• Edit issues by dragging and dropping them over a query;
• Bulk change issues with drag-and-drop;
• JIRA Labels plug-in support;
• Voting and watching support;
• Local tags export and import;
• Search when viewing text attachments;
• Support for editing date/time fields.

There are a few more minor improvements and a bunch of bug fixes.

JIRA Client 1.4 will work with any JIRA Client 1.x license key. If you have evaluated JIRA Client before, you can have another free evaluation period with this version.

To upgrade from version 1.3, simply install the new version over the old one. Please note that this release significantly changes the structure of the local database, so it is especially important to back up your workspace before installation. After 1.4 is installed, please run full sync with File | Synchronize menu. If you already have a connection to JIRA with Labels plug-in installed, you will also need to restart JIRA Client after synchronization to finish the upgrade.

Please let us know what you think of the new features. All feedback is very welcome on our forum.

Igor Sereda
ALM Works Team

Links:

• Download JIRA Client 1.4 beta 1
• Full change log

Today we have released patches to the latest versions of Deskzilla and JIRA Client.

The patches contain fixes to the few issues that have surfaced since the release. Upgrade is advised but not required if you are not experiencing any problems.

To upgrade, just install the new version over the old one. Please backup your workspace before upgrading.

Igor Sereda
ALM Works Team

Links:

• Download Deskzilla
• Download JIRA Client
• Discussion forum

• Fast synchronization makes sure that you work with the latest data, while keeping network traffic and server load relatively low. (Quick Sync happens every 2-3 minutes and downloads only changed issues; Full Sync happens twice per day or when run manually with Ctrl+F5);
• Screenshot capture & edit tool allows to grab an image from the screen or clipboard and attach it to an issue. Before attaching, you can edit the image, for example, highlight an area to attract attention or blur private information;
• Export to PDF builds detailed reports ready for printing, with comments and attachments;
• Quick find & match highlighting allows to quickly search query result for specific terms or a regular expression, highlight matches or filter out non-matching issues.

Other improvements include:

• Spelling check for comments and text fields;
• Open selected issues in a separate tab or a separate window;
• Creating attachment with drag-and-drop;
• Use improved pager parameters to load bugs more effectively from JIRA versions 3.7+ (#813).

Upgrade is recommended for all users. All existing licenses will work with JIRA Client 1.3. Before installing the new version, please back up your workspace.

If you have tried JIRA Client before, you can install the newest version and get another 30-days free evaluation period.

Lastly, many thanks to everyone who sends us feedback or posts on our forum! Please keep your comments coming.

Igor Sereda
ALM Works Team

Links:

• Download JIRA Client 1.3
• Change Log
• Forum

• Fast synchronization makes sure that you work with the latest data, while keeping network traffic and server load relatively low. (Quick Sync happens every 2-3 minutes and downloads only changed bugs; Full Sync happens twice per day or when run manually with Ctrl+F5);
• Screenshot capture & edit tool allows to grab an image from the screen or clipboard and attach it to a bug. Before attaching, you can edit the image, for example, highlight an area to attract attention or blur private information;
• Export to PDF builds detailed reports ready for printing, with comments and attachments;
• Quick find & match highlighting allows to quickly search query result for specific terms or a regular expression, highlight matches and filter out non-matching bugs.

Other improvements include:

• Spelling check for comments and text fields;
• Open selected bugs in a separate tab or a separate window;
• Creating attachment with drag-and-drop;
• Extra checks to ensure the new bug or comment was not already uploaded (#576);
• Using default values for Priority, Severity and other fields (#100);
• Limited support for customized workflow, introduced with Bugzilla 3.1 (#784);
• Attachments are downloaded with the rest of the bug's info, when available from Bugzilla (#173).

Upgrade is recommended for all users. All existing licenses will work with Deskzilla 1.6. Before installing the new version, please back up your workspace.

If you have tried Deskzilla before, you can install the newest version and get another 30-days free evaluation period.

Lastly, many thanks to everyone who sends us feedback or posts on our forum! Please keep your comments coming.

Igor Sereda
ALM Works Team

Links:

• Download Deskzilla 1.6
• Change Log
• Forum

• Improved synchronization schedule (see below);
• Screenshot capture & edit tool;
• Export to PDF (including comments and attachments);
• Quick search & highlighting within query result table;
• Spelling check for comments and text fields;
• Open selected issues in a separate tab or a separate window;
• Creating attachment with drag-and-drop.

A note about improved synchronization schedule: this feature makes sure that you work with the latest data (when you are online), while keeping network traffic and server load relatively low. The application will perform quick sync every 2-3 minutes and download changed issues if there are any. Full synchronization, which loads all the metadata (projects, components, versions, etc.), now happens once every 12 hours or when run manually with Ctrl+F5.

