Jonathan's dashboard

Jonathan shared an idea in Pivotal Labs on January 15, 2009 19:19:

It would be nice to have another bucket for 'deleted' stories

Things are deleted for a reason, and there's often valuable dialogue in the story.

Somtimes you delete something, and a few weeks/months later you want to do it again.

Instead of physically deleting stories, there should be a trashbox. It doesn't need to be on the same page as done/current/backlog/icebox - it can be its own page. But people should be able to go through deleted stories for reference, and also 'undelete' them into the icebox.

Jonathan asked a question in Pivotal Labs on January 14, 2009 20:55:

add ability to split story into mulitple new stories

Many times a story in the tracker ends up being comprised of multiple tasks/features/etc

It would be great to have a 'split this story' button that allows me to turn 1 story into 2 ( and repeat! ), with each new story referencing what it was split from.

I'm not quite sure what the ideal ux would be.

Jonathan asked a question in Pivotal Labs on January 14, 2009 20:52:

Add ability to add stories to bottom of icebox ( currently goes to top )

It's really annoying right now, because in order to drag something to the bottm of the icebox i need to do a 'trick' of dragging the story into backlog , scrolling down in icebox, and dragging it back in.

Either in the add-story or edit-story/details window it would be great to have "move to top of icebox" and "move to bottom of icebox" buttons

Jonathan replied on January 01, 2009 19:28 to the idea "How about custom point values" in Pivotal Labs:

Just to harp in on ideas here:

- I'd love to see 'longer' scales for values too. The 4 option sets are rather limiting

- I'd love to see multiple estimation levels too. With my situation in Product Management, we use the points to manage estimation for dev-time, and are jamming the 'product improvement/importance' into the comments. For example, there are some things that we want to do that take 4points of dev time, but only improve the product by 1 point; and vice versa. It would be nice to be able to track both - letting the dev team and management teams better prioritize the build cycles.

Jonathan replied on December 22, 2008 18:23 to the problem "I get an error when trying to import stories" in Pivotal Labs:

Hi Mark -

You're right. iWork can't export files that Pivotal reads. I think it may be a mix between line endings and the character encoding. You may want to have your engineering team work out a patch.

I tried an Excel editing, and it could parse the file!

Unfortunately, I got a ton of error messages
- Accepted must be estimated
- Text can not be blank

I tried to patch them up by hand, but it got too tedious.

As a test, I tried to import the CSV from one project to the next, without any sort of data cleanup / munging -- same errors. Suffice to say, your export and import functions aren't in sync.

I can send you guys .csv files or project ids if you'd like.

Jonathan replied on December 19, 2008 16:01 to the question "Can't unstart wrongfully started stories." in Pivotal Labs:

Thanks Edward, that button was hiding from me!

This could be a good addition to the FAQ.

I'm kind of ashamed for not having seen that button amongst all the others.

Jonathan reported a problem in Pivotal Labs on December 19, 2008 16:00:

I get an error when trying to import stories

I'm trying to migrate some stories from one tracker to another.

I've gone through the directions in the help document:

1- Export stories to CSV
2- Remove ID column, re-export as csv

However I always raise errors on the pivotal input , with either invalid csv docs or invalid fields.

I've tried the following:
1- Remove entire ID column
2- Remove values from ID column, leave the header
3- Remove values and header from ID column

Can someone @ Pivotal make more detailed instructions as to the format and exact steps required?

The closest to this working I've got so far is an error message "Import FAILED: Invalid CSV format: Validation failed: Text can't be blank" -- suggeting it was actually accepting the CSV.

Also , I'm using Apple's Numbers (iWork) application to generate the CSV through their export, and using UTF-8 charset, since they seem to be standard now.

Jonathan asked a question in Pivotal Labs on December 01, 2008 01:38:

Can't unstart wrongfully started stories.

Someone else entered a story , assigned it to me, and clicked 'start'. Now it is in the current, not icebox.

There is no way for me to 'unstart' it or defer it into the Icebox for review.

I would like to be able to 'unstart' stories. This one should not have been started.

