SCRUM is an excellent agile project management methodology. Our Reports module for activeCollab (and our own project / product development methods) are heavily inspired from SCRUM.
Here’s a quick video that will teach you core concepts of SCRUM in just 8 minutes! It’s a must watch!
Do you use SCRUM? Are you a Reports module customer? How do you use it?
Aimed for the moon, but reached on mars! This is what happened to us. We applied for an iPhone developers account at start of December. It’s been about 3 months now, and we have not got the Developers Account despite sending all documents and repeated followups.
We have 4 iPhone products ready to deploy, but our hands are tied because we don’t yet have a developer’s account. The frustration levels went so high, we decided to just drop the plans to release these products.
Then we got an idea! Why not release them on the Mac?
So from frustration to joy, we present to you Picture Puzzle!
Download Picture Puzzle (8M, Mac OSX)
Picture Puzzle is a Mac OSX memory test game. You see a collection of pictures one after another. The objective of the game is to arrange them in right order after initial display. This tests how well you can remember the order of images. It stimulates your brain and helps you remember things better.
Apply all memory tricks you may have learned. Tell us if you beat the game!
Download Picture Puzzle (8M, Mac OSX)
It’s a free download!
Do you have an iPhone Developer Program sad story? Let us know!
If you think you have sharp memory and can remember well, wait till tomorrow!
Got a question from a customer:
I am setting up a cron using a third party service. Do I have to set cron to execute the tasks both frequently, hourly and daily (or is it sufficient once a week?)
Our Answer:
If you set up frequently, hourly and daily it will make activeCollab happy! (The new Incoming Mail module uses frequently job to pull emails).
For Reports, once a week is sufficient, but you will need to ensure it gets called on the day your week starts (as per aC configuration you have). Webcron.org may be in some other timezone than your server. So you will need to ensure it gets fired at correct time. When cron gets executed, it checks if this is the start of the week, if so, it will take reporting snapshots.
Every week, on start of week (e.g. Monday) we take snapshot of previous week.
If your host does not have crontab / scheduled task enabled, your reporting data will not update. For best results you should have Scheduled Tasks configured and working for activeCollab.
If your server has a web based control panel (cPanel, Plesk etc), there are good chances you can configure cron jobs with it. If you have shell access to the server (SSH), you can easily configure cron jobs from command line (crontab -e).
If all that fails, what are my alternatives?
Alright, so life is really making it difficult for you, you have two alternatives.
If you are using Access theme with activeCollab, Reports icon does not show up in main menu. You do see a menu item and can click on it, but it is missing an icon.
Why does this happen?
Access theme uses a custom CSS file to override look and feel of activeCollab. By default it hides any unknown styles. They do not have an icon for Reports module yet. This results in no icon showing for Reports module.
How to fix it?
It’s easy to fix this. Here are the steps:
public/assets/modules/reports/images/icon.gif to public/assets/themes/Access/images/icons/reports.gif. Note we are copying as reports.gif, not icon.gif.theme.css in public/assets/themes/Access/. Search for #menu_item_status in it. It may have another line for invoicing module after it. Add this line: #menu_item_reports span.outer {background: transparent url(images/icons/reports.gif) no-repeat center 15px;}If this does not work, post a comment here with some more details and we will sort out!
BTW, we have already requested Leon (Access theme developer) to include a Reports icon. We are still to hear from him.
Want to see how the reports module looks? Here’s a quick demo video showing you installation, configuration and usage of our reports module for activeCollab project management system.
What do you think?
Are you ready to buy? It’s just $39!
Welcome to this introduction to Reports module for activeCollab. In this quick article, we will see how to install, use and make decisions with this exciting new module for activeCollab – a superb project management system.
Let’s get started.
Click on a subject to learn more about it.
We have a superb introductory video on Reports module. In well under 5 minutes, you can learn how to setup and use Reports module with your activeCollab setup!
Do you have some feedback for us? An idea to improve? Some problem we missed out? We are eager to listen. Please give us your feedback.
You can filter reporting period by selecting dates in two date selectors at top. The first is starting date and second is end date. Click on the calendar next to a date field to select another date. Click on Refresh button to reload reports for this date range.
At the top of your Reports Dashboard, you will see a drop down list of projects you have access to. Select any project from this list and click on Refresh to update reports.
We anticipated that you may want to review all your projects once a week. We simplified this operation with the Next button. Click on Next to load reports for next project in your list. Review reports and click Next again to move to another project.
We did not want legends to obstruct your view, so we kept them hidden. You can toggle them by checking the Legend box at top right. When on, this will show you color code legends for all your charts.
We create these reports by taking a snapshot of your projects. We store reporting trends for last week at the start of each week. This is how we get weekly progress reports. And this is the reason why we need Scheduled Tasks running!
This data – burndown, iteration, hours – is not updated during a week. So if you come back to these reports during a week, you will not see any updates. The only real time data is Most Active Tickets and Longest Open Tickets.
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