Besides common improvements, JIRA Client and Deskzilla have new stuff in the integration part:

Deskzilla / Bugzilla integration:

• Extra checks to ensure the new bug or comment was not already uploaded (#576);
• Use default values for Priority, Severity and other fields (#100);
• Limited support for customized workflow, introduced with Bugzilla 3.1 (#784);
• Attachments are downloaded with the rest of the bug's info, when available from Bugzilla (#173);

JIRA Client / JIRA integration:

• Use improved pager parameters to load bugs more effectively from JIRA versions 3.7+ (#813);
• Automatically detect page size limit set in JIRA to avoid HTTP errors when downloading queries (#814);
• Fix: due date field shows wrong value when cleared (#794);
• Fix: timezone problems with IST and Australian EST (#778, #788);

If you find any of these improvements worthy, please try the beta version. To make sure you can roll back to the older version if needed, please back up your workspace. Any improvement suggestions, bug reports and other feedback are warmly welcome on our forum.

Igor Sereda
ALM Works Team

Links:

• Download Deskzilla 1.6 Beta
• Download JIRA Client 1.3 Beta
• Deskzilla Change Log
• JIRA Client Change Log

The patches contain fixes to the few issues that have surfaced since the release. Upgrade is advised but not required if you are not experiencing any problems.

To upgrade, just install the new version over the old one. Please backup your workspace before upgrading.

Igor Sereda
ALM Works Team

Links:

• Download Deskzilla
• Download JIRA Client
• Discussion forum

Major features introduced in this version are support for sub-tasks and support for issue-level security. It's now possible to create sub-tasks from JIRA Client interface and arrange issues in a tree-like structure with sub-tasks placed under parent task.

System requirement: Sub-tasks are supported only on JIRA versions 3.7 or later. If you have an earlier version of JIRA, the relationship between sub-tasks and parent tasks may not be correctly detected.

A totally new feature, which has been suggested on our forum, is Reorder by Field. It lets you arrange issues in a certain order, for example, in order these issues should be addressed. You use drag-and-drop or buttons to move issues in a list, and JIRA Client automatically updates a custom field that's been designated by you to hold numeric sort value.

Starting with this version, collections have been renamed to tags, and several features have been added to boost tags usefulness. Now you can add search criteria based on issue's tags, and add/remove tags using a single Tag action.

This release has 35 other improvements and bug fixes. Upgrade is recommended for all users. Please backup your workspace before the upgrade.

Upgrade note: after upgrading JIRA Client, and if you are using sub-tasks, please reload all issues from server (select a query, right click, reload from server). Until you reload an issue's details from server, JIRA Client won't have any information about the issue's sub-tasks or parent task.

Igor Sereda
ALM Works Team

Links:

• Download latest JIRA Client
• Full list of changes
• Discussion forum

Major news in this release are support for custom fields, which have been introduced in Bugzilla 3.0, and support for private comments. You can now work with custom fields as easily as with other fields, including searching and viewing distribution by drop-down field values.

A totally new feature, which has been suggested on our forum, is Reorder by Field. It lets you arrange issues in a certain order, for example, in order these issues should be addressed. You use drag-and-drop or buttons to move issues in a list, and Deskzilla automatically updates a custom field that's been designated by you to hold numeric sorting value. Because custom fields are used for reordering, this feature requires Bugzilla 3.0.

Starting with this version, collections have been renamed to tags, and several features have been added to boost tags usefulness. Now you can add search criteria based on issue's tags, and add/remove tags using a single Tag action.

This release has 34 other improvements and bug fixes. Upgrade is recommended for all users. Please backup your workspace before the upgrade. After upgrading, please run synchronization to download additional information from Bugzilla (use menu File-Download Changes).

Igor Sereda
ALM Works Team

Links:

• Download latest Deskzilla
• Change list
• Discussion forum

Change list / updated software:

• Bugzilla 3.0.1;
• Testopia 1.3 Beta 2 (over a separate Bugzilla 3.0);
• Upgraded system packages, Apache and MySQL;
• Fixed problem with JSON package in Testopia;
• Installed VMWare Tools in the VM.

As always, we tried to keep download size as small as possible, but due to the inclusion of VMWare Tools it has increased to 86 megabytes. After you download the distribution, it is still a matter of a couple of minutes to get your new Bugzilla server ready.

Upgrading from a previous version is not a trivial task though — you'll need to move data and configuration from the old server to the new server. Please follow upgrade instructions and don't forget to make backups.

A note for Testopia users: the new version of Testopia is still beta, so before completely switching to the new version, please check if it works for you. As before, you'll need to download an additional package and install it over the core VBS 2.1.

Igor Sereda
ALM Works Team

Links:

• Virtual Bugzilla Server
• Download
• VBS forum

TrackLink development has been suspended for some time, but now we are renewing our efforts to make issue tracking an essential part of a developer's daily work and environment. TrackLink 2.0 is a new start, with some old buggy functionality removed, general look&feel remade, and some features added.

Changes:

• Revamped TrackLink tool window with better look and feel;
• Analyze stack trace from issue;
• Quick search through issues;
• Multi-line tooltips showing issue content;
• Removed buggy functionality for automatic association of issues and code;
• Fixed a few bugs.

If you ever thought about a feature that would be nice to have in TrackLink or a similar tool, now is the best time to ask for it! Please post you comments and feature requests in TrackLink forum.

TrackLink has also been made an open-source project for some time already.

Igor Sereda
ALM Works Team

Links:

• TrackLink home page on ALM Works site
• TrackLink home page on Google Code
• TrackLink forum