September 5, 2012

We’ve made a few UI changes that make it easier to navigate the world of Pivotal Tracker accounts, update your profile and preferences, and work with all of your projects.

Navigation Links

We’ve moved all of the more administrative navigation links to a new dropdown in the top right corner. This is where you’ll find links to your Profile (where you can do things like change your password, update email preferences, etc) as well as to the new Accounts page, and Sign Out. If you’re using Tracker’s simple time tracking functionality, you’ll find the Time link here as well.

New Accounts Page

First, what exactly is an account, versus a user login? Let’s ask the Tracker FAQ:

Accounts in Tracker are separate things from personal user logins. A user's login is always associated with an individual--their email address, an optional username and their private password. That login can own or be a member of one or more accounts, and accounts are, effectively, containers for projects.

Accounts allow you to group projects. For example, you might create, or be a member of, an account for your company projects, and have a separate one for your personal work. Every project belongs to an account. You can create as many accounts as you'd like....(read more).

The new accounts page, accessible via the Accounts link the new dropdown in the top right corner of the page, shows you all of the accounts that you are associated with, along with projects in the accounts that you have access to.

For each account, you can see what subscription plan it’s on, as well as how many private projects and collaborators there are in the account. Accounts on this page are grouped as follows:

Accounts that you own - these are accounts that you own, including the one automatically created for you when you signed up for Tracker.

Accounts that you administer - these are accounts that someone else owns, but added you as an administrator to (more on roles here).

Accounts you’re a member of - if you’re a member of projects in someone else’s account, or your company’s account, you’ll see that account listed here, and you can see who owns and administers it (hover over the admins link to see those). The owner or administrator of these accounts may have given you permission to create projects, in which case you’ll see a Create Project button.

Clicking on the Manage Account button for an account that you own or administer allows you to see and change the subscription plan (if you're the owner), change settings, work with account members, etc.

All Projects Page

Previously, projects were grouped by account here, but that made finding the right project(s) hard sometimes. That account grouping is now on the Accounts page, when you need to think about how projects are organized administratively, and the Projects page becomes a simple list of all active projects that you are a member of.

By default, projects are shown in most recently accessed order, so the ones you work with the most should always appear near the top. You can change the sort order to show projects in alphabetical order, by account, or by created date (newest first).

Hover over the cogwheel for various actions including changing project settings, archiving, and deleting.

Clicking the “Show archived projects” checkbox at the top of the page will do, well, just that - show all archived projects.

Creating projects can be done on this page, via the big button, or anywhere else now via the new Create Project option in the Projects drop-down at the top.

Updated Profile Page

There aren’t any functional changes here, but your Profile page looks a bit better now, and allows you to make changes to individual sections without having to scroll up and down to get to the save button.

We hope these changes make it at least a little bit easier to do the more administrative things in Tracker and stay organized. We’d love your feedback on what else we can do, and if you need any help at all, just visit our help and support page.

Stay tuned for what else we’re up to, and what you can expect over the next few months!

Jun 6, 2012

One of the goals of Pivotal Tracker is to give everyone on your team the same view of your project, and allow people to work with individual stories but without losing sight of the big picture.

Some stories, though, and especially epics, can accumulate quite a bit content, including comments, source commits, and mockups. It can be hard to read all this, sometimes, so to make it easier, we've added the ability to zoom in, and expand stories to full page mode.

This feature also lets you get to individual stories much faster, when clicking on a link to a story, for example in an email.

To toggle between a normal size story to full page mode, click on the arrow button to the right of the story title. To shrink a full page story, and see it the context of the project, click the arrow button in the top right corner, next to the 'x', which closes the story.

Any changes you might be in the middle of making on the story get preserved as you zoom in or out.

Apr 11, 2012

We've launched the Epics feature, it's available for use on all of your projects now. Thanks to everyone who helped us test and evolve it!

Epics allow your team to plan, discuss, and keep track of progress of coarse-grained features or themes, at a level higher than individual stories.

Epics are similar to stories, but they live in their own panel, and can be ordered independent of stories in the backlog, to make the project's big picture priorities obvious to the whole team. You can also use epics for design collaboration of big features, and make it easy for developers to find assets (such as mockups) for a big feature that spans many stories.

Epics are tied to stories via a special label, called the linked label. Apply this label to stories to make them part of the epic. Labels linked to epics are purple, instead of the usual green.

Click on the EPICS button at the top of the project page to show the epics panel, or just type shift-e. The + button at the top of the epics panel creates a new epic. You can also convert existing labels to epics, in the Labels and Searches panel.

Epics allow you to see "where you are" with big features at a glance. As you prioritize and work on stories associated with an epic (via the linked label), a multi-color progress bar will appear on the epic, allowing you to see how big the given epic is, relative to other epics, and easily see how much of the epic has been accepted, is in progress, prioritized, or on ice. You can hover over the progress bar with the mouse to see a more detailed breakdown, as well as estimated completion date, which is the last day of the iteration that the epic's last prioritized story appears in, in the backlog. Clicking that progress bar, or the small arrow button to the right of it, reveals all of the epic's stories.