Jonathan reported a problem in Seesmic on August 28, 2008 01:19:

characters trailing a url are interpreted as part of the url

if someone puts a period after a url , like in a sentence, it gets shortened

look at this twitter account: http://twitter.com/brett

brett uses tinyurl

the twitter site will display his lists like this

[a]http://tinyurl.com/6k27hq[/a].

twhirl does

[a]http://tinyurl.com/6k27hq.[/a]

i know url munging is frowned on, and has drawbacks - but this could at least be fixed in the url shortening apps. twhirl supports several, and it would be trivial to add a regex to make sure that tiny/isgd/etc urls are always displayed as 'valid'

Jonathan reported a problem in Seesmic on August 08, 2008 15:46:

Twhirl reacts poorly to application switching On OSX

On OSX twhirl reacts poorly to application switching. When the window gets focus it always does a getURL if the post has a url in it -- and it seems to make random favorites to my twitter account.

there should be some better handling. this makes the application nearly unusable -- creating datapoints on my twitter account when i don't want them , and opening up urls in safari/firefox nearly every time i try to switch to twhirl.

if i click on a url in a twhirl window, it should only open a URL if twhirl is the active app.

Jonathan replied on July 11, 2008 17:00 to the question "iTunes Software Update bricked my iPhone. Apple turned off all the community support." in Apple:

I fear this is because Apple/AT&T decided to do activation themselves -- in the past they used Synchronoss (SNCR) to handle activation. They ended the relationship and are doing it themselves now.

Jonathan replied on July 11, 2008 16:38 to the question "iTunes Software Update bricked my iPhone. Apple turned off all the community support." in Apple:

The discussion forums are back online.

According to Engadget, all of Apple's Activation servers are down

http://www.engadget.com/2008/07/11/it...

Jonathan marked one of Chris Messina's replies in OAuth as useful. Chris Messina replied to the problem "OAuth has nebulous licensing".

Jonathan replied on July 11, 2008 16:00 to the problem "OAuth has nebulous licensing" in OAuth:

Awesome.

I should have suggested -- as you discovered, the CC ShareAlike is the best bet. It lets you keep copyright, brand identity, and protects against too-similar forks -- while letting people distribute the spec at will with their software projects.

Thank you!

Jonathan replied on July 11, 2008 15:42 to the problem "OAuth has nebulous licensing" in OAuth:

Great. I await seeing the licensing made prominent!

This is really just a visibility issue -- the CC licensing is asserted offsite, but not on the oAuth website or specification (which would make sense ). That is good enough to allow me to redistribute the spec as a reference document with libraries and applications that use it - but still nebulous.

The non-assert is definitely important , but thats the 'sledgehammer' when we really just need a finishing nail ;)

Jonathan asked a question in Apple on July 11, 2008 15:36:

iTunes Software Update bricked my iPhone. Apple turned off all the community support.

Itunes Software Update has bricked my iphone: "We could not complete your iTunes Store request. The network connection was reset".

I upgraded this morning. This message appeared.

My internet connection is ok, and the iTunes store seems eager to sell me awful cds and movies.

It will not, however:
- Complete my software update
- Let me roll back to a previous version. I just get a white screen.

I went to the Apple.com support page, and they turned off all their discussions / community support.

This has happened to several friends.

What the shit, Apple?

This sounds like bad infrastructure planning and product design - if your IT network can't handle the load of people upgrading their phones, then don't let them half-upgrade a device without the ability to roll back -- and don't start turning off sections of your consumer help website.

I am left without a telephone, and trying to make choppy Skype calls into Apple's tech support. I'd love to call them on my phone, but... you get the point.

Jonathan reported a problem in OAuth on July 01, 2008 21:15:

OAuth has nebulous licensing

OAuth has nebulous licensing.

It was not until Gabriel Wachob pointed me to this external document:

https://agree2.com/declarations/oauth...

That I found licensing on the specification. That should be on the spec itself - and it would be great to see it on the site too.

I don't care about the non-assertion -- I just care about the spec. The placement of the specification under that Creative Commons license is imperative so that people can legally redistribute the spec for reference.