YouTrack 5.0 EAP Speaks Your Language

YouTrack 5.0 codenamed ‘Gentle’ is on its way. Meanwhile, we are excited to open the Early Access Program. Several heavily requested features are ready for you to try out. Let’s explore them!

Localization (FR, DE, RU and more coming)

Salut! Hallo! Привет!

We are thrilled to introduce the most wanted feature in YouTrack ever. YouTrack is ready to speak German, French, and Russian, and more languages coming later in time for the 5.0 release.

To change system language in YouTrack, please go to Administration > Settings (you need administrator rights to do this) and choose from four currently available languages:

Please note that this is only Early Access Program and some translations are still in progress or too fresh. However, any feedback on this feature is highly appreciated.

For YouTrack InCloud users, we’ve created four EAP instances where they can try out the newest features in their language:

Please help us improve current translations by sharing your feedback: simply create issues at the corresponding YouTrack instance. We appreciate your input!

What’s more, if your language isn’t available yet, now you can translate YouTrack on your own. Or, you could create a personal YouTrack with your own slang, if you like. A How-To guide on this topic is coming soon.

Entirely restyled UI: new full screen issue, issues list, ‘create’ and ‘edit’ screens

We here in YouTrack always paid attention to balance between form and substance. We’ve redesigned the Full-screen Issue, Create Issue and Edit Issue screens and hope the new look and feel will help you manage issues faster, easier and cooler.

Key enhancements and major changes:

  • Unified design and layouts for full screen, edit and create issue screens: same place for fields everywhere
  • Field’s labels are permanently visible now
  • Highlighting assignee
  • Attaching files from the system is faster and more fun: simply drag them to the create or edit issue screen
  • Generate issue template URL and send it to your customer or collaborator. You also can use this URL for yourself for further issues reporting
  • Clear but still detailed comments view
  • Updated menu components design
  • Restyled edit and delete issue icons

Enough talking, just take a look at the brand new Full Screen Issue:

Redesigned full screen issue

Just try out the new YouTrack look and feel by grabbing the freshest build from EAP.

Similar issues

On the screenshot above you may have noticed a brand new tab next to the familiar History and Linked Issues tabs. Please give a warm welcome to the Similar Issues tab. There you can find similar issues to the chosen issue. Just start editing the issue description or summary, and the similar issues list will refresh and show you the most relevant issues. You can show or hide the similar issues block on editing and creating issues screens:

Similar Issues

This will help you to eliminate duplicates in your project: users will see right away if a similar issue has already been reported. Another advantage of this new tab is that you can easily link relevant issues with one click.

Clone Issue

One more highly wanted feature is ready to be shipped. From the very beginning YouTrack was a unique tracking tool because of its command language and full keyboard control. Now we are pleased to introduce a new command: Clone issue. With this command you can clone one or multiple issues. Just start typing “Clone” or open command dialog to apply new command to the issue!

System-wide notification message

More customization possibilities for YouTrack administrators. Now you can show system-wide message to all of your YouTrack site users to notify them about any site maintenance, last updates, recent events, or anything you would like.

Database improvements

We’ve enhanced our database, designed internally by our engineers specially for YouTrack. It’s gotten faster, smarter and safer.

Contrast Darcula TV scheme

Many JetBrains products have adopted the darker side, and now it has finally reached YouTrack as well.

If you apply Agile methodologies in your practices, you know that the hardest thing is to stay Agile. To cope with this, your board should be visible as much as possible, especially during meetings, or maybe even permanently on a TV screen in your office. You can’t afford not to keep track of what’s going in your project.

This is why we’re making available a new Darcula-style view for the Agile board. Specifically designed for TV, it is highly visible from a distance and also very usable on a PC screen. Please welcome YouTrack Darcula TV style:

Contrast Darcula TV scheme

To enable this new view, go to Agile board and choose the Darcula style among other view options (minimal and compact):
Switch to Darcula view

Explore the darker side to stay Agile!

Where to go next:

To try out all the new features, download the freshest YouTrack 5.0 build from the Early Access Program.
If you use YouTrack InCloud, check out all the newest features in one of currently available languages. Please report issues with you comments directly in these instances. We’ve created YouTrack 5.0 InCloud EAP instances specifically to gather your feedback:

Just create an issue there to tell us what you think.

Please share all your feedback with us. We would be happy to make YouTrack 5.0 even better with your help.