Drag and drop stories within an epic's story list to re-prioritize them relative to each other. Dragging a story from the icebox or backlog to an epic's story list panel will move that story to that position and associate the story with the epic. Dragging and dropping stories on the epic itself, in the epics panel, just associates the stories with that epic, without moving them to a new position.

For more about epics, please watch this 2 minute video, check out the FAQ, and download this quick start guide.

Feb 17, 2012

As posted to the Tracker blog yesterday, we've made a number of changes to the redesigned story interface based on your feedback, and added some new features:

• You can now navigate through all of the drop-downs and select values with the keyboard.
• When adding a new story, in addition to being able to move through the story types and point estimates with your left/right cursor, you can also choose values with a single key. Use F/B/C/R for Feature/Bug/Chore/Release, and the number keys to pick an estimate.
• CTRL + S (or CMD + S on a Mac) now save stories.
• Enter and escape work everywhere again, to save changes or cancel.
• The overall visual design has been adjusted to improve contrast and scannability, especially in the top section.
• There's now a save button at the top of new stories, for more consistency between creating and editing.
• We've adjusted the gray background to a warmer color.
• Clicking on a file attachment thumbnail or file name should open the file inline in the browser, at least for most file types. To download a file, use the cogwheel menu next to file attachments.
• The 'view all images' page now shows upload date/times.
• The Flash-based 'click-to-copy' feature for story ID and URL can ow be explicitly disabled on the Profile page, for those having trouble with Flash. When disabled, your stories will show a text field for both story ID and URL, which should auto-select when clicked into for easy copy and paste.
• Story tasks can once again be disabled in project settings, if you're not using them.

Note: We're aware of some performance issues related to opening and closing of stories, as well as drag and drop in large projects. We're working on this, and plan to roll out improvements over the next few weeks.

Feb 4, 2012

Stories have been given a serious upgrade. For the most part it’s all pretty self explanatory - the functionality you’re used to is all there, just in a format that’s more intuitive, user friendly and hopefully you’ll agree, more appealing.

One of the goals of Tracker has always been to make collaboration around your story backlog as easy as possible, so that your team spends less time managing your project and more of it actually building things. We think there’s room to make that not just easier, but more enjoyable, even fun! So to that end, great usability and user experience are major themes in our backlog for 2012, starting with this story redesign.

New Look and Feel

Like we said, stories look different, and are hopefully a lot easier to work with now. It's a complete redesign, with a color scheme that fits better with the rest of the Tracker UI, and that's intended to make the important information in a story stand out more - such as the story title, description, comments, code commits, and file attachments.

Besides visual appeal, we’re aiming to reduce clicks - for example, when creating a new story, it only takes one click to choose a story type or point estimate value. And, you can now start, finish, deliver, or accept/reject an expanded story with one click, with the familiar buttons.

Click to Copy ID and Story URL

We heard your feedback about having to scroll down in stories to find their IDs, to copy them to your commit messages (you are using the source commit integration, right?). So, we've moved the ID to the top of stories, and made it so that you can copy the ID to the clipboard with one click (on the ID button).

The same is true for the story URL, for when you need to send someone a link to the story. Just click the link button in the top left corner, and the story's full URL will be copied to the clipboard. Note - you’ll need Flash enabled in your browser for these to work. If you don’t have Flash, you’ll see the full URL on a separate line, so you can copy it the old way.

Less commonly used actions, including delete and view history, have been moved to the “More” menu, which is where we’ll be adding some other convenience actions soon.

File Attachments on Comments

One big change in this redesign is that files are now attached to stories as part of posting a comment, rather than as a separate list. This is because files are commonly uploaded and shared in the context of an on-going conversation, and it’s so much easier to refer to a file that’s actually part of that comment (e.g. “Here’s that icon”) rather than having to say “see the file named foo.gif at the bottom of the story”.

You can still drag and drop files from your desktop to stories, and entering an actual comment when adding files is optional - just drop your files on a story and close it.

View All Images and Comment Filtering

The truth is, thumbnails of mockups attached to a story can be indistinguishable from one another. Sometimes you just need to see them all full sized, on one page. Now, with just one click of the View All Images link above the Activity section, you can.

We’ve also made it easier to find what you need in a long-winded (all of it beautifully clear and vital) comment conversation - just use the filter dropdown menu at the top right of the Activity section to show just file attachments, just source commits, or all comments without commits.

Feedback

This redesign of stories is the first step in an on-going usability overhaul. We’ve got much more coming over the course of this year, but we’d like to incorporate your feedback at every step, so please let us know what you think so far, by email to tracker@pivotallabs.com.

Jan 5, 2012 - API V2 Removal on Jan 27

We're working on a new version of the developer API, with a long list of improvements. The release of this is a few months away, but to prepare for it, we're removing the old version (V2) of the API. This change (removal of V2) is tentatively planned for January 27, 2012, just over three weeks from today.

