January 4, 2010
Yolk, the company serving mite, moved to a new office. Please use our updated address if you’d ever wish to contact us via snail mail:
Yolk – Munz & Soergel GbR
Oranienstraße 166
10999 Berlin
Germany
Please have a splendid and productive New Year, everyone – let’s get it going, 2010!
Julia in Inside out
December 5, 2009
Managing user rights and responsibilities in mite got a little more elaborate today. You can now choose from four roles instead of three:
The time tracker corresponds to whom we used to call the user with limited rights. We simply re-named this role to a more self-explanatory one. Time trackers are only allowed to track time on projects they were granted access to. They only see their very own time entries. They’ll never see revenues.
The co-worker corresponds widely to the former default role, the regular user. Co-workers are authorised to manage customers, projects and services. They see reports of all projects including time entries of other users. What changed with the update is that co-workers are not allowed to edit other users and account settings anymore.
New: the administrator. Admins hold extended rights to manage the account and the team: they can add new users or edit existing ones. They can download invoices and backups. Furthermore, they are authorised to edit time entries by other team members and lock / unlock time entries – both of these features launched today as well.
The owner of the account is the most powerful user role in mite. He’s responsible for managing payment data. Only the owner of the account is authorised to cancel the account.
You can find a detailed overview of all roles & rights here.
Julia in New features
December 5, 2009
Have you been looking for a way to flag those time entries that have been invoiced already, or those that have been checked and approved by a responsible team member? You weren’t the only one. And yes, we heard you!
Now, time entries can be locked. Locked time entries cannot be edited anymore. The feature is available for administrators and the owner of the account. Co-workers and time trackers will see if an entry is locked or not, but won’t be able to switch this status.
You’ll find this option under the tab »Reports => Time entries«. By clicking on the corresponding icon at the end of every line, the lock, a single time entry can be locked or unlocked. If you’d like to lock / unlock several time entries, bulk edit will be at your service. Of course, you can filter and/or group by this status.
Julia in New features
December 5, 2009
Managing your team’s time entries? Thanks to today’s update, that’s a piece of cake. From now on, you can bulk edit time entries. Finally!
Of course, you can edit the project, the service, the user or the »locked« state of one or several time entries with a click. Notes can be edited very flexibly: search & replace is available. Furthermore, hours can not only be set to a fixed quantity, but also rounded up or down to quarter, half or full hours. Finally, you might not only edit time entries, but also delete them.
If you are an administrator or the owner of the account, you’ll find the new bulk edit feature under the tab »Reports => Time entries«. Co-workers and time trackers are not authorised to bulk edit time entries.
Have a look at the short video screencast (1:25) to see the feature in action:
mite. Bulk edit time entries. from mite on Vimeo.
Please tell us how bulk edit is working out for you! We’d love to hear from you.
Julia in New features
November 19, 2009
This is unbelievable, quite honestly. After spending the weekend in Graz, Austria as a Europrix Multimedia Awards 2009 nominee, we hopped on a plane to Hamburg to present Yolk, the company behind mite, at enable2start, Germany’s biggest entrepreneurial competition, initiated by Financial Times Germany.
Out of 12 finalists, a colorful jury chose five winners: Abotic, CaptchaAd, LaTherm, SilberTool and yes & hurrey, Yolk. 1086 teams had applied. Wow!
We want to thank not only the people who considered our team worth recieving this honor, but rather you: our lovely users and supporters. You made this happen, really – without your feedback, demands, suggestions and trust, Yolk and mite would be just another idea. Merci! And gogogo, let’s push this forward!
Julia in Inside out
November 11, 2009
Hear hear, Redmine users! Thanks to a plugin developed by Thomas Klein, time entries tracked on issues within Redmine can now be sent automatically to your mite.account.
Redmine projects might be bundled with mite.projects. For each project in Redmine, you might specify which mite.services should be selectable. Furthermore, dynamic comments are available: you can specify if information such as the title or the ID of a ticket should be added to the notes of your time entries.
Redmine2mite makes use of our open API. To setup the connection, you’ll have to activate the mite.api within your account first. You’ll find this option by clicking on your user name in the upper right-hand corner in mite. Please activate the corresponsing checkbox there, copy your API key and save your changes.
Having installed Redmine2mite successfully, you’ll find a new link in the upper right-hand corner within Redmine, labeled »mite«. There, you’ll have to specify your login credentials from mite (login & API key). Once your Redmine account is connected with mite, you might specify how projects should be bundled as well as which services should be available on a per project basis.
Please head over to GitHub to get the latest version of Redmine2mite. Thomas Klein who developed the plugin published it under the free MIT license. Help yourself, grab it, fork it, improve it! And please don’t forget to get in touch with Thomas if you’re missing anything or simply want to give props.
Redmine is an open source, web-based project management and bug-tracking tool. It is written using Ruby on Rails and under active development. You’ll find an online demo here.
Julia in New features, Add ons
September 23, 2009
Unquestionable, we’re not running out of ideas how to push mite a little bit further, again and again. Even after almost three years of continuous development, there’s still so much to do, it’s amazing. The reporting section has been our main building site for the last few weeks, and will be for some more. There’s lots of potential to be tapped in this section. Today’s update package holds one new feature and a couple of smaller improvements. We hope you’ll like it!
Under the tab »Reports => Time entries«, the heart of the reporting section, filtering and/or grouping became a whole lot faster today. Even the most complex filters can now be applied with a single click: just bookmark them.
