Solotility #6 – 0.1.22 Release

by Dave Development-Outliner, Updates

As I’m sure that I’ve mentioned in alot, if not all, previous posts concerning Solotility, most of my dev-time is spent building Demox- I’ve managed to get some time to fiddle with Solotility aswell though- which to me is a good thing since I’m using the tool myself for my own project management.

With that said, I’ve just released v0.1.2.2 with some new features, updated behaviour and bug fixes!

Head over to the Files page to download v0.1.2.2

0.1.2.2 Release Log

Features

Update Log Generator – Save a text-line when closing an item, all text lines will be printed to a .txt document when an update log is built

Tag List Popup – Display a list of all tags that already exist in your solution from the Item Editor

Interim Goal Tracker – New widget that makes it possible to track interim goals or build progress

Updates

Item Naming Conflict – Items that share the same name with an already existing item will either replace the original or append an integer at the end of the name

Improved Text Formatting – An easier tag-library has been implemented and text formatting is more consistent

Now possible to move catalogs within the Solution Outliner by right-clicking them

Widget Display – Message Board, Item Filters, Item Search widgets have been docked to the main window, other custom widgets will appear on the dashboard

Images attached to the items are now added to an image-gallery inside the Item Editor. Previous method of printing them inside the text editor had inconsistent results and sometimes also caused an application crash

Fixed


[ Item Template Manager ] – Fixed Null Reference Exception beeing thrown if the user clicked an empty space in the item template list
[ Item Editor ] – Fixed issue with “Edit Content” button remaining highlit if checked when deleting an item
[ Data Management ] – Fixed issue with used solutions not appearing in the “Recent Files” list on the Welcome Screen
[ Item Editor ] – Fixed minor glitches when editing user-created item templates.
[ Dashboard ] – Fixed issue with the Database Statistics field displaying wrong item sums
[ Dashboard ] – Fixed issue with Database Statistics not beeing updated when creating, closing or disposing items
[ Item Editor ] – Fixed issue with empty item links beeing added to an item if the “New Item” event is cancelled during Item Link Management

Solotility #5

by Dave Development-Outliner, Updates

Most of my attention the past few weeks have gone to developing Demox however, I’ve managed to put some time on fixing a few things for the Solution Organizer Utility aswell. While not ready to be deployed, these changes will be in place for v0.1.2.0 which will be released sometime within the next few weeks!

  • New Features

Update Log Generator:
By clicking the Project Overview button, and then entering a build/version name that exist in your database you will be able to print an update/change log for your solution. It will collect all work items that you’ve completed for the specified build and output them to a .txt document on your desktop.

Interim Goal Tracker Widget:
A new dashboard widget that allow you to specify one of your interim goals that you wish to track from your solution’s dashboard.

  • Updates

Interim Creation changes:
I’ve removed the field “Interim Goal Type” from the Interim Creation dialog since it served no purpose

Item Name Conflicts:
Saving an item with a conflicting name will display a dialog to either rename the new item ( eg. <ItemName>, <ItemName>1, <ItemName>2 ) to include a number or to overwrite the existing item

Editor Text Formatting:
The item editor now properly hide tags when you’ve finished editing your text. Also, header-tag has been changed from (##) to (<h></h>) and italic-text from ( [ ] ) to ( <i></i> ).

Catalog Migration:
From v0.1.2.0 it will be possible to move catalogs within the solution outliner.

Furthermore, a few bugs and glitches have been sorted out:

  • Fixed issue with the “Manage Widgets” button not opening the Widget Preferences screen
  • Fixed issue that made dashboard widgets glitch if applied inproperly in the Widgets Preference screen
  • Missing or removed solutions will no longer be printed in the Recent Files list
  • Fixed issue with the Solution Outliner not beeing reset when loading a new project/solution
  • Fixed issue with the Dashboard Statistics field displaying wrong item sums
  • Fixed issue with the Item Editor not loading “Target Build” for the first item opened after loading a solution

I’ll return to you with a release date soon! 🙂

SolOTility #3 – Beta

by Dave Development-Outliner, Updates

In the previous post I wrote regarding SolOTility I mentioned that I expected to be able to release a beta-ish-version of this program within a week’s time. Needless to say I misjudged the time estimate, alot of time this week has been spent working on Demox, and on top of that I found some bugs in SolOTility that needed to be fixed before releasing the first version aswell as some new features that were added!

Appending Images to Work Items

I’ve added functionality to append images to work items within the user’s solution. It can be either added manually by writing the filepath to the image within tags ( eg. <img>C:\Program\SomeDir\myImg.png</img> ) or by clicking the “Add Image” button in the Item Editor, which will auto-generate the previous code.

There’s also been alot of fixes for the Item Editor, most in order to make it a little more user-friendly and help the user avoid making wrong decisions by mistake. (Such as closing items without saving changes, etc. )

The new appearance of Solution Catalogs and Items in the Item List

Solution Interim Goals

I added a feature to allow the user to set up their own interim goals, it’ll be useful in cases if the user would like to keep track of progress of the project, a specific build or of a group of work items.

It’s a quite simple system, the interim goals are set up to compare the amount of closed items ( completed, obsolete & deprecated ) against other items ( inactive, active, prioritized ). When all specified items are closed the interim goal is completed.

The user can currently set up interim goals to either track items with a specific build name or items with a specific item tag.

Example of an image appended to a work item’s content.

Work item control’s appearance has been updated to make it easier to identify item type, and the catalogs shown in the Solution Outliner panel are now color-coded aswell. The Dashboard is colored red, Navigator nodes are colored blue and common catalogs use one of four available green colors. ( The green color is shifted depending on at what level within the catalog node tree a catalog is placed. )

Another minor change, Mindmap Editor is opened in Full-screen mode.
The Project Overview screen, displaying all user-created interim goals and solution progress.

Last but not least, another widget was added called “Message Board”. The message board will display the most recent messages or comments that have been left in an item, the idea is to have these messages act as a reminder.

All that remains before I upload a beta release now is to figure out how to create a setup / installer file. I’ve created such files before but all of them have been sort of broken in one way or the other, so this time I was thinking that I probably should do some research and get things right for once .__.’

And before we part ways, don’t forget to follow me on @Twitter for more news, artwork and whatnot!