If you're using the API, please make sure that you're using the current version (V3), as requests to V2 will no longer work.

To see which version you're using, look at the URLs of the requests you're sending. If you see "v2" in the path, for example /services/v2/projects, you're using the old version, and will need to upgrade to the current API version.

If you have any questions, or could use help figuring out how to make your code work with the V3 version of the API, please send an email to tracker@pivotallabs.com.

Sept. 20, 2011

Tracker now integrates with Google Apps, and is available for your domain in the Google Apps Marketplace.

Provisioning Tracker for your Apps Domain

The first step is provisioning Pivotal Tracker for your Google Apps domain. You’ll need to be a domain administrator to do this, or a user with the Domain Settings privilege enabled (more on that here). Click the button above, or go to the Pivotal Tracker listing in the Marketplace, click the Add it Now button, and follow all the steps.

Once provisioned, you should see Pivotal Tracker on your Google Apps Dashboard. This is where you can make any provisioning changes, or remove apps from your domain.

Integration between Tracker and a Google Apps domain is at the level of the Tracker account (more on those here). Only one account can be associated with a Google Apps domain, so normally this should be the account that holds all of your company's projects.

Universal Navigation and Single-Sign-On

It may take a few hours after provisioning, but all users in your Google Apps domain should see a Pivotal Tracker link in the more menu (in the various Google services like Gmail, Google Docs, Calendar, etc.). Clicking that link will sign you into Tracker via OpenID, using your Google Apps identity.

If you access Tracker by going to the Tracker sign in page directly, click on the Google Apps link (the one at bottom right), and type the name of your Google Apps domain (for example "pivotallabs.com").

Note: If you run into problems with multiple Google OpenID identities (for example because you used to sign in via Google Accounts), please read this.

Inviting Google Users to Account and Projects

We’ve made it easy to invite co-workers from your domain to your linked Tracker account and/or projects within it.

To invite people to your Tracker account, for example to delegate administrative or project creation rights, go to the Account Members page for the account, click the Add Member button, then the Add Members from List link at the bottom.

You’ll see a list of everyone in your Google Apps domain. Choose the people you’d like to invite to the account, as well as their desired roles.

To invite users from your domain directly to your Tracker project, go to the Project Members page, and click the Add Members from List button. Again, you’ll see a list of all users in your Google domain, and can select multiple users along with their desired project roles. The drop-down menu at the top allows you to toggle between showing Google domain users only (who are not yet on the project), Tracker users only, or both.

Sharing Google Docs via Tracker Stories

Google Docs are indispensable for sharing and collaboration around anything that requires more info than a concise user story. Copying and pasting document links into Tracker stories, and worrying about whether the docs are shared with the right people isn’t fun, though - so we’ve made it easy to attach relevant Google Docs directly to stories.

Google documents that are attached to stories are shared automatically with project members, in view mode, as people open them (by clicking on the document thumbnails/links in Tracker). Note - it sometimes takes a few seconds for Google permission changes to be processed, so you might get a permission denied error the first time you open a Google document in Tracker. If this happens, just close that browser tab and try again.

Feedback and Comments

We’re eager to hear what you think about the Google Apps integration so far, and what you’d like to see in the future. If you think we’re on the right track, leave us a review on the Google Apps Marketplace and star us up!

July 22, 2011

End of the 6 Month Extended Free Period

This week marks the end of the 6 month extended free period, which was offered to everyone in January as part of the Tracker pricing introduction. For the full recap, please see this blog post.

Accounts that were on the six month extended free period were completely unlimited in terms of projects, collaborators, or file storage. As the free period ended on July 19, any accounts that were not explicitly upgraded to one of the paid plans transitioned to the free plan automatically. The free plan allows for up to 5 projects for individual use (no collaborators other than yourself), and up to 200MB of file attachment storage.

As described in recent emails to account owners, accounts that are over the limits of the free plan have become read only. You can still access them fully, but you will not able to add or edit stories until you either reduce collaborators/projects/file attachments, or upgrade the account to a plan that allows for your account’s level of use. See the FAQ for more information on this.

If you’ve already upgraded your account, but find that some of your projects are still in read-only mode, the projects may be in a different account, and will need to be moved. You can see which account(s) your projects are in by going to the My Projects page. Projects can be moved to a different account easily, via the project settings page - more on that in the article mentioned above.

Consolidating Projects to a Single Company Account

Paid plans are managed with accounts. Accounts are not the same as logins - they are a mechanism for grouping projects together for the purpose of sharing access and administration. You can read more about accounts in the FAQ.

Projects at your organization may belong to a number of different accounts - we have an article on the Tracker blog that outlines the steps to consolidate these projects into a single account, as well as how to manage administration and subscription plans in one place.

Getting Help

If you have any questions at all, or have problems accessing any of your projects, please do not hesitate to get in touch with us, by email to tracker@pivotallabs.com. We generally try to respond within a few hours.

