Menturio/WEB 1.7 released

[12/17/2004]

This release (a.k.a. “Team Player”) introduces meeting management. About meeting management in general Meetings are key tools to keep a project on track. However, many times meetings are inefficient. They take long hours while discussions are never properly recorded, resulting in the same problems arising again and again. They tend to take completely new directions during the course of a discussion, leaving several problems uncovered. And, most importantly, even if they are recorded, participants do not receive an overview of what happened during the meeting; most of the time they leave with their own notes in their hands, hoping they recorded everything properly. Meetings in Menturio™ Menturio™ addresses all these problems and more. - meetings are entirely browser-based and SHARED. This means that participants need not be in the same room, building, or even country. They follow the course of the meeting on the meeting page that is being constantly updated. During meetings they can communicate using a browser-based instant messaging system, built into the meeting page. - during meetings all the discussed problems are issues stored in Menturio™. Should a new problem arise or should you have some new idea, you can easily add a new issue to the meeting - all modifications are automatically recorded. This solves the problem of meetings being inflexible. - only the issues added to a given meeting are discussed. You can take the issues step-by-step - the currently discussed issue is even highlighted on the meeting page so even participants who join after the meeting has started will instantly know the topic of discussion. This solves the problem of a meeting taking a different course from the desired one. - after finishing a meeting, a report is automatically created, containing all the discussed issues, modifications, decisions on issues (including possibilities to postpone an issue to another meeting). This solves the problem of meeting documentation. Participant management with e-mail notification, complete with vCalendar The meeting participant management makes it easy to invite, notify and manage participants. The e-mails you send about a given meeting contain an automatically generated vCalendar entry; this feature, combined with the use of vCalendar-compatible calendar applications is very useful. You can add to a meeting internal Menturio™ users and external users as well. This makes it easy to have meetings with third-party experts who may not be constantly needed for the project; in this case, instead of going through the process of creating a user for the participant you just add him or her as an external. You can also send e-mail notifications to participants with a press of a button. Notifications include all necessary information about meetings (including location, start time - considering the participant's time zone, planned length, topic). When a meeting starts, you can set who is present and who is not, and this information is also stored automatically, making attendance registers obsolete. Also, Menturio™ can automatically send an e-mail message to each participant whenever a meeting is cancelled, saving you this tedious task. Dynamically refreshed meeting page The running meeting page (the page that you see when you join a running meeting) is constantly being updated, making sure you always see the current meeting status. Also, the meeting page includes an internal instant messaging system. These conversations are saved for later reference. Improved general performance During the development of meeting management we have made radical changes to the core engine of the system as well, resulting in serious performance boost on the Items page and on the Reports page.

Menturio/WEB 1.6 released

[08/14/2004]

This release (a.k.a. “Babel Fish”) focuses on the single most important thing in web development, browser compatibility. Naturally it includes several other new and improved features: Browser compatibility Alternative browsers (Mozilla Firefox being the most popular of them at the current time) becoming more and more widespread, it is necessary for any web-based service to support as many as possible. With browser implementations being so different it is virtually impossible for large systems to be completely browser independent. Considering current browser usage studies, we have concentrated our efforts to make our first step in browser independence: Mozilla Firefox compatibility. Project independency Testing Menturio™ we have noticed that project dependency sometimes decreases effectiveness. One of the best examples is when you open an item by entering its identifier: if the desired item is not in the current project, you cannot use this method. This presents a problem when you only have the identifier of the item and no other information. Keeping this in mind we have developed project independency for the following features: - open item by identifier - manage items - edit items Improved e-mail sending Sending e-mail notifications about issues is considered by our partners one of the most useful features of Menturio™. Following polls we have introduced several new features for issue e-mail notification. We have introduced improved recipient selection with the address list comprised of available Menturio™ users; from now on, selecting recipients is as easy as in any e-mail client application. Using another new feature you can append additional notes to the e-mail and at the same time, add the notes to Menturio™ as well.

Menturio/WEB 1.5 released

[03/14/2004]

This release (a.k.a. “Marvel”) brings ease of use to a new level. Highlights: Fast and easy access of issues When having a large number of issues (ideas, tasks), it seems you are never able to access the ones you really need. Even if you have their Menturio™ identifiers, you have to go through the tiring process of opening the filter page, creating a filter that displays the issues with the given identifiers and so on. No more. Using the new issue access system you just enter the identifiers in a dialog box and you have all the issues you want. You may receive some notification of issues by e-mail - just copy and paste the mail contents into a dialog box that intelligently recognizes the identifiers and shows you the issues you just need. New issue management system When managing issues, one of the problems is the overwhelming set of properties in Menturio™. Sure, they allow you to get detailed information on any document, email, task or idea in the system. However, when it comes to modifying issues, having a smaller amount of visible properties can make management more intuitive. This is why we have developed a new management system. Using this, only the most used properties are visible; you can also enter for each managed (modified) issue a reason for the modification - this reason is automatically added to the system as a follow-up. This makes tracking issue changes even easier. New project overview page The new Project Overview page provides a fast and easy way to check the current status of your project. Listing each issue type (Task, Request, Idea, etc) and stage (New, Active, Quality Assurance etc) it gives you a general picture of the project advancement. It also lists project milestones, complete with their most important properties (deadline, related reports etc), making it easy and fast to analyze project status in detail. Service page for administrators Using the new service page it becomes easy to find any system-related problems (database downtime, server version incompatibilities, etc) for your system adminstrator. It also enables you to send our support team an e-mail containing all the system information necessary for troubleshooting - with a single press of a button. Numerous other enhancements and bug fixes.

