Since last night, mite is running on a new version of its underlying application framework. Starting at 1am (CEST), we took mite offline for about 15 minutes to deploy the update and perform some database migrations.

If you cannot notice anything working differently, we put our thumbs up. Yes, the update speeds up mite a little bit and will help us maintaining it, but it did not change anything on a feature level. Nevertheless, if you happen to stumble upon a bug, please tell us so we can fix it right away. Send us a detailed e-mail which includes information on your browser version. Thanks!

Julia in Tech talk

The Heartbleed bug is a vulnerability in OpenSSL that was disclosed on Monday night, April 7th (CEST). OpenSSL is a very popular cryptographic software library. Approximately two thirds of all servers use it to encypt Internet traffic. The Heartbleed weakness could have been exploited by attackers to eavesdrop on communications, steal data, and compromise secret keys of SSL certificates.

Here at mite, we used and are using OpenSSL, too. Today, we want to tell you in detail how we reacted to Heartbleed, when, and which actions we took to secure your data. This information comes a little late. We are sorry about that. On the technical side, we were so much faster! You could rely on us, and you can rely on us in the future, too.

• We learned about Heartbleed on Tuesday morning, 9:20am.
• As soon as a security patch was available for our systems, we started to install them. At 12:02am, all of our servers were successfully patched.
• As a measure of precaution, we requested a new SSL certificate with new keys. We rebooted all servers. Since 12:24am, they use the new certificate. As the certificate was re-issued by DigiCert Inc, you won’t see this new validation date, don’t let this fool you.
• We changed all of our passwords on all systems.
• Tonight, we will invalidate all cookies. You will have to log-in again.

Better safe than sorry, so please change your passwords for mite, too. Click on your user name in the upper right-hand side to do that.

OpenSSL is widespread, and Heartbleed thus affected lots of services. Please think about changing your password for other services, too, especially webmail services. You can check whether or not a service is patched thanks to services such as this one. If so, check if the certificate is a new one, or ask if it was re-issued. Then, change your password.

Thanks for your attention. Now back to work!

Julia in Tech talk

Machinery needs a little bit of grease every now and then, software an update, and a home a cleaning. Some projects lack the one big final »Done!«—and a feature to budget them smoothly in mite. E.g., if you agreed with your client on maintaining a project for 20 hours a month, you had to add a new project every single month to keep a keen eye on its budget.

No more! You can now set a monthly budget for a project, too. As usually, you can budget in hours or euro or another currency. Simply choose the brand spanking new option »hours per month« or »euros per month«, when adding or editing a project on the tab »Projects«.

mite will then display the percentual useage of the monthly budget and the remaining or exceeded hours or euros in all the familiar places. If the budget exceeds 75%, it will show up on your dashboard report as ‘critical’. Budgets will always be displayed on »Reports => Projects« and on project reports, including possible shared reports.

The project report of active projects will show the budget status of the current month in the upper right-hand corner. The report of archived projects will show the budget average instead.

Click on »Show all months« to have a thorough look at the historical budget data, starting with the first month you tracked a time entry on.

If you did not track any time entries at all on a given month, the average will be calculated excluding this month. Add a time entry with 0:00 to force mite to include an easy-going month in the average.

Hopefully, this update will help you to manage recurring budgets more smoothly. We’d love to hear some feedback. Give it a try and tell us how it’s working for you. Thanks!

Julia in New features

Here at mite, we’re migrating to the new European payment standard SEPA, too. Although this affects you only a little bit, we have to and want to let you know about all upcoming adjustments that will become effective on February 1st, 2014.

If you pay user fees per direct debit from a German bank account, we will start SEPA direct debiting your bank account as of February 1st. Your account number and the bank code will become IBAN and BIC. We already converted your bank information for you. Nevertheless, please have a look at the tab »Account => Payment« and double-check. You can find your IBAN and BIC on your bank statement.

For now, paying user fees for mite via direct debit continues to be available for German bank accounts only. As soon as our payment partners will implement direct debit for other SEPA countries, we’ll consider this enhancement too, yes of course.

Due to SEPA, we also updated our Terms of Service. We only adjusted §6 Payment/Invoice. The term »direct debit« now reads »SEPA direct debit«. And we added a single phrase: »The pre-notification period of a SEPA direct debit is shortened to 1 day.«.

Our updated ToS will become effective on February 1st, 2014. Please find them right here. If you do not object within six weeks in textual form (e.g. via e-mail), you accept our updated ToS. Should you object, we’re entitled to terminate and end our contract on February 1st, 2014.

Thanks for your attention. Now back to more important things!

Julia in Inside out, Tech talk

mite will end official support of the Internet Explorer 7 on September 12th. We won’t optimize and fix for this browser version anymore.

If you’re still using IE7, please update soon—on version 8 at least, or, better, on the current version 10. A free update is available directly from Microsoft. Or, switch to a current version of Mozilla’s Firefox browser, or Google’s Chrome.