July 9, 2011

In this week's update, we've made it easier to apply and remove labels to/from stories, with a new auto-suggest and click-to-remove widget. We've also made the Google Accounts sign-in integration more flexible.

Easier Adding/Removing of Labels

Labels in Tracker allow you to tie stories with a common theme together, or to convey something special about the status of a story (for example, "blocked", or "needs discussion").

In the future, labels will get even more powerful. As a first step, we've improved the usability of applying and removing of labels - it now takes fewer mouse clicks, and you can use the keyboard more efficiently.

There are now two ways to apply a label to a story - by typing into the Labels field (above story description now), or by clicking on the down-arrow and picking from labels that already exist in the project. Typing into the Labels field allows you to create a new label (hit enter when done) or to choose an existing one that matches what you type (hit the down arrow and enter to choose one).

To remove a label from a story, click on the small 'x' in the label itself, or use the left-arrow key to highlight it, and then delete (or backspace).

The same new auto-suggest labels widget also appears in the Stories menu at the top of the project page, which allows you to add or remove labels to/from multiple stories. Remember - to select a story, click the checkbox to the right of the story name (in the story list panels), and use shift-click to select a range of stories.

Note: To see all of the labels in your project, open the Labels and Searches panel (from the More menu). Here, you can also rename and delete labels.

Improved Google Sign-in

The first time you sign in to Tracker with your Google Account, you'll be presented with two options - to sign up as a new Tracker user, or to associate your Google Account identity to an existing user in Tracker. It is no longer necessary to use the same email address in your Tracker profile and your Google Account in order to link them together.

If you've already associated your Google Account with Tracker, but you'd prefer to remove that association and tie your Google Account identity to a different Tracker user, you can do that on your Profile page in Tracker. Scroll down to the Google OpenID section, and click 'remove' to the right of the identity URL.

July 6, 2011

We're excited to announce the release of Pivotal Tracker for iOS, the officially supported Pivotal Tracker app for the iPhone, iPad, and the iPod Touch!

You may find Pivotal Tracker for iOS to be familiar - it's based on the popular TrackerBot, which Pivotal Labs recently acquired from Vulpine Labs LLC.

Getting Started

Pivotal Tracker for iOS is available now as a free app in the iTunes App Store. After downloading and installing it, sign in with your Pivotal Tracker email address (or username) and password.

After choosing a project from the projects list, you'll see the familiar story panels, but streamlined for the iOS touch interface. The current iteration and the backlog are combined in one panel, and you can swipe sideways to move between panels.

You can create stories, edit them, reject them, delete them, add comments or tasks, and view attachments. The interface is designed exclusively for iPad and iPhone, incorporating the seamless transitions and animation you expect from a native app, but it's also familiar to anyone who's used Pivotal Tracker on the web.

Prioritizing Stories

Drag stories to move them using one or two fingers. With one finger, touch a story, hold it until you see it’s shadow, and drag. If you'd rather not wait for the shadow, use two fingers to drag the story immediately.

Finding the right spot for that story is easy - the multi-touch interface lets you easily scroll through your stories, even while you’ve got a story in your other hand.

Offline Access

Pivotal Tracker for iOS keeps a copy of your project offline, allowing you to access your stories even without an internet connection. You do need to be online to edit stories, though.

Upcoming Features

We've got lots in store for the app, and you can expect frequent updates. We're starting with features that will bring Pivotal Tracker for iOS closer to parity with Pivotal Tracker on the web, including search, improved panel management, and My Work, but we also plan to add unique features that take advantage of iOS and the mobile platform. Stay tuned!

In the meantime, we'd love your feedback. And if you do enjoy the app, please post a review at the app store!

Note: If you're using TrackerBot, the app will continue to work, but it's no longer supported - all future development will be focused on the new Pivotal Tracker for iOS. Download it now for free from the iTunes App Store!

June 17, 2011

This update includes changes that we're hoping will have a very noticeable impact on usability, especially for those of you who manage large projects. You can now select multiple stories with a few clicks, using shift-click, and drag them together to a new location. Also, iPad usability has been greatly improved - for example, story panels can now be scrolled with one finger, and you can move stories via drag and drop

Dragging Multiple Stories

Changing business priorities on large projects has always been a bit painful for us, having to drag stories one by one. Cloning panels helps with this, but really, what we've always wanted to do is just select a whole group of stories, and drop them in their new place in the backlog or the icebox with one action. You can now do this, and it's even possible to drag stories that are in-progress to the backlog or icebox and it just does the right thing (un-starts them).

Click on the screenshot above to see a larger version.

To select multiple stories, use the small checkboxes to the right of story titles. If you'd like to select a range of stories, select the first story in the list, then shift-click on the last story. This will select all in the range, and allow you to drag them together, or use some of the other actions in the Stories drop-down, such as export to CSV or move to another project. Note: range select with shift-click only works in a single panel at a time, but you can select multiple ranges of stories across the whole project.

