing the correlation between the number of request/appends/files/file sizes and time taken to search.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )How was it started?
A year ago my friend who just joined a printing firm as a COO (Chief Operating Officer) asked me for a calender. He said, “I am unable to manage because the things are in chaos. No one knows who is doing what. I need something with which I can find out who is/will be/was doing what.”
Ah! you dont need a calender, you need a workflow management solution similar to what we have for bug tracking.
I started my research and realized most of the tools that exist in the market are either too naive or if they are mature, they are for software industry.
We tried our hands on various products like Bugjilla, Jira, scarab…list goes on.
Here are the needs that they all failed to achieve:
1. A simple and sweet user interface.
The interfaces should be sweet, simple and yet cater to advanced needs. Google is the superb example. There should not be too many things on my first screen. The asthetics should be taken seriously.
2. Flexibility to configure them for other kinds of industries.
The product should not be specific to one particular group. In an organization there are all types of departments like HR, Accounts, Facilities, Systems, QA, Developement. They all should be using a single system. Why there isnt a single system for all? Not because people dont want it a single system but because it is quite dificult to make such a system.
Every department has different set of roles. For example, In HR the role are Manager, Senior Manager, Super senior manager blah blah while in IT Department we have only two roles Developer and Boss.
Every department has a different workflow.
How do you cater such needs? It was really a tough part. And believe me the solution was simple.
3. Complete integration with email system
“I dont want to open a browser and type a url and then find where to to log a request. I just want to send a mail and reply to peoples request. I dont want to listen any excuses.”
— This is what one of my clients said.
4. Searching inside attachments.
Most of the people type the things in Microsoft Word and attach it. Some even put the excel file or pdf into the system. System has to support searching inside these. Trust me this is very importent for a non-technical person.
5. Is it programmer friendly?
Being user friendly is not enough. It should provide API using which not only people but computer too can talk to system.
After giving it a thought, I realized I can make a better system and I jumped into it.
Today I stand with a luxury of talk about its beauty.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 1 so far )
tBits - A next generation workflow management system 