Now that’s a headstart for 2010: two 3rd party developers, Daniel Rinser & Victor Saar, released an app to bring mite to the iPhone / iPhone touch! The native app named mite.go joins the official version for the iPhone browser. From today on, you might choose to use the faster and more feature-rich iPhone app.

With mite.go, time entries can be added very easily. A timer is available as well; you’ll find it on the dedicated timer view. A smart icon right within the menu bar allows you to make sure at a glance if a timer is ticking. Furthermore, customers, projects and services can be managed with mite.go – a feature which is not available in the official browser-based iPhone version. The interface adapts graphical elements known from mite; it’s well-arranged and useable.

You can find more screenshots, system requirements, the feature roadmap and support details on the site of mite.go. The app is $4.99 (3.99 €, 5.50 CHF), you can download it from the App Store. Please note that you’ll have to activate the mite.api, our open data interface, first: You’ll find this option by clicking on your user name in the upper right-hand corner within mite.

The developers are definitely looking forward to improving mite.go based on your feedback. So please take a minute and tell them how it’s working for you! You might even want to add a review on the App Store? Other users would benefit from your opinion, for sure. Thanks in advance to you, and of course to Daniel & Victor for developing this great app!

Julia in New features, Add ons

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,
• the co-worker,
• the administrator and
• the owner of the account.

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

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

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

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.

Setup

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.

Download

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.

About Redmine

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

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!

New: Bookmarkable filters

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.

Redesigned: How to trigger filters

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.

Redesigned: Entries per page

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.

Easier printing

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.

More to come

Stay tuned! More updates in the reporting section will be launched during the next months.

Julia in New features

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

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

[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

1. Create a ticket and assign it to a person
2. Edit the ticket and give feedback
3. Mark the ticket as solved

Due to the limited time I will focus only on web-based open source issue tracking systems, having each:

• a good documentation
• an API
• a repository of plugins for my reference
• a programming language not to difficult to learn for me in the limited time

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.

Let’s get rolling!

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

Undo was one of the first commands I learned – and learned to love – when getting my hands on my first computer. NO, I didn’t really mean to delete this Monkey Island cheat sheet! For sure, this command saves all of us, day by day, right? Thus, I’m really happy to experience that this feature, long-serving in desktop software, is heading to the web as well – slowly but surely.

Here at mite, undo has been around for accidentally deleted objects for almost a year now. That’s a good first step, but we wanted to push this even further: as of today, undo is everywhere. Just click the undo link in the info message that fades in right after you deleted, edited, archived or activated a customer, project, service or user. If you changed the date of a time entry or duplicated it, undo is on your side as well.

To help spread undo on the web, we open sourced the corresponding code: memento is a small RubyGem for Rails/ActiveRecord that covers destroy, update and create. Are you a Rails developer? Help yourself as well as your users and grab memento at GitHub.

Julia in New features