Keep calm and track softly with YouTrack 5.0 codename ‘Gentle’ EAP
YouTrack Team

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Welcome YouTrack 4.2.2 with many bug fixes and enhancements

We are excited to announce that YouTrack 4.2.2 is available. This fresh update ships a number of bug fixes for REST API, error messages, email notifications, and GitHub integration, enhanced YouTrack performance, and more.

In particular, YouTrack 4.2.2 brings this email notification enhancement that many of you have requested. Now you can specify an address that should be used as “From:” address in email notifications for each project, instead of system-wide address set for email notifications.

Check the full list of improvements and fixes in release notes and feel free to upgrade to YouTrack 4.2.2. If you are using YouTrack InCloud, you site will be upgraded to 4.2.2 according to our Maintenance Calendar.

Keep tracking with pleasure!
YouTrack Team

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Introducing YouTracker — the first iOS client for YouTrack

This post comes from Lorenz Lauwaert, the author of first iOS client for YouTrack.

Hello! My name is Lorenz, I’m a developer from Belgium and a big fan of JetBrains YouTrack.

I love the way YouTrack works and feels and I wanted to extend that feeling to the mobile platform. But first of all, I want to thank the whole JetBrains team that gave me the opportunity to introduce the first iOS app available for YouTrack:

YouTracker

YouTracker for iPhone

YouTracker is available for iPhone, iPod touch and iPad. Current supported versions: YouTrack 3.0 or higher.

Since YouTrack is very customizable and allows you to quickly update/edit/create issues. I made sure that those advantages are found in the app as well. If you use YouTracker on your YouTrack instance you will be able to customize your projects so the UI feels familiar to what you are used to.

The app is a few months old and new features are being added frequently. This is a list of currently implemented features the latest YouTracker 1.5.0 supports:

  • List your issues: The list can be fully customized by deciding which custom fields should be shown, background coloring for issues.
  • Creating issues.
  • Issue filtering: Use your saved searches or type a query in the search bar (with intellisense) to quickly find the issue you are looking for.
  • Agile board: The app will allow you to use an agile board that can be configured at will. You can enable drag and drop to update issues (as you would in the web interface).
  • Time tracking: YouTracker allow you to manage and display time tracking settings. The issue list can even contain a small progress bar.
  • Attachment adding: Use your camera take a picture or use a photo from the library to add it as an attachment.
  • Issue details: view and update custom fields, add and delete comments, view and add attachments, view history, view links, etc.
  • Quick linking: Let YouTrack add a ‘youtracker://?ID-12′ link to your notification e-mails and you can use them to immediatly launch the app and show that issue’s details.
  • Multiple projects: You can select one or more projects to be active in the app. Each project can be configured separately.
  • Multiple host / account support: You can add multiple hosts / accounts to the app. This is very handy if you use multiple YouTrack instances
  • Plus more handy features…

The app already supports quite a lot of features, but development is far from over. This app is very alive and gets frequent updates and features added to it. This is a list of things that I would like to add:

  • Tag support
  • Apply commands to one or more issues
  • Macro’s (e.g. apply a specific command by swiping the issue list)
  • VGA out support
  • The todo list isn’t set in stone. Any suggestions are appreciated

I have setup a YouTrack cloud instance which can be used to add any suggestions (or bugs) if you have any please visit http://yt.myjetbrains.com

You can try out the iPhone version or the iPad version. There is a lite version available to show you what the app is all about if you wish to see how it works.

YouTracker for iPad

Feel free to follow me on Facebook or YouTracker Twitter.

Met vriendelijke groeten,
Lorenz Lauwaert

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Chat with YouTrack Jabber-Bot

Today we would like to introduce you to our YouTrack Jabber-Bot – a killer feature in YouTrack 4.2. Check the demo by Hadi Hariri.

With this awesome feature, you can talk with your YouTrack via Jabber. Send search requests and apply commands in reply to a jabber notification, or simply start a chat with YouTrack.

How to start conversation with Jabber-Bot?

To enable Jabber-Bot you must have Low-level Administrator Permissions. Enabling Jabber-Bot is easy:

  • Open Administration > Settings page
  • InCloud users: You can’t change Jabber-Bot’s username or server. It will be named your_instance_name@myjetbrains.com:

    Enabling Jabber-Bot

  • Stand-Alone users: Enter Jabber-Bot’s server, port and user credentials
  • Enable Jabber-Bot in Administration > Settings > Jabber notifications panel
  • Send a test message from Jabber-Bot to your jabber account:
  • Enabling Jabber-Bot

    You should receive a contact request from YouTrack Jabber-Bot:

    Add Jabber-Bot to your Contacts

    ** If you don’t get a contact request, please add Jabber-Bot’s contact details into your jabber contact list manually.

Congrats! The setup part is over, so just enjoy your pleasant conversation with YouTrack.