The Stories drop-down menu has been changed - it now shows the number of selected stories more prominently, and we've removed the old bulk story move actions (move to icebox, etc), since this is now possible (and easier) with drag and drop. Note - the Stories menu allows you to unselect all selected stories, which can be useful if you're moving a lot of stories around in steps.

Note: We realize the that the checkboxes are a bit small, and hard to click on - we'll be addressing that in an upcoming release. Also, in certain panels and/or browsers, shift-clicking on a checkbox highlights text on the page, we'll be fixing that as well.

iPad Usability

We've addressed most of the major usability issues on the iPad, and Tracker (the web application) now supports one-touch scrolling of panels, drag and drop, easier expanding and collapsing of stories, and displays properly in both orientations.

In horizontal orientation, you can see up to 3 panels at one time, and 2 panels in vertical orientation. But, you can open others, and the panel section will slide sideways to reveal newly opened ones. Dragging sideways will move the panels left and right.

To drag a story, touch it for a brief moment, until it turns yellow, then drag it.

Possible Issues

One of the reasons that all these usability changes were possible, and fairly easy, is because we've changed the underlying drag and drop library that Tracker uses. We've tried to test thoroughly, and there are some minor issues, but there is fairly good chance that you'll find some as well. Please let us know!

June 6, 2011

As we blogged about last week, all pages in Tracker that require you to sign in are now served exclusively over secure HTTPS.

As part of this update, we've also improved how "remembered" sessions work. Select the remember me checkbox on the signin page, and you'll stay signed in for two weeks in that browser. This now works across multiple browsers .To clear all of your remembered sessions, just sign out anywhere, and resetting your password will clear all remembered sessions as well.

We've also made it easier to keep with all of the latest and greatest 3rd party tools and add-ons for Tracker, with a new RSS feed. Follow this link to add the feed to your feed reader, or click the RSS link at the top of the 3rd party tools page.

If you haven't been there recently, there are now around 80 third party tools listed, including the popular TrackerBot, an iPad/iPhone client for Tracker, Pivotal Tracker Analytics, an on-demand business intelligence application from GoodData, the Pivotal Tracker Story Board, a Chrome extension that shows your current iteration as a card wall, and many others!

May 18, 2011

You can now create custom point scales for your projects. This is one of our most commonly requested features, especially from teams that practice, and/or use the planning poker form of estimation.

The default point scales of 1/2/3, 1/2/4/8, and 1/2/3/5/8 remain in place, unchanged. To use a different set of point values for your project, go to your project settings, choose 'custom' in the point scale dropdown, and enter a list of numbers, separated by commas.

When using a custom point scale, the estimate values will appear as numbers, instead of the usual bars that you see when using one of the default point scales.

Unestimated stories will show the first 5 point values as buttons. If your point scale has more values, you can choose one of them to estimate a story by clicking the '+' button on the right.

In general, we believe in breaking down projects and features into fine grained stories, with small point estimates. This gives your team an opportunity to uncover and discuss all of interesting, and potentially risky parts of a feature early, and allow you to de-prioritize parts that are less important. However, we're also fans of having choices when it comes to process, and customizable point scales will allow you to experiment.

May 11, 2011

Story tasks are now turned on by default for all new projects, they can be added to a new story before it's saved, and you can drag them to rearrange their order.

If you haven't used story tasks before, they allow you to maintain a checklist of all of the specific things that need to be done before a given story can be considered finished. Typically, these are technical tasks, for example, a feature like "As a user, I can reset my password, so I can get back into the application" might break down to tasks along the lines of "Create new password reset controller", "Add reset password link to signin page", "Write functional test for resetting password", etc.

To enable tasks for your existing project, go to Project Settings, and click the 'Enable Tasks' checkbox near the top of the page.

Once enabled, you can create tasks for a story by typing into the 'add task' field, and hitting enter. Drag a task to move it to a different position in the task list, click the checkbox next to it to mark it as complete, and hover over a task to edit or delete it (you'll see an edit and delete button to the right of the task when hovering over it).

Stories that have tasks will now show a balloon icon next to the story title when collapsed, indicating that there is some more info available.

April 17, 2011

We've made a few usability improvements to related to viewing and editing of stories, as well as file attachment handling.

All of the story text fields now automatically expand based on the amount of text entered, and they'll grow as you type. When you expand a story, you'll now see the entire story title in one glance, even when it's long. Fields for story description, comments, and tasks expand as well.

Working with file attachments got a bit easier, too. It now takes fewer clicks to attach a file, and you can upload multiple files at once. In browsers that support it, you can drag files on to the story directly from your desktop. Finally, there's now a 'download' link next to each file attachment, for easier access to the original file.

March 29, 2011

We've added a new email notification to Pivotal Tracker which will let you know when someone assigns a story to you. There are also a few new additions to the API, related to projects and iterations.

