tag:help.lighthouseapp.com,2008-09-20:/discussions/suggestions/99-set-ticket-watchersLighthouse: Discussion 2012-04-25T23:24:50Ztag:help.lighthouseapp.com,2008-09-20:Comment/119142008-06-27T02:22:07Z2009-06-20T20:01:20ZSet Ticket "Watchers"<div><p>I am not saying this is a bad request, but maybe it isn't a high
priority feature for an "Issue tracker". What I mean is, maybe you
are looking for a better way to communicate what you are doing. Or
maybe "Collaborator X" doesn't really want an email <em>every</em>
time you create a ticket.</p>
<p>Off the top of my head, after reading your post, I immediately
thought of the Journal in <a href=
"http://www.backpackit.com">Backpack</a>. It lets you set a status,
and post what you are working on. It also shows a list of things
each person has worked on in the sidebar (a history). It may be
something to look into in the meantime. It may give your team a
whole new perspective on the issue. Then, "Collaborator X" can see
exactly what you have been working on. AND, other team members
might notice something as well.</p>
<p>Just a suggestion... Hope it helps...</p></div>Kiere El-Shafietag:help.lighthouseapp.com,2008-09-20:Comment/119142008-06-28T14:10:52Z2009-06-20T20:01:20ZSet Ticket "Watchers"<div><p>Well, I guess it just struck me as odd that it didn't already
exist. It's not that I want everyone else to get emails every time
I create a new ticket, rather to have an option to select certain
people to get them upon ticket creation. I find it more tedious
than it needs to be when I'm creating a ticket for a sensitive
issue that may or may not require more than just my input to have
to email another person just to say "I created a ticket for this,
please review."</p>
<p>Perhaps we are using Lighthouse in a slightly different way than
it is intended. We are using it for project management to develop
our applications, creating new tickets for developing various
aspects of our application, and having our developers knock down
those tickets, grouping tickets into milestones for deployment,
etc. On top of that we do our issue tracking as well through
Lighthouse. I guess I can see your point if all Lighthouse is
intended for is issue tracking, then this feature might not be very
widely used. We just find that Lighthouse is the [nearly] perfect,
lightweight answer for our project management needs (our dev team
is very small).</p>
<p>Perhaps it is time to shift to a more robust project management
system.</p></div>Christian Nathstag:help.lighthouseapp.com,2008-09-20:Comment/119142008-06-28T18:01:26Z2009-06-20T20:01:20ZSet Ticket "Watchers"<div><p>No, I completely hear what you are saying. I switched from
Basecamp completely to Lighthouse now. The only thing I think it
really needs for it to be a complete replacement for software
developers is message notifications. So, I understand what you are
asking for, I was just giving you another suggestion to possibly
help with your process.</p>
<p>In fact, when I was using JIRA, I would create a new ticket for
myself, then assign it to the first person I wanted to review the
ticket. They would comment on it, then I would get it assigned back
to me. Then I would assign it to the next person. Unfortunately,
that solution never really worked for me. They would just forget to
comment and that would hold me up assigning it to the next person.
It would be easier to check 2 or 3 people and let them log in and
comment on it in their own time. But, assigning it to them and
having it show up in their list may keep it 'in their face' so they
remember to comment.</p>
<p>Anyway, like a said, not at all a bad request, but if you find
another solution to help you in the meantime, so much the better.
;)</p></div>Kiere El-Shafietag:help.lighthouseapp.com,2008-09-20:Comment/119142008-06-28T20:53:43Z2009-06-20T20:01:20ZSet Ticket "Watchers"<div><p>Kiere, I would be interested to hear about some of the
differences between Basecamp and Lighthouse; especially to know
about your decision to switch. Basecamp is our next-in-line
alternative to Lighthouse and it would be nice to hear a 'horses
mouth' comparison between the two, before going through the trouble
to switch our team over for a trial run.</p>
<p>Basecamp seems to be where it's at for project management, but
we find it really nice to have our issue tracking right here along
side it.</p>
<p>I do appreciate your suggestions, Backpack might be something
we'll have to look into.</p></div>Christian Nathstag:help.lighthouseapp.com,2008-09-20:Comment/119142008-06-29T05:22:53Z2009-06-20T20:01:20ZSet Ticket "Watchers"<div><p>Well, you asked for it... and it is long. :) (Short version...
stick with Lighthouse...)</p>
<p>First, don't get me wrong, I love 37Signals' products. I have
(had) a paid account for every one of their subscription apps.
Currently, Backpack is my absolute favorite. Since they opened it
up to be multi-user, it is the perfect Intranet for a company.
However, I have always found Basecamp to be a little lacking for
software projects. The ToDo list feature isn't great for tracking
that kind of work. I am used to Issue Tracking systems like
FogBugz, TestTrack Pro, JIRA, etc. I like to record everything I
can regarding each ticket (bug, feature, whatever it is).
Lighthouse has all the features you need for tracking a software
development project, in a much more affordable package (compared to
JIRA, Testrack Pro and FogBugz). I like FogBugz a lot, but it can
get expensive if you are developing on a team. Lighthouse is just
right... affordable, feature rich, nice to look at and easy to
use.</p>
<p>Compared to Basecamp, they both have a Dashboard, Overview pages
for each project, Messages, Attachments and Milestones. Obviously,
the point at which they really diverge is task management.</p>
<h2>Tickets vs. Todos</h2>
<p>Lighthouse is Ticket-centric as you know. You can track comments
(history) with each ticket. Tickets also track any state changes
(like adding new tags, changing the ticket status, etc). Basecamp's
focus is equally distributed between all their objects. Team
collaboration is the main (published) focus behind Basecamp.