Hello, Jabber-Bot!

From now on, you can start a conversation any time by simply typing any command or search query to YouTrack Jabber-Bot, or by replying to any jabber notification.

What topics to discuss with Jabber-Bot?

Help
If you’re not sure how to start a conversation, just ask for help! Type /help and get basic tips on the syntax used in commands and search queries:

Jabber-Bot Help

Usage Statistics
If you don’t like reading manuals or asking for directions, there’s another topic available anytime. No, it’s not weather, but the current usage statistics of your YouTrack server. Just type /stat:

Usage Statistics

Search for Issues
For a search request, just add a slash before your query. YouTrack Jabber-Bot will happily return the top 10 results matching your query. Here I’m asking for a list of issues assigned to me in project JBD (Jabber-Bot Demo):

Search Results

Apply Command
You can manage your issues by applying commands to specific issues directly from your Jabber:

Apply Command

Add Comment
Just type ‘comment’ after issue ID, or as part of a command, to add a comment:

Add Comment

Stay in Context – Skip Issue ID
Did you notice how I just skipped JBD-4 (the issue ID) in my second command? A true partner in conversation, Jabbet-Bot pays attention and stays aware of your context. When you receive a jabber notification from YouTrack, you can skip issue ID in reply and start directly with the command or comment that you want to add to the issue. Likewise, after you’ve just edited/commented a particular issue, you can skip its ID in the following commands/comments:

JBD-7 duplicates JBD-4

Get Issue Details
You can easily get issue details just by providing its issue ID. YouTrack Jabber-Bot will show you the issue description, summary and fields:

JBD-7 Details

JBD-7 was resolved as duplicate of fixed JBD-4:

We’ll continue improving Jabber-Bot. Soon we’ll add an avatar to InCloud Jabber-Bot. For Stand-Alone, you can add it yourself.

Please enjoy the conversation and be nice to your Jabber-Bot, else it could take offense and stop talking to you! :-(

What else would you like to talk about with your Jabbet-Bot? Please share your ideas by leaving a comment below. Your feedback is highly appreciated.

Chat with YouTrack with pleasure!
JetBrains YouTrack Team

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YouTrack 4.2.1 is here with fixes and updates for even more tracking pleasure

We are happy to introduce YouTrack 4.2.1. This release includes set of fixes and minor updates on jabber notifications, file attachment, CSV export, issue deleting and more. Please check the release notes for the full list of changes.

Download YouTrack 4.2.1 or sign up for the newest YouTrack InCloud. Existing YouTrack InCloud sites will be updated to the latest version on Monday, March 25, according to our Events & Maintenance Calendar

Keep tracking with pleasure!
YouTrack Team

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Webinar Recording. From Bug Tracking Chaos to Issue Management

As you remember on March 12 we organized a webinar “Umbraco meets YouTrack: From Bug Tracking Chaos to Issue Management” with Umbraco Project Manager Sebastiaan Janssen and JetBrains Technical Evangelist Hadi Hariri. The recording is now available JetBrains.tv and YouTube.

Thank you Sebastiaan and Hadi for the great session, and thank our attendees for their attention and questions. Some of the questions were related to the following topics:

  • Matrix reports: The question was about sharing matrix report with the team. Currently, it is not possible. If you are also interested in this feature, please feel free to vote for it.
  • Agile board: We are working on making YouTrack agile board better. View the suggested enhancements, vote for the ones you like and add your own.
  • Custom and out-of-the-box workflows: We think that workflows are worth to organize the whole webinar about them. Follow our further announcements.
  • Integration with TFS and VCS: Currently integration is possible only via TeamCity. The details are listed here. In TeamCity you have to create at least one build configuration. However, you don’t have to actually build anything with TeamCity. Another good news is that it’s free.

So far please enjoy the recording of the webinar:

Sebastiaan Janssen walks us through the wide range of YouTrack features he regularly uses at Umbraco: doing complex searches in second, using keyboard shortcuts and command console, integration data from the tracker into release page via YouTrack REST API and more advanced tricks.

We hope to see you on next YouTrack webinar. For future announcements we recommend that you follow us on JetBrains Facebook, YouTrack Twitter, or YouTrack Product Blog.

