The July 27th release includes a new tool for publishing repository commits by FTP and SFTP to a Web server, an expanded set of tutorial videos, and some other fixes and adjustments.

We're happy to deliver a frequently requested new feature: The FTP publishing tool.  Web developers can use this tool to push new HTML and PHP commits directly to a Web site on almost any Web host.  It adds professionalism, transparency, and speed to any Web development team with more than one designer/developer.

To get it:  Select Admin/Tools on your workspace, and select the FTP tool.  This same workspace should hold your Web code in a subversion repository (Source/SVN or Subversion and Trac).

To use it:  Fill in the form under the "FTP" tool to tell the address, path, login name and password of your FTP account.  Select "Deploy Now" to start.

• FTP or SFTP (Secure FTP)
• Frequency options: Manual (Deploy Now button), on each commit, hourly, daily, or weekly
• Deploy any repository branch or path

Coming soon: The current release publishes from Subversion repositories, and only publishes to one server.  In the next release, we will support git repositories, and we will support deployment to more than one server.  For example, you might want "on commit" deployment to a staging server, and manual deployment to a production server. 

Hint: If you have a more complicated deployment that requires build scripts which pull the code from a repository, and run other operations, try our Server tool.

Tool Tutorial Videos

We want to make it easier for new Assembla users to get started, so we added tutorial videos for many of our tools.  Look for a green bar on the bottom of the page that says something like "Watch our tutorial video for the Wiki tool".  In some cases we will also show a video panel in the middle of a tool that you haven't used yet, and we also show a link near the tool description on the Admin/Tools page.  We have posted videos for Tickets, Milestones, Source/SVN, Wik, Message, Files, Scrum, Time, Branding, Twitter, and Portfolio. Hopefully one of these videos will give you a chance to learn about a capability that could help you.

These tutorials are simply screencam tours, narrated by community marketer Ryan Menezes.  The simple format should make it easier to keep the tutorials up to date as we enhance each of these features.

Support ticket preview and file attachments

Customers Support tool users can preview their tickets before submitting, just as space members do. Customers can also now upload files to accompany their support tickets.

We fixed the activity stream filter by user.  Scrum reports now archive indefinitely, so you can refer to reports members filed months or years ago.

For a demonstration of the changes, watch the video on Youtube, or below.