technical in project management software

Teamwork patch 5.0.1 released

We just released a patch for Teamwork 5, version 5.0.1 (build 53500). Download it here.

This patch contains mainly bug fixes:

– installations with “non empty context path”, that is, where Teamwork is not running as root application had problems

– fixed a bug in setting English or American default settings.

– read SVN logs now works also in https

– fixed an occasional bug when creating resources on SQL Server

Moreover the update contains a better portlet “project summary extended”.

Teamwork relational structure

Following some user requests, we’ve put together a first documentation of Teamwork’s relational structure, that will be a part of next release of Teamwork user guide. Here is the PDF. Hope it helps!

P.S. Published an update expansion on July 19 (2010).

Teamwork 4.5 patch release (4.5.17900)

As always after a major upgrade, thanks to your detailed feedback we can already do a patch release with a few bug fixes. This is a free upgrade for all users of version 4. Get the installer / upgrader here: http://www.twproject.com/download.page

Bug fixes:

– IMPORTANT BUG FIX FOR ORACLE INSTALLATIONS: Release 4.5.17800 had a schema name bug which made it impossible to install it on Oracle – a problem in our Oracle test due to an existing table made us fail to detect the problem. This release works fine on Oracle.

– issue editor is now compatible also with lower screen resolutions

– issue statuses can now de deleted

– the “worklog day” portlet now saves also descriptions

Teamwork weekly news: in Russian, in French and friendlier

We are currently intensely working on release 4.2, which will be a free upgrade as usual. Some of the new features that will be included are

translation in French
in Russian (!, thank you Kostantine),
maybe also Chinese,
a new start page,
a new feedback messaging system,
an empowered meeting management.

In the meantime we also refined our Tomcat configurations on our hosting farm, to make it even faster.

Twproject, MySQL and UTF-8

Teamwork is MySQL partner.

This is a technical post about tand its databases.

Many Twproject customers use MySQL as database for their data; Twproject as web application supports UTF-8, which means that you can insert data in practically any language; but of course to save such data you need support along the “entire trip”, so your database must support UTF-8 data too. Now unfortunately MySQL default encoding is not UTF-8, but we found a way to work around that, which will be released with version 4.2: the Hibernate schema script generator will create UTF-8 encoding tables, as UTF-8 is supported also at table level (supported by MySQL 5), so it will work in all cases.

This is done by simply extending the Hibernate MySQL5InnoDBDialect with

@Override
public String getTableTypeString() {
return ” ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8 COLLATE utf8_general_ci”;
}

as suggested here.

Remember to use MySQL 5 with referential integrity on and to end you JDBC url with “?useUnicode=true&characterEncoding=UTF-8”!

This is particularly important for our future Chinese customers, now that a Chinese translation is forthcoming.

Upgrading from Teamwork 3 to 4: why and how

If you are a user of Teamwork 3, you may now consider upgrading from 3 to 4.

Why?

Well, simply version 4 is Nicer – Faster – Friendlier – Wider..

This does remind of the Daft hands video 🙂 . To get more in detail, probably the best way is to have a look at the user guide.

P.S.: Faster? Yes, it is graphically richer, but still it is faster: given the extended Ajax usage, many pages no longer need “global reloading”; and there is also caching for all the graphical pages parts.

How?

First, you must buy the upgrade license here. The cost is 35 Euro per user (the buy page will show you also the price in dollars).

The installer of version 4 contains an upgrade procedure from version 3 to 4. Upgrading means evolving the database schema, updating and inserting some data, and updating the web application. This is a complex process, which we tested extensively on different database, but it is not entirely fail-safe; there may be permissions lacking, differences of encoding, particular settings of your installation etc. .
So before any upgrade attempt we STRONGLY advise doing a complete backup: these are the required operations to preserve all your data and your configurations settings:

B1. Backup your database
B2. Backup the entire web application: e.g. TEAMWORK_HOME/webapps/ROOT
B3. Backup your repository, where files get uploaded: if you have not customized this folder you can find it in TEAMWORK_HOME/teamworkRepository.

Consider that if you have Teamwork running in a non graphical environment, you cannot directly use the installer for upgrading, and this may be a problem, as several files must get updated.

So the recommended procedure for upgrading is the following:

1.   Backup as above B1, B2, B3
2.   Create a copy of your database, accessible from a graphical environment
3.   Install version 4 on such database with the graphical installer
4.   If everything is fine, use the obtained web app as the new Teamwork

This way there should be no danger of “ruining” your current version 3 installation.

You can delegate us to do the upgrade procedure for you, if you are willing to give a temporary remote access to your web application. Before giving us access, you must have done backups B1, B2, B3, as our upgrade comes with no guarantees of data preservation in case of failure, and it is to you restoring the database and the web app in the previous state. Buy the “remote setup” here:

http://www.twproject.com/licensing.page

In case the upgrade procedure fails, you will get a full refund of the remote setup.

A dedicated server

Why?

How?