Story Assignment Notification

In the typical Tracker workflow, stories stay unassigned as they move their way up the backlog and into the current iteration. When a developer frees up, he or she starts the next unstarted story, and becomes that story's owner.

There are times when it makes sense to assign a story to a particular person before it gets started by someone else, for example when the story calls for certain skills or specialization, like design or UX work.

With this new notification, when you make someone other than yourself the owner of a story, that person will receive an email, saying that the story has been assigned to them. As with all story notifications, it's possible to reply to that story right from your email inbox, in order to initiate or continue the evolving conversation that the story represents.

This notification is enabled by default, but can be turned off on your Profile page. Look for the Assigned stories checkbox, in the Email Preferences section.

API Enhancements

We've added the following information to the projects API response: project start date (if specified in project settings), the exact date/time the first iteration started (based on the date of the first accepted story, or an explicit project start date), current iteration number, and whether tasks are enabled.

Also, iterations now include team strength, all list elements should now include the type='array' attribute (to make ActiveResource happy), and you can retrieve the current iteration and all iterations in the backlog in one call, like this:

 curl -H "X-TrackerToken: TOKEN" -X GET http://www.pivotaltracker.com/services/v3/projects/PROJECT_ID/iterations/current_backlog

See the API help page for details and examples.

Note: We're planing on making more significant improvements to the API soon, as part of a new API version (V4). Look for more information on that in the next few weeks.

March 4, 2011

You can now post comments to stories right from your inbox by replying to any story notification email. This update also adds the ability to delete unwanted story comments, add extra notes like company address or tax ID to your billing receipts, and there's a new public projects directory and activity feed.

Reply to story emails

There's no need to fire up a web browser any more to answer a question about a story. Reply to any story notification email, and your reply will appear as a new comment on that story within seconds. In order for Tracker to know who the reply is from, though, you'll need to make sure that you're replying from the email address that's on your Tracker profile, and that you're a member of the project.

Note: All Tracker emails now come from the pivotaltracker.com domain. Please add notifications@pivotaltracker.com and tracker-noreply@pivotaltracker.com as contacts or allowed senders in order to prevent Tracker emails from getting caught in your spam filter.

Delete comments

Story comments can now be deleted, by project owners or comment authors. To delete an unwanted comment, hover over the comment header (author's name and time stamp), and click the trash can icon.

Public Projects directory

Public projects, which are visible to anyone, can now be easily explored with a new public projects directory.

This directory shows a random featured public project at the top, a list of the most active projects, and a live feed of all public project activity. It also allows you to search for public projects by name, project description, or project member name.

More on public projects in this blog post.

Billing receipt notes

We've heard from many companies, especially in Europe, that their accounting rules require additional information to appear on billing receipts. It's now possible to add arbitrary notes to your account, such as a company address or tax ID, which will appear on all printable receipts, including receipts for past transactions.

To add such information to your receipts, go to the Plans and Billing page of your account, and edit the Notes on Receipt field in the Billing Information section (which appears after you've upgraded to a paid plan).

Click on any of the 'view receipt' links in your Payment History, and you should see these notes on the printable receipt.

Feb 17, 2011

It is now possible to delete old projects permanently. You can do that on your All Projects page, which you can get to via the Projects drop-down menu, above. Be careful - deleted projects cannot be restored.

The syntax for the source commit hook now includes delivers, for situations where your commits actually trigger auto-deployment of code to a staging environment.

Note: The introductory 20% discount is available until midnight PST on Friday, February 18. More on that here.

Jan 1, 2011

Bugzilla Integration

Bugzilla is great tool for easy bug reporting and organization, while Tracker enables focused team collaboration around a prioritized backlog of stories. That backlog may include stories for new features, as well as to fix existing bugs in your application, which may come from multiple places, including a bug reporting system. This integration allows you to use Tracker and Bugzilla to their strengths, side by side.

You can enable Bugzilla integration for your project in your project settings, based on the instructions here. Once enabled, you'll see a new panel in your project, in the MORE menu:

This panel will allow you to see and import Bugzilla bugs into your Tracker backlog or icebox easily, via drag drop. As you collaborate around and complete stories linked to these bugs, Tracker will post notes about story comments and state changes to Bugzilla, allowing the entire development team to stay on the same page.

You can configure which bugs are shown in the Bugzilla import panel based on bug state, assigned product, and/or assigned component. You can also set up multiple "buckets" per projects, to allow you to see and import bugs for multiple product components separately, for example.

Notes: This integration supports Bugzilla versions 3.4.x to 3.6.x. Bugzilla 4.0RC has a number of changes in the API, and may not work with this integration (yet). Also, your Bugzilla instance has to be exposed on the web (outside of your company's firewall) in order for the integration to work. Tracker must see the URL you specify in the integration settings.

Updated My Projects page

We've re-organized the My Projects page to be easier to use. This is where you see all of the projects that you're a member of, grouped by account. Hovering over the area with the project name, in the project list, will show links that allow you to visit various pages for that project, as well as to archive or leave the project.

