Yesterday's release includes improvements to Tickets, Search, Alerts, Chat, and Email. Read on to find out how these features can help you.

Tickets

Users ask me whether I recommend using the Assembla Tickets tool, or Trac tickets. With recent improvements to the Tickets tool, we have switched to using Assembla Tickets on new projects. Trac is an outstanding tool, and we will continue to support it as our most popular tool, and we will continue to provide the Trac code browser for all developer spaces. We want to support a standard version of Trac that our users can import and export. This means that when we want to add new features and improved integration - things like batch update, one-click lists, screen grabbing, and time tracking - we add those features to the Assembla tickets tool.

This week's release of Assembla Tickets includes formatting improvements to make your tickets easier to read, preview, comment anchors, and deletion.

We have released a script that imports from Trac to Assembla Tickets. Get it here. It uses the new API. Soon we will also support a button to import from Assembla hosted trac, which will make this process much easier. We will also export to Trac, so that you can easily come in and out of the Assembla system through Trac. This comes on top of our on-site subversion option.

We promised the test release of the screen capture utility that allows you to grab and post a screenshot in seconds. You get better bug reports faster, and people who have used similar features in competing systems say they can't live without it. You can find it here. If you run the windows installer, you will see the "Assembla Tracker" in your task bar. If you are using Mac or Linux, you can unpack the java files and run the jar as a normal application. Select the “Screenshot” button. Then drag your mouse over the area you want to grab. Then click on the resulting shaded area. You can submit it as an Assembla ticket, or a file. This utility uses the API. It is an early release, so send us your comments and requests to help us upgrade it.

Search

We changed the search behavior. When you select "Search" on the top of a space, you search inside the space. When you select "Search" in a user area, you search all objects. In previous implementations, search only searched the space names. Nobody used that. I thank my technical lead, Vitalie Lazu, for taking a new look at this feature.

Alerts

We have upgraded the Alerts page with RSS, and filtering by user. To get RSS feeds from a private project, you will need an RSS reader that supports "HTTP basic authentication", with a username and password.

Chat

When I first proposed implementing chat to provide a comfortable place for the team to have a daily coordination session, I didn’t guess that there would be so many details to think about. For example – what happens to your data entry box when you type a long message? In this release, the box expands to show your complete message. Other small changes create a smoother experience.

Email options

Assembla has hidden features for using email. For example, you can configure the space to allow email into the flow message list, which allows you to reply to alerts at @alerts.assembla.com. To enable this option, go to the Space Admin tab, Security subtab, and select "Allow to send email to flows". That's level of control is new. We also added an "Email all team members" link to the Team page for space owners that need to contact all of their team members. A few releases ago we added a link to "Select people to receive notification about this message" to the bottom of the flow message form.