Internet Explorer 7 was released in October 2006. Seven years ago, aka 42 cat or Internet years. In the meantime, browsers improved big time. They got faster and more secure. We have to work around the constraints of IE7 during every single update. Sometimes, we even developed special slimmed-down versions of a feature. We’d like to put this time to a better use, so all users benefit. Better browsers are available, and, luckily, ~99,3% of all mite.users do run them. Dear 0,3%: Please update now. Other sites will be grateful for that, too, and will show their gratitude with a smoother behavior. Thanks!

Julia in Tech talk

The web-based project management tool Planscope now integrates with mite. When you start a timer on a task in Planscope, or add a time entry manually, this time will show up in mite too. Thanks to the integration, you won’t have to add any more time entries twice.

Projects in Planscope can be bundled with projects in mite. Also, you can define a service to which time entries in mite will be assigned. The title of the task in Planscope will be referenced as a note of each time entry in mite. There’s a short video on Planscope’s blog which shows the integration in action.

This new integration was developed and will be taken care of by Planscope. Thanks a lot for your time and effort, Brennan and team!

Julia in Add ons

Every mite.account is available under its own, unique URL. When you sign-up for a new account, you choose this personal login. E.g., if your login is »myteam«, you log-in at https://myteam.mite.de.

You can now change this login—which can be handy if you rename your company for example. The owner of the account and administrators can find this new feature under the tab »Account«.

If you change the login of your account, the renamed account will be at your service under its new address immediately. Please inform your team about the update, so nobody will get lost. Also, the URLs of any shared reports will change. Thus, please let your clients know, too. Thanks!

Julia in New features

Working days often differ strongly in detail, but follow a similar basic structur. At some moment of the day, we usually check our mails, take care of administrative issues, get our team on the same page in a meeting, and push forward our current project.

From today on, you won’t have to add the same time entries from the ground up every single day. Instead, mite will be happy to help you kickstart your day. With a single click, you can now copy last working day’s time entries as a template for the current day.

If you select a day without time entries, you’ll see a link on the white content area which says »Copy last working day’s entries as a template«. When you click on it, mite will duplicate the project and service of these time entries, delete their notes, and reset their hours. Now, you can start the timer on any of these template entries, or edit their hours directly.

If you don’t need one or several of the copied time entries on the current day, simply delete them. The last working day is the last day on which you added at least one time entry. Time entries with archived projects and/or services won’t get copied. Of course, you can manually add more time entries to the copied ones. The time tracking features you’re accustomed with won’t change at all.

We hope so much that this new feature will help you save some precious time, day by day! Please tell us how the update is working out for you. Constructive feedback is super-important for improving mite. Thanks!

Julia in New features

Hear hear, Mac users: Do you use Lion or higher? Then this is for you. Version 3 of DynaMite, the sleek mite.client for Mac OS, has arrived!

What is DynaMite?

DynaMite is an add-on for Mac users which is developed and maintained by Swiss MediaAtelier. DynaMite is kind of a remote for your mite. It sits directly in the menu bar of your Mac. Right here, you’ll see at a glance if a timer is running, and if so, how many minutes you’ve been working already. Stop or edit running timers with a single click. Or create a new time entry with a running timer in no time at all.

What’s new in version 3?

• Idle timers
• Time entries with multiline notes
• Click a day summary to view the corresponding mite.page
• Increase or decrease running timers right from your menu bar
• Switch easily between multiple mite.accounts

How much is DynaMite?

DynaMite is an add-on of an independent 3rd party, Swiss MediaAtelier. Thus, you’ll have to pay a small extra to use it. DynaMite costs €12 (one-time fee). If you upgrade from DynaMite 1 or 2, the upgrade is €5 only. If you bought DynaMite 1 or 2 on or after September 1st, 2012, the upgrade is for free.

Installation

DynaMite makes use of our open data interface, the mite.api. To setup the connection, you’ll have to activate the mite.api for your user first. You’ll find this option in mite by clicking on your user name in the upper right-hand corner. Please activate the corresponding checkbox there and save your changes.

During set-up, DynaMite will ask for your account name: that’s the subdomain of your mite.account. E.g., if you login at https://acme.mite.de, the account name is »acme«.

Later on, a window will pop up, asking for your e-mail address and your password, or, your Mac will ask you to access your mite.credentials stored in your keychain. Please enter the credentials asked, or allow access to those infos in your keychain. DynaMite needs those credentials to connect with your mite.account.

Thanks, MediaAtelier

Stefan, thanks so much for continuously improving DynaMite! Merci, and grüezi to Züri.

~~
Update, 2019: MediaAtelier doesn’t offer DynaMite to new customers anymore. So sad. However, as a current or former customer, you can still download DynaMite 3 over here.

Julia in New features, Add ons

The recently launched select menus feature a search to find any given entry in no time at all. We just updated this search: You can now search for groups, too. E.g., if you create a new time entry, you can search the select »Project« not only for a project, but also for a customer. mite will then display all projects of the customer in question.

Thanks so much for your numerous feedback suggesting this enhancement! We’re very happy to know the search feature is utilized to such an extent already.

Julia in New features