It is also now easier to create pre-populated sample projects, which allow you to see what a typical software project looks like, and experiment with the various Tracker features. To create a sample project, click the Create Project button on the dashboard or on the My Projects page, and then click the 'create a sample project' link.

Other Changes

The Zendesk integration now allows you to specify the full URL of your Zendesk instance, rather than just the account name. This is useful if you're using a vanity domain, for example "support.yourcompany.com".

We've also fixed a number of cosmetic / CSS issues, including IE bugs. Please let us know if you're still seeing any layout problems or other visual bugs that may have gotten introduced as part of the recent redesign.

As always, we look forward to your feedback. Post your thoughts in our user community, or give us a shout at tracker@pivotallabs.com

Dec 4, 2010

Tracker has a new look!

The Tracker team has been busy since the hosting move last month. We've shifted our focus from improving Tracker's performance and stability, to core product enhancement. This update introduces an updated visual design, as well the first wave of usability improvements. We've also added some new features, including the ability to sign in to Tracker with your Google Account

Reorganized Drop-down Menus

The Tracker project page (above) has a number of visual changes for improved contrast and readability, but it should still be familiar, and just as easy to use. We did, however, re-organize the various drop-down menus to make finding things more intuitive.

The More drop-down menu allows you to access all of the story lists (done, current iteration, backlog, etc.) as well as charts, and any integration panels you've enabled for your project.

The new Project drop-down menu contains project level actions such as changing settings, inviting people, configuring integrations, etc. Finally, the Stories menu allows you to perform actions on selected stories, such as deleting, applying a label, or moving to another project.

The Projects drop-down menu has also moved, it's now part of the navigation links on the right. In addition to allowing you to switch between projects easily, you can now also use it to access the All Projects page, where you can see all of the projects you're a member of, grouped by account.

The preference settings for including the current iteration in the backlog panel, and showing the project tabs have moved to your Profile page.

Dedicated Signin Page and Google Accounts

The sign-in form is now on a dedicated, HTTPS-only page. Access it with the 'sign in' link in the top right corner of the new home page, or this URL:

https://www.pivotaltracker.com/signin

Tracker now allows you to sign in via OpenID, using your Google Account.

If you've used your Google Account email address when you signed up for Tracker, signing in with Google will automatically take you to your existing Tracker account.

Disabling Enter Key When Editing Stories

We've also added the ability to disable the automatic saving & closing of stories with the 'enter' key, as a new preference on your Profile page. This should make it easier for our Japanese users to use the 'enter' key to select from kanji words, for example.

Known Issues and Feedback

This is a fairly major update, especially in terms of the visual design. Please let us know if you discover any issues - by email, posting to Satisfaction, or via @pivotaltracker on Twitter. We plan to address these as they arise, and update the site frequently this week. At the moment, we're aware of some layout issues in Internet Explorer 7, which will be fixed within the next few days.

As always, we're looking forward to your feedback!

Sep 18, 2010

This release focuses on features to help with account management. Accounts tend to stay out of the way for most people, but they can be essential for larger companies, especially consulting companies like ours. They allow users to separate their personal, open source, and company projects, for example, and to share administrative abilities and permissions for related groups of projects with other users.

Accounts can be managed on the My Accounts page.

Read more about what accounts are, including the different types of account roles, in this section of the FAQ.

Account Owners and Admins

Accounts now have single owners, and multiple admins. Previously, accounts could have multiple owners. For those accounts, we've made the very first owner of that account as the account's new single owner, and made everyone else an admin.

All account admins have the same access to the account's projects, and any of the admins can choose to take ownership of the account. Ownership is mostly just a token, it lets everyone know which individual is responsible for the account.

Account Member Management

The Account Members page allows you to see and manage everyone who is a member of a project within your account, as well as people with special account roles, like Admin and Project Creator. For accounts with time functionality enabled, the list will also include Time Keepers and Time Enterers.

By default, the Members page shows everyone involved with the account. Use the role filter buttons to the right of the View label at the top of the page to see account members with specific roles only. You can also search for members by name or email address by using the Filter field at the top right.

The Members page allows you to add members to the account directly, based on email address. These can be people who are already users of Tracker, or people you'd like to invite to participate in projects or administration of the account. Use the Add Member button to add people to the account.

The Actions popup in the list allows you to do a number of things, including:

• adding an account member to a specific project, or to all projects in the account
• removing a person from all project in the account
• changing the roles and permissions of an account member, for example to an Admin or Project Creator
• giving account members permission to create new projects in the account
• for accounts with Time enabled, designating account members as "time enterers" or "time keepers"

You can learn more about account roles in the FAQ.

Deleting Accounts

Accounts can now be deleted by account owners or admins, on the Settings tab of the Account page. Deleting an account is permanent, and removes all projects and stories within the account. Be careful, there may be projects in the account that you may not be aware of.

Account Project list

You can now see all of the projects in a given account, on the Projects tab of the Account page. This page also allows you to create new projects within the account, as well as archive projects.