Basecamp's Todos are just 'one-liner' tasks that you can re-order
and drag between lists. There are no unique IDs (ticket <a href=
"/discussions/suggestions/18" title="Discussion #18">#18</a>),
comments, notes or history.</p>
<h2>Pages vs. Writeboards</h2>
<p>Basecamp has Writeboards, however, they aren't tightly
integrated since it redirects you out of the application to use
them (but having the links is better than nothing). Lighthouse has
Pages, which are nice because they are right there in the project
(no redirection). Both Writeboards and Pages are like the Wikis of
other systems (FogBugz)... a great place to write documentation. I
think Lighthouse does a little better job here, from the software
development perspective. The thing that bothers me about the
redirection of Basecamp's Writeboards is the loss of the
navigation. You have to click 'Back to Project' then you can
continue navigating. It just seems unnecessary to me (but I
understand why). Both Pages and Writeboards are Textile-based but
Writeboards do track your versions as you make edits to the
documents. Lighthouse doesn't, but I know it could since Rick
literally wrote the <a href=
"http://github.com/technoweenie/acts_as_versioned/tree/master">plugin</a>.
;) I wouldn't mind seeing Pages get their own sub-nav button beside
Milestones (Overview >> Tickets >> Messages >>
Milestones >> Pages).</p>
<h2>File Management/Attachments</h2>
<p>I think Basecamp gets the file management part right. You can
attach files to Messages or upload them directly to the Files page
and you can search and browse them. They have a way to browse the
image previews, etc. Lighthouse can attach to messages, tickets and
comments, but the images aren't displayed inline which I think
would be a nice feature. I sometimes don't realize the attachments
are there because they get lost in the sidebar. In Lighthouse, when
you do click an image, it links directly to it. I think it would be
nice to have two links. One to view it within the context of the
page (using something like FancyZoom) and the other could continue
to take you to a direct link to the image. Or maybe you just hover
over the link for a semi-large preview and clicking it remains the
same. But, once you get used to the existing setup, it works
fine.</p>
<h2>RSS vs. Notifications</h2>
<p>The thing I need to remember about Lighthouse is that it is more
RSS-focused. Instead of notifications for things you create, they
give you the RSS feeds. Since I jumped into RSS later than most,
that doesn't always occur to me right away. But, now that I have
subscribed to the feed, I can see what is going on just fine. With
Apple Mail, you can subscribe to an RSS feed and have it show up in
your Inbox with your email (and Outlook 2007 too, I think). So, it
is essentially the same feature as direct notifications (just not
targeted to specific users).</p>
<h2>Chat</h2>
<p>Basecamp has Chat integration, but it is really just a link to a
particular Campfire room in the previously setup Campfire account.
So, it isn't necessarily a 'feature'. See below under "Lighthouse
Enhancements" for more on this.</p>
<p>Something cool I have setup is a 'webclip' of the Project list
(from the Dashboard) and the History (also from the Dashboard). (I
also did this for my GitHub repository list.) So, I can just press
F12 on my Mac and see what is new on the site OR click a link right
to a project or item. It works great. (But I got that idea from a
blog post about doing the same thing with the Backpack Journal.)
:)</p>
<p>Lastly, I have always been into UI. Justin has done a fantastic
job with v2 of Lighthouse. I love the fonts, the colors, the
arrangement of positive/negative space... I think it is absolutely
fantastic on a Mac in Safari (or any combo, but that is my
favorite). Plus, when you couple Engine Yard hosting with Safari
rendering speed, font smoothing on a Mac, and Justin's artistic
ability, it is just a great user experience. I find it to be an
excellent, well-designed tool. (The design of Basecamp is very nice
too, clean and easy to use, but I like Lighthouse v2 better.)</p>
<p>If I was you, I would stick with Lighthouse as your project
management tool. Basecamp is great for project management, but it
is better for generic projects.</p>
<h2>Lighthouse Enhancements</h2>
<p>Some feature requests for Lighthouse that would really tighten
it up as a Software Development Project Management tool would be
EITHER Message Notifications OR better explanation of the use of
RSS to accomplish the same result. I don't think it is readily
apparent. To most it would seem that Messages in Lighthouse just
aren't as mature as Messages in Basecamp. Second, it would be nice
to have customizable 'Quick Links' in the sidebar or somewhere.
This would simply be a label field and a URL field (Target a new
window, though). That way, you could add links to other commonly
used tools like Github, Campfire, Backpack, etc. You could define
them globally or on a per-project basis. They would all show up in
the Project sidebar, but the global links would appear in every
project. Finally, inline display of image attachments. Little
previews right beside the comments would be very nice. I can
recommend a great plugin called <a href=
"http://github.com/technoweenie/attachment_fu/tree/master">attachment_fu</a>
for just such a job (ha!).</p></div>Kiere El-Shafietag:help.lighthouseapp.com,2008-09-20:Comment/119142008-06-29T14:09:56Z2009-06-20T20:01:20ZSet Ticket "Watchers"<div><p>UPDATE: You can implement the Quick Links idea on a per-project
basis by editing the Project details and using HTML link tags in
the project's Description field. The target attribute of the link
tag gets stripped off though, so you can't make it open in a new
window. This blub of text does show up on every page of the
project. But something more structured still might be nice one day
(especially if it allows the link to open in a new window).</p></div>Kiere El-Shafietag:help.lighthouseapp.com,2008-09-20:Comment/119142008-06-29T19:53:01Z2009-06-20T20:01:20ZSet Ticket "Watchers"<div><p>Kiere, thank you so much for the run down. You've definitely got
me more excited about Lighthouse than I was before reading this. I
think the RSS feeds are really the answer to my problems