Keep Tracking with pleasure!
JetBrains YouTrack Team

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Upcoming Webinar. March, 12. Umbraco Meets YouTrack: From Bug Tracking Chaos to Issue Management

Join us Tuesday, March 12th for our free webinar, Umbraco Meets YouTrack: From Bug Tracking Chaos to Issue ManagementUmbraco’s Project Manager Sebastiaan Janssen will go through the wide range of YouTrack features he uses to easily stay on top of their product development.

We’ll be looking at:

  • Doing complex search queries in seconds
  • Using custom fields to support the community in contributing to the source
  • Making the day more productive by using the command console and keyboard shortcuts
  • Taking advantage of the Agile board to get an overview of the release at a glance
  • Integrating the data from the tracker into our custom roadmap and release page, using some Knockout.js and the YouTrack API
  • And more power user tips and tricks along the way

This free webinar will take place Tuesday, March 12th from 16:00 – 17:00 CET (Central European Time). Space is limited; please register now.

This webinar will be hosted by JetBrains Technical Evangelist Hadi Hariri, and Sebastiaan Janssen, Project Manager at Umbraco.

About Sebastiaan Janssen

Sebastiaan is a .NET developer and has recently started working as the project manager at Umbraco, one of the most deployed Web Content Management Systems on the Microsoft stack. Sebastiaan is originally from Holland but moved to Denmark for this new challenge a few months ago. Before his move he has been implementing websites using various content management systems on the .NET platform. He has been a very active contributor to Umbraco for years, doing talks atmany user groups and the yearly Umbraco conference called CodeGarden.
 
Keep tracking with pleasure!
JetBrains YouTrack Team

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Post-Mortem of YouTrack InCloud Availability Issue

As you might have noticed, on Wednesday, February 20, there was the problem with YouTrack InCloud availability. The problem caused downtime at around 19.00 GMT and another downtime at around 23.00 GMT.

What was the problem

We use Nginx server which is focused on high concurrency, performance and low memory. On February 20 Nginx was unusually high loaded. This caused Out of memory error and we decided to restart Nginx on another server. We got 30 minutes downtime, finally. Honestly, longer than we expected.

What we’ve already done to solve this issue

Our Nginx was restarted on another server which is more powerful. Some technical issues which made downtime while moving to another server longer than expected were solved. All  YouTrack InCloud instances should work fine since 23.30 GMT.

Please, contact our InCloud support if there is still a problem with your YouTrack instance.

What we are willing to do to prevent further issues

Current solution prevents similar problem for a long time. Though, we plan to configure second nginx server and use Elastic Load Balancing automatically distributes incoming application traffic across multiple Amazon EC2 instances.

We apologize for the inconvenience you might have experienced due our system downtime. We have done our best to solve the problem as soon as possible. This issue taught us a lesson how to achieve greater YouTrack InCloud fault tolerance with higher loads.

Best regards,
JetBrains YouTrack Team

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YouTrack 4.2 is Ready to Chat With You

Valentine’s Day is meant to be spent with your loved ones. That’s why we’re releasing YouTrack 4.2 today – the latest and greatest version of our favorite agile issue tracker and project management tool. Now you can chat with YouTrack Jabber-Bot, share Zendesk tickets with YouTrack, enjoy new workflows and more!

Chat with YouTrack Jabber-Bot

We’ve already raved about our brand new Jabber-Bot, and soon enough you’ll see a whole blog post dedicated to it. Talk to it to apply commands, search for issues or view issue details. For now, check out this conversation on a very important Valentine’s Day project:

Integration with Zendesk

Share your Zendesk ticket with YouTrack to create a new issue in YouTrack and automatically synchronize further changes between Zendesk and YouTrack.

To do this, first initiate a sharing invite from Zendesk, and then accept it from YouTrack. Conveniently, as you accept an invite, you can choose which field in YouTrack will represent the Zendesk ticket Status.

Here Zendesk ticket ‘Restaurant reservation’ with status ‘Open’ was shared with a YouTrack project:

Zendesk Integration

Zendesk ticket status corresponds to Issue State in YouTrack. All comments were shared automatically. From this moment on all further changes to this ‘Restaurant reservation’ ticket will be applied to YouTrack issue VD-1.

Zendesk Integration

Shared issues are synchronized both ways, i.e. all issue changes in YouTrack will be applied to the corresponding Zendesk tickets.

For mode details see our updated documentation.

Many New Default Workflows

New workflow for “depends on” link. Now you can get a notification when the ‘depend on’ issue is resolved.