Limit Project Invitations to Account Members

Account owners and admins can now restrict who may be invited to projects by project owners in the account. When this option is enabled (on the Account Settings page), new project invitations are limited to people who are already members of the account, and explicitly listed on the Account Members page. This is useful if you'd like to limit access to company projects to specific employees only. By default, owners of projects in the account can invite anyone to their project.

Jun 4, 2010

OAuth For Twitter Notifications

Starting Jun 30, the Twitter API will no longer allow 3rd party applications (such as Tracker) to connect using your Twitter username and password. Instead, applications will be required to use OAuth, an authentication protocol that allows users to approve a 3rd party application to act on their behalf without sharing their username/password.

Tracker now uses OAuth for project Twitter notifications. When you enable this feature for your project (see the integrations help page for more on that), you'll be asked to sign in to Twitter (on the Twitter site), and give the Pivotal Tracker application permission to access your Twitter account.

If you have enabled Twitter notifications for your project(s) prior to this release, the stored credentials are in the username/password format. You'll need to remove these old credentials, by clicking the 'Remove Twitter Credentials' button. After you've done that, click the 'Sign In With Twitter' button to re-enable the Twitter notifications using the new, more secure OAuth way.

More information on Twitter and OAuth can be found here.

Move Stories to Project

We've added the ability to move stories from one project to another. To move a story, or a group of stories, select them first, using the checkboxes to the right of story titles:

Then, select the 'Move to Project...' option in the Actions drop-down, and choose the project you'd like the story or stories moved to:

You should see a message that the stories were moved, and there should a history entry for the move as well, both in the source and destination project. Moved stories retain comments, tasks, attachments, as well as their own history of actions.

It's also now possible to move stories to a project via the API. Simply do a story update, with the target project's ID in the story's <project_id> element. More on that on the API help page.

Apr 9, 2010

Multiple Integrations

You can now have multiple integrations of the same type for a project. This allows you to see and import Satisfaction topics from different products, for example, or use multiple Zendesk views for different types of support tickets.

Configurable Updates

Each integration now lets you choose which updates Tracker should send to the external tool, for example story state changes or new comments. For the Campfire integration, you can select whether your chat room receives updates for new comments, state changes, or new stories.

Issues/Tickets No Longer Filtered

For Zendesk, JIRA, and Lighthouse integrations, the list of issues/tickets in the import panel should now match what you see in the corresponding Zendesk view, Lighthouse bin, or JIRA filter. Previously, we only showed new tickets/issues. The only ones that don't appear are tickets/issues that have already been imported into your Tracker project.

Satisfaction Questions

The Satisfaction integration now includes Questions, in addition to Ideas and Problems. We use the integration ourselves, and find that many people use questions for feature suggestions on Satisfaction.

Mar 8, 2010

Zendesk Integration

We've added Zendesk to the list of applications that Tracker integrates with. Zendesk is on demand customer support help desk system, and this integration allows your development team to prioritize and collaborate around Zendesk tickets as linked Tracker stories.

To learn how to set up Zendesk integration for your project, visit the integrations help page. Once enabled, you'll see a new panel in your project, allowing you to see and drag/drop Zendek tickets into the backlog or icebox. Story comments and state changes will appear in the corresponding Zendesk ticket as comments.

Note: At the moment, the Pivotal Tracker target in Zendesk does not create linked stories in Tracker. We're working with Zendesk to enable that, and make the two integrations seamless.

Jan 23, 2010

API V3

This is a new version of the API. As part of this release, the first version of the API (V1) has been removed. You may continue to use V2, but that version will is deprecated and will be removed at some point in the future.

API V3 adds the following:

• more complete and detailed activity resources
• support for adding file attachments to stories
• ability to move (re-prioritize) stories
• GitHub post-commit support, as well as a generic post-commit hook, that will allow you to associate source commits with stories
• more information in the project resource, including labels

Complete documentation is on the API Help Page. For more details about what's new or changed, see this blog post.

Activity Web Hook

You can now have Tracker post notifications to a URL you specify as story activity happens in your project. The POST body of these requests will contain XML describing the activity, as well as the affected story, in the exact same format as the API activity response.

One way to use the web hooks is for integration, to keep stories synchronized with resources in other systems. We're hoping you'll find other interesting ways to use them - let us know what you build!

Enable an activity web hooks can be enabled on your project's Integrations page. To get there, go to your project settings, and click on the Integrations tab at the top right. More information on activity web hooks, as well as other types integration are available on the Integrations help page.

Bug / Issue Tracking Tool Integration

In this release, we're introducing the first of many external integrations, starting with support for JIRA, Lighthouse, and Satisfaction.

The idea with these integrations is to allow your team to prioritize, and collaborate around stories that are tied to tickets/issues in other systems, increasing overall visibility without having to do manual double entry. For the JIRA and Lighthouse integrations, changes to story states, and new comments will be reflected in the linked ticket/is