Menturio/WEB 1.4.5 released

[10/31/2003]

This interim release (in preparation for 1.5 a.k.a. “Marvel”) focuses on some more usability enhancements and overall system robustness. Highlights: Workflow-oriented status selector The item status is an important property to follow the progress of an issue or a task (especially, combined with the item history and/or offline reporting). In Menturio there are many status values (like New, Open, Resolved, Closed etc.) to suit your needs. Since you could choose the status from a combo box, it was at times not intuitive to find the status you were searching for. Based on the feedback from our users, the new status selector visualizes in what phase the item is currently in by showing the main status values in a flowchart and marking the current one. Of course you can still use the combo box status selector as well. (Right-click in Edit/Add items on the Status field to show the new status selector) Web Folders: easy document sharing anytime, anywhere In Menturio you could always attach your documents to the items. Now you have the means to use your Menturio document repository as an ordinary file system like one on your hard drive. On any system that supports the WebDAV standard, and especially on Windows XP you can manipulate your documents in Menturio even without installing new extensions. You can create, open and save documents from Microsoft® Word™ , Excel™, PowerPoint™, or virtually from any other application as if they were on your hard drive. Menturio statuses revisited The status values of Menturio evolved as users managed their projects with Menturio. We have learned through your feedback (thanks!) and put together a new, even more powerful set of status values. With the accumulated knowledge the new status values provide more workflow options and a streamlined way of handling items in your projects. For example, we have introduced the approval status values so that certain work items can be flagged as waiting for management/client approval; also added a second level of QA status values for client QA validations. Numerous other enhancements and bug fixes.

Menturio/WEB 1.4 released

[08/24/2003]

This release (a.k.a. “Homo Ludens”) is focusing on usability and reporting functionality. Highlights: Off-line reporting added Although the Menturio Reporting Tool is a powerful report engine with many features like grouping and summaries, there are reports which require more sophisticated calculations. Now you should not put those reports away because they are hard to create. Instead the reporting engine can export your project data (of any report) into Microsoft® Excel™ (or any other spreadsheet application) with full version history of the items on the report. You can also export the time records for those items that are part of your report. This will allow you to create any type of report you may think of. Enhanced reporting UI We have considerably enhanced the report creation process to make it more intuitive and easier to use, and have a common look with the filtering dialog. We have also extended the reporting engine. Working time editing on the Web In Menturio/GUI you were always be able to add your working times to the items which then were the basis for many of your reports. Now you can also add, delete or edit your time records on the web interface by choosing Working Times on the Item Details page. Simple vs. Advanced User Interface All items have a large set of properties which are needed when managing complex projects, but not needed by many users of Menturio. E.g. help desk personnel only need to see the subject and detail of the item and should be able to search among the items. For such people we have designed a simple user interface that shows only minimal information about items and provides a limited set of tools. Enhanced filtering UI We have made the filtering UI easier to navigate and less busy. Also added advanced Boolean filtering capabilities. Filter bar Menturio has a state of the art filtering solution so you can access all the needed items easily. For your convenience we have selected the most frequently used filters and created a toolbar of checkboxes of them which is placed above the item list. This way you are only one click away from the desired list of items. Mailing list/e-mail interface Now you can submit bugs/tasks to Menturio through e-mail! You can also discuss issues with your team through e-mail and Menturio will track, store, and version control all your communications, including attachments, automatically. Numerous other enhancements and bug fixes.

Menturio/WEB 1.3 released

[03/10/2003]

This release (a.k.a. “Big Brother”) focuses on tracking, auditing, and version control. Some usability enhancements are included as well. Highlights: Version control Following the changes of items is very important in project management. Menturio is now equipped with a fully functional version control engine that stores old versions of your items and keeps a change log (history) of everything that happens in your projects. You can view the history of an item by pressing the ’View History’ button on the item detail page. You can track what has been changed by whom and when. See session traffic On the Admin page we have added the “See session traffic” functionality so that you can verify who has accessed Menturio when and in which way (WEB/GUI). Printer friendly reports Reporting has a new option (“Print Report”) so that now you can create your reports with professional looks on paper or in electronic form. This is a black and white version and only uses borders to visually separate information on your reports. Notifications enhancements The notification engine was enhanced to let you fine-tune on which items you desire to get notifications (Favorites or all) and whether you prefer concise or extended notifications. Numerous other enhancements and bug fixes.

Menturio/WEB 1.2 released

[12/20/2002]

Changes in version 1.2: Category tree Now you can create a hierarchy by using pipes ('|') in the category field. New Theme You can select a new theme ("Greenhouse") that is actually not green, but never mind :-). Privacy New privacy levels. See the faq item New properties Keywords, Severity, Found in version, Fixed in version, Target version and Estimated time to allow even better project control. and many more...

Menturio/GUI 1.1 Build 52 is here!

[08/02/2002]

The Demo project is created	[06/17/2002]
We have created the Demo project so that we can demonstrate the capabilities of our system. It will also serve as an example for the documentation.

Public demos start	[06/17/2002]
We plan to start demonstrating our system next month (07/2002) to outside companies.