We’ve made “+1″ comments do what they really mean to. Now if you type ‘+1’ in your comment, YouTrack will offer you to vote for the issue. This idea was previously described here.

Sometimes we all forget to actually attach things we referred to in our messages. Never again. We’ve added a reminder to add an attachment or a screenshot if the word ‘attach’ is mentioned in the comment.

According to the updated ‘subtask’ workflow, parent issue state will now take the minimum value from the child state, instead of having only Open / Fixed values. For example, if you had four child issues with states Submitted, Fixed, Fixed and Verified parent issue state would be Submitted.

Now you can mark a sprint as completed to prevent further changes.

Now it’s possible to create a blacklist for spam filtering. This workflow prevents submitting a description or comment with words from the blacklist. Now it is much easier to protect your YouTrack from spammers.

We’ve also added a timer (on/off or changing state In Progress/Fixed) workflow for adding work items automatically. You can track time spent on issue just by changing issue state (from In Progress to Fixed).

New Commands: “Visible to” and “Delete”

We’ve added a new command and search query, “Visible to”. Now you can directly define the group your issue/comment is visible to, or search for issues visible to a particular user group.

You asked us for a way to delete multiple issues, and we made it possible. With the new “Delete” command, you can delete multiple issues at once instead of deleting each issue separately from its full issue screen.

Other Great Enhancements:

We’ve improved Mailbox Integration in YouTrack 4.2 with a couple of small but significant updates. First, you can now eliminate endless quoted text in comments generated from emails – keep just the actual replies, plain and simple. Hooray! Second, you can now configure custom text patterns to search for in a message body. This way you can automatically filter out messages and ignore them along with auto-replies while processing fetched emails.

Import work items from RedMine: YouTrack 4.2 allows you to import work items from RedMine. Just use “-t” option when running the script from the command line.

Performance improvements: With YouTrack 4.2, you can track faster than ever before.

Try Now

Check What’s New for more details and download YouTrack 4.2 or sign up for YouTrack InCloud right now! As always, we welcome your feedback.

If you are already using YouTrack InCloud, your site will be upgraded to the latest version automatically according to our Maintenance Calendar.

Keep tracking with pleasure!
JetBrains YouTrack Team

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Welcome to YouTrack 4.2 Early Access Program

Are you ready to try YouTrack 4.2? Good, because YouTrack 4.2 Early Access Program (EAP) is officially opened as of today. Oh, and after you do please give us your feedback.

What’s already in there?

  1. Chatting with YouTrack Jabber-Bot: this feature is hilarious, honestly! The idea is that now you can really chat with YouTrack via jabber: send search requests and apply commands in reply to the jabber notification or simply by starting a chat with YouTrack! Here is just a short episode of my conversation with YouTrack:
    What can you chat about? 

    • Send search queries for quick results. For example, type /for:me #unresolved to get the top 10 unresolved issues assigned to you.
    • Apply command(s) to specific issue(s). For example, type Erp-24 fixed tag ready to be tested to fix issue Erp-24 and add the tag ‘ready to be tested’.
    • Ask for help by typing /help.
    • Simply chat if you feel like talking to someone :)

    This guy is really worth a separate blog post, so expect it soon! Please take a look at the YouTrack Chat-Bot Manual before you start chatting.

  2. Integration with Zendesk: This brand new integration allows you to share Zendesk tickets with YouTrack. When you share a ticket, a new issue is created in YouTrack automatically and all the changes will be further synchronized between Zendesk and YouTrack. For details about configuring the integration click here.
  3. A bunch of brand new workflows, bundled with YouTrack and ready to be used in your projects, such as:
    • workflow for ‘depends on’ link
    • detect +1 in comments and suggest to vote for the issue
    • reminder to add attachment or screenshot, if ‘attach’ is mentioned in the comment
    • blacklist for spam filtering
    • be notified when the ‘depend on’ issue is resolved
    • mark sprint as completed to prevent further changes
    • Timer (on/off or changing state In Progress/Fixed) workflow for adding work items automatically
  4. ‘Visible to’ command and search query: Now you can directly define the group your issue/comment is visible to, via the command window, or instead search by the visibility group:
  5. Performance improvements: Now YouTrack is even faster! Try v4.2 and feel the difference.

You are welcome to check the full list of changes included in YouTrack 4.2 EAP. Download YouTrack 4.2 EAP build and enjoy all the latest tracking goodies!

Your feedback is extremely important to us. Please share your thoughts via:

Keep tracking with pleasure!

JetBrains YouTrack Team

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