Beautiful project dashboard, more flexibility with OpenID Connect and OAuth2 and invitation of buddies, see what’s up for October.

Enhancements

New this month, we prepared a quick video to show the key features of the release. Let us know if you like this kind of content in comments !

Key 12.1 features in video

Customize navigation bar with an image

Project dashboard with a background image
Project dashboard with a background image

Following the work started in 11.18 and 12.0 the top bar continues its metamorphosis with introduction of a background image. At the time of writing, the image will be displayed on Project Dashboards and Project Administration. The other pages will come in 12.2 so each project will be able to define its own visual identity.

In addition to make Tuleap pages even more beautiful, the image helps users to to distinguish easily in which project they are working. Most of users are member of several projects, with a different image in each project they will know with a blink where they are.

In order to ensure that selected images has the right attributes, we ship with an opinionated list of possible background, carefully optimized for all screen size and to save bandwidth. All the images are free of usage and come from Unsplash.

Project administrators can choose images from the library
Project administrators can choose images from the library

Define OAuth2 apps at site level (Tuleap Enterprise)

As project administrator, you can define OAuth2 apps at project level since Spring. Sometime though, 3rd party apps that need to be integrated to with Tuleap are not « limited » to a project but make sense for the whole platform. For instance, while it makes sense to integrate Jenkins at Project level, a RocketChat server shared by the whole company, should be integrated at Tuleap Site level.

Use OpenID Connect and LDAP in parallel

The two authentication methods are no longer mutually exclusive. However, it should be considered as a temporary setup to transition between an LDAP based to an OpenID Connect based authentication in order to have a single source of truth for user authentication.

You should refer to the administration guide to learn in details how to setup OpenID Connect and LDAP.

Invite people to register on Tuleap

When Tuleap is deployed, it’s often with usage of the local database of users (no configuration of LDAP or OpenID Connect). It might be cumbersome for early adopters (will be called « Host » in the following example) to get other people (« Guest » in the following) to join them on Tuleap. Host needs to:

  • realize that the platform is not connected to an LDAP,
  • figure out if Guest has already created an account or not,
  • logout to find the « register » link,
  • craft an email to Guest to ask them to create an account.

And finally they need to monitor manually if Guest created their account to add them in the relevant projects. To make it easier and faster, we introduce an « Invite » button in the top bar. This button only appears for platforms with local database of users. On click, a popup is displayed to enter people emails and a custom message:

Invite people to join on Tuleap
Invite people to join on Tuleap

Behind the scene, Tuleap will figure out if the email belongs to a user that already has an account and either invite them to create an account or to login.

When Guest creates their account, Host will receive an email so they can start working together.

Host receives an email when the guest create their account
Host receives an email when the guest create their account

Simplification of Project Templates

Those changes applies for projects that will be created after the upgrade to Tuleap 12.1, existing projects will be left unchanged.

In all templates

  • Change « on going » in « In progress » everywhere.
  • « Note from the editor » becomes « Note from Tuleap team » with a welcome message with no reference to configuration matter.
  • Workflows are disabled. Project administrators can activate them when they want to go further.
  • Cardwall renderers have been set up with the default field « status’.
  • Remove « project » term.

Agile ALM

  • Test management:
    • It’s now possible to add a bug from a test execution
  • Remove triggers between stories and tasks
  • « Bugs » tracker: remove graphs to ease widgets visibility
  • « Tasks » tracker : add criteria and columns in reports

Scrum Template

  • Remove triggers between stories and tasks
  • Tracker « Bugs »: remove graphs to ease widgets visibility
  • Tracker « tasks » : add criteria and columns in reports

Kanban

  • « Activities » tracker:
    • Default value is now « todo » (was « none » before)
    • Remove report « assigned to me » in expert mode

Issue tracking

  • « Issues » tracker:
    • All fields visible and can be submited
    • Modify reports : add columns, criteria and charts

Proactive deprecation for Internet Explorer and Tracker v3

We maintain a list of features/services maintenance duration where end of life are announced. However, this list isn’t known by end users (and sometime by site administrators too).

The deprecation messages will now be displayed directly to end users so they can plan their way out of the old practices. For 12.1, we enforce this policy for the announcement of:

  • the end of support of Internet Explorer (IE11 & Legacy)
  • the end of support of Tracker v3 (the oldies most of you never heard of)

Internet explorer

For Internet Explorer users, a warning popup (see below) will be displayed to warn users to move out of it. This popup will be shown every 4 days, it’s annoying, it’s on purpose.

The maintenance cost of IE11 is huge, most of the features we are developing are limited by what is possible to do with this platform. It’s an infinite source of bugs and sometime we are even oblige to degrade features for all users just to have a basic support of IE11. This must end.

Warning message for Internet Explorer users

Tracker v3

If you didn’t know what Tracker v3 are or if you are wondering which version of the Tracker you are using, you can skip this part. Tracker v3 can no longer be installed since 2011. For platforms that still have those trackers, it’s no longer possible to create a new one since 2016. It’s time for them to retire !

The deprecation message is displayed on each and every Tv3 pages without possibility to hide or remove it.

Deprecation message for Tracker v3
Deprecation message for Tracker v3

Bugs and Requests

There was 86 bugs and requests fixed during 12.1 release cycle. Bugs and security fixes were already backported on Tuleap Enteprise builds. You will find below a selection of the most notable fixes.

Security

Git

Trackers

Misc