A couple of default bookmarks are waiting for you already. Don’t need one of them? Please apply the bookmark in question, then click the »-« button on the right-hand side of the select menue to delete them. To add a new bookmark, select the corresponding filters and/or groups first. Then, add the bookmark by clicking the »+« button on the right-hand side of the select menue. If you’re tracking your time on a multi-user account, you can chose if the bookmark should be shared with other authorized members of your team, or not. Users are authorized to view team bookmarks if their rights are not restricted.
The lion’s share of today’s updates tend to improve the ease of use of mite‘s reporting section. We learned a great deal during the last years, above all not to go with our instincts only. Putting features to the real life test surely brings up issues you’d have never thought of otherwise. In this case, we were honestly surprised to experience that the huge orange button »Apply filter« on top of the sidebar, which triggered the filter box under »Reports => Time entries« and »Reports => Projects«, was overlooked, over and over again.
Some users simply didn’t spot this button, and therefore missed one of the best parts of mite. Yes, it was roughly a 5% percent issue, but with harsh consequences. Most interestingly, when pointed to the button, users couldn’t quite explain why they missed it in the first place. Was it because the orange color was associated with adding a new item? Was it because they took the button for a miscarried header of the other sidebar buttons (print, export etc.)? To be honest, we couldn’t get to the exact root of the problem. But we could and did try other versions of this button: we experimented, tested, retested and tested again. Finally, we came up with this new version. It is just a little bit inconsistent with other sections of mite, and will hopefully therefore manage to solve this issue:
The button to trigger filters and/or groups now finds its place in a new header, just above the content area with the list of all time entries. Our tests went well – now we’re excited how it’ll work for thousands of real users. Please give yourself some time to adapt to the new version if you catch yourself pointing your mouse to the sidebar during the first few days. Even if you spotted the button in the first place, the new version will save you some time by bringing the button and the filter selects closer together.
The menues inside the filter box can now be selected faster as well. Instead of activating the checkbox first to trigger the selects, the select menues can now be activated directly. Inactive selects are not hidden anymore, but differ visually instead.
Please note: the new version of the select menues won’t be available under Internet Explorer 7. Unfortunately, technical reasons forced us to stay with the old version, here.
Formerly available within the filter box, you can now specify how many entries you’d like to see in the footer area. Older entries are loaded via Ajax, right on the same page. Therefore, the former pagination is not available anymore.
On the right-hand side, within the sidebar, mite now serves a special print view of the list of all time entries. The print view which opens in a new window now displays all time entries corresponding with the current filters and/or groups, not only the first page, as it used to.
Stay tuned! More updates in the reporting section will be launched during the next months.
Julia in New features
September 7, 2009
Mantis2mite is a plugin for Mantis which I developed during my bachelor thesis also thanks to a lot of precious feedback from mite.users. It is licensed under the terms of the MIT License and hosted on GitHub.
Mantis is an open source bug tracking system based on PHP and under constant development. Mantis2mite connects your Mantis account with your mite.account. Track your time easily on issues within Mantis and get them automatically send to mite. Projects from Mantis can be bundled with mite.projects. Furthermore, you can specify which mite.services should be available in Mantis on a per-project basis. Users having a certain (configurable) role in Mantis may also view the time entries made by other users. This option is meant for project managers to easily get an overview on how much time was tracked on a problem.
There is one important precondition: Mantis >= 1.2.0., since this is the first version with a real plugin system. This was necessary to develop Mantis2mite.
You can find a zip archive containing all files on GitHub. Addidtionally there are installation instructions, a FAQ and a list of known issues in a README document. Make sure to check this out first, if you have any questions.
I’m looking forward to your feedback, especially in regard to the upcoming Trac-/Redmine plugin!
[Update, September 7th] After renaming a directory of the plugin, nothing worked as it should. I just discovered this issue and fixed it. Please download the fixed version on GitHub. Sorry for the trouble. I guess I couldn’t totally hide my green horn ;-)
Thomas in New features, Add ons
August 4, 2009
Are your projects staying on budget? mite offers a very simple way to help you track that crucial information at a glance: once you specified the total max. budget of a project, a visual budget status bar will show up in your reports that informs you about the amount of remaining hours.
This feature has been around for a long time. From today on, you’ll have the option to not only track your budget in hours, but in dollars or any other currency as well.
Thanks to all users who made their voice heard and requested this feature! We surely hope that this alternative will help you staying on budget.
Julia in New features
July 21, 2009
[Update, 2nd August] Survey closed. Thanks for your input! The results are: Trac, Mantis and Redmine.
My name is Thomas Klein and I’m currently studying Computer Science & Media at the BHT Berlin (Beuth Hochschule für Technik Berlin). For my final exam, lasting for three months, I’m dealing with the connection of open source issue tracking systems and mite via plugins.
The term »issue tracking system« has many synonyms and covers therefore a wide variety of software. In my perception, an issue tracking system should at least support the processes
Due to the limited time I will focus only on web-based open source issue tracking systems, having each:
Now it’s up to you: Take part on this survey with only 3 questions to affect my implementation ranking of the remaining issue tracking systems. Additionally you can provide some feature requests for the mite.plugins. Based on the results and your recommendations I will implement a mite.plugin for the first 2-3 issue tracking systems.
If you have any questions or comments regarding my thesis or the survey feel free to contact me on Twitter.
Thomas in New features, Add ons, Let's discuss