Code Review is an essential practice for teams that want to have a Maintainable Codebase. Some teams go as far as instituting peer programming, where two developers to work on a single computer on a single piece of code. However, most of us don't have this luxury. For everyone else, we present lightweight Merge Request reviews with inline comments.

Today, after much experimentation and input from customers like you we are ready to release the fruits of our labor. Merge Request now include inline comments. Thanks go to Kivanio Barbosa and Ghislaine Guerin for their contributions.

Includes, but not limited to:

• Add Inline Comment by clicking the green comment icon

• See who participates in the discussion on a specific version of a file

• Mention people when replying - bring their attention to your Inline Comment

• Enable Code Review notifications in stream to get emails about comments

We are listening to your feedback. Let us know how we can improve Merge Requests to suit your needs.

Learn more about Assembla Repository features here.

What is your usual way of prototyping? Forget the file handoff and the email mess of sending those HTML prototypes. Collaboration with Designers is made easy in Assembla. Just check out the render button on any HTML document:

• render a file at any revision in Git, Subversion or Perforce
• get fully rendered HTML page - with CSS and JS

This makes the full-blown HTML prototype be only a commit away and you never lose it, because it is in your repository!

Learn more about collaboration here 

I talk to many Assembla Customers in a day, I figure that others can benefit from this direct communication with the VP of Engineering at Assembla.  

I am hosting an IAMA this Thursday, January 24th between 1600 and 2000 UTC.  Please join me and Ask Me Anything.  I will answer as truthfully as possible by a human.

Some Topics that might be discussed:

• How to use Assembla Code Review
• How to integrate Tickets and Code Commits
• How to use Stories and Tasks
• What is the future of Assembla
• What are the features of Assembla?
• What does it do other than store code or track bugs?
• Anything else you can think of.

So stop by and ask me anything: Reddit IAmA

 UPDATE: Thank you all who joined and asked questions, I learned a lot, I also really enjoyed it.  I will try to do another soon.  Those who missed it, feel free to read the past from the link above.

At Assembla, we have been converting our apps over to Ruby 1.9.3 from 1.8.7.  We had the GC patches applied to 1.8.7 and were in no hurry to switch to 1.9.3 (See graph below).  One of our applications relied on Ruby SVN bindings, but the current Subversion project only supported Ruby 1.8.x. 

Well with a little patch and some cooperation of the Subversion Team, we got it into trunk.

Ruby 1.9.3 has initial support in Subversion development branch now.  The tests still need some work, but overall its nice to have it finally.

A special thanks to Vincent Batts who did the original work on the patch and the bulk of the effort.  Thank you Philip Martin from the Subversion Team for working with us to get this patch accepted.

Over the past few months, Assembla has been improving the way team members communicate with each other.

As a result of these efforts, we have seen measurable increases in traffic and collaboration activity by Assembla teams and throughout the system. 

@Mentions

A few months ago, we released @mentions which allow you to type @<user name> in tickets, messages, commits, code reviews, etc. and draw the attention of a team member. 

I can not live without this feature. I have one place to promptly respond to any questions or requests. Apparently our users enjoy it as well with almost half a million @mentions since implementation - and the numbers continue to grow.  

We have made improvements since the first release:

• Type @ and start typing a team members username OR first name and a drop down selector lets you quickly choose from a list
• @mention your entire team by typing @team
• @mention a specific group of team members by typing in @<label name> - example: @designers. You can label team members from the Team tab. 
• We have added @mentions to your start page

In addition, we have added system notifications in the top bar next to your mentions notifications box. If the triangle lights up yellow, you have a system notification waiting for you. 

Stream Messages

What if you just want to post an update or send someone an @mention without posting a ticket? You can put a short message, up to 140 characters, directly in the stream using the new data entry box located at the top of the stream. It’s like Twitter or Yammer, but inside an Assembla team space. Want to see what everyone is talking about outside of project tool activity? Just use the filter to only show Stream messages. 

Customized Email Alerts

Now the email alert settings under "Stream > Email Notifications" allow you to select a different email alert frequencies for each type of event.  So you can see messages "when an event happens" and reply, but get a daily email summary of commits - you choose what you want to be emailed about and when. Learn more about this update. 

Improved Search Bar and Simple Shortcuts

In August we upgraded search, so you have more ways to find content using the search field on the top right of every page in a project space. Now, you can use the same form for some other actions:

• “@andy” will take you to the user report for “andy”
• “#99” will take you directly to ticket number 99
• “% This is a stream message for @andy” will make a stream message, with an @mention for user andy

In the future, we will be doing more to turn the search box into a true command bar. For example, the FTP tool and our upcoming SSH deployment tool look at stream events to decide what to do. If we give them a little bit of parsing intelligence, you will be able to type “%deploy production” in the command bar and get what you want.

You can now select the frequency of email alerts for each type of event.  You can have an Hourly Summary for your Ticket Events while having your Messages sent immediately and a Daily Summary for Team Code Reviews.  

In the past, I could only select one event frequency.  I like this feature  for myself because our teams have many updates on tickets, which would flood my inbox, so I want a summary for this, but I want to receive my messages alerts immediately and separately from this hourly summary of the tickets. 

We have copied over the frequencies from your previous settings for the Events you are notified on and maintained the frequency of "Never" for events that you were not subscribed to before.

Thank you Vitalie Danu for updating this feature and allowing us all to control our email once again.  I find this an extremely valuable addition to Assembla.

Getting mentioned on Assembla just became a whole lot easier.  A couple of weeks ago, we released a feature that allows you to send @mentions to other team members (@mentions blog posting).  Want to mention someone now?  Just start typing @<name>

You will see a dropdown search

This will work in a ticket description, message, standup, etc.  You can search the username, firstname, lastname, or email address of the team member.

We hope you find this as useful as we do.  We have found it to help with our workflows on a daily basis.  I get thousands of emails a day and its hard for me to keep track of every ticket, I like to use @mentions to ask questions or know that someone else wants to get my opinion on a ticket or message, though it was not assigned to me.  It has made my life so much better and our process has less hiccups now.  You should try it yourself and see how easy it is to get someone elses attention.

Thanks Vlad Gurdiga and the rest of the team in developing another great tool that is easy to use and very powerful.

After the much-anticipated release of Google Drive, there have been many articles about teams using it for project related collaboration.  With Assembla’s Google integrations, using Google Drive in combination with Assembla results in the ultimate collaboration powerhouse.  

The integration allows team members to link to their Google Drive files from tickets, wiki pages, messages, etc. without having to manually share files though Google’s web interface. No matter what type of Google Drive file, team members will always have instant access because Assembla "shares" the document when a team member clicks on it.

How does it work?:

From within multiple tools of your Assembla Project Workspace, you have the option of attaching a local file or attaching a Google Doc.  For example, you may want to attach a Google Doc to a task.

When you click on the upload a Google Doc option for the first time, you will be taken to a Google page to grant Assembla access to your files – it’s safe and secure.  Once you grant access, you will get a Google file picker pop-up that displays all the files on your Google Drive.

When a file is selected, our integration automatically grants instant access to anyone that is a part of your Assembla team so you don’t have to individually share anything.

Working with Google formats (.gdoc, .gsheet, etc.):

Google formatted documents and spreedsheets are ideal for content and requirements collaboration because of their ability to have multiple contributors working on the same web based file.

For example, the marketing team at Assembla is responsible for a lot of content creation and collaboration tasks. Every ticket/task has a Google Doc attached to it where the content comes alive from multiple contributors though drafts, edits, comments, etc. until it is satisfactory. Passing around and uploading new versions would double the time required to complete these tasks.

Working with other file types from your Google Drive:

Google Docs is nothing new but Google Drive adds many new capabilities. With desktop integration, you can now easily add any file to your Google Drive. When you work on the files locally, new versions are synced to the web-based drive.

Attaching these files via “Add a Google Doc” integration is different than just attaching the files via “Add a File” from your computer because they are accessed from Google’s version and not the version you attach. This is better because:

• When you attach a file from your Google Drive, you can still work on it locally without having to attach an updated version – the Assrmbla link is always the most recently synced version from your computer.

• These files are accessed directly from Google and not Assembla so you do not have to upload anything. Attach a 100 mb photoshop file or a 1 gb video file and it is instantly available without waiting on uploads.

Assembla’s Google integration is perfect for teams that are using or considering Google Drive but also require a complete suite of integrated collaboration and development tools like tickets, code repositories, deploy tools, wikis, messages, and more. 

Below are the updated overview videos for Assembla's most used collaboration tools - Wiki, Files, and Messages. If you are not taking advantage of any of these tools, you can add them to your project workspace in seconds from the Admin tab of of you space.

		The Wiki tool is ideal for organizing pages for instructions, ideas, specifications, documentation, and anything else you want. Add new pages in seconds, and customize the navigation to fit your needs. Let other team members contribute; if you don't like their additions, just roll back to any previous version.
		The Files tool provides a central and secure place or organize and manage project files and Google docs. You can add files and Google docs directly to the Files tool or you can upload them to tickets, messages, wiki pages, etc. - either way, all your project files will be organized and searchable from the Files tool.
		The Message tool lets team members communicate with each other while maintaining a centralized record of all conversations. Messages are a great way to facilitate communication and collaboration without messy email threads that get overlooked, clutter email inboxes, or don't reach everyone.

These videos and others can be found on Assembla's YouTube channel. 

Below is the video presentation from a previous webinar on "Managing Distributed Teams with Assembla." You can also watch the video on YouTube.  We built Assembla to manage distributed teams, and we work as a distributed team. Our experience might be helpful to the 79% of software projects that have team members in more than one place.

The presention covers how to:

• Set up and manage a cloud-based development environment
• Coordinate team activities across multiple time zones
• Apply Agile techniques to globally distributed teams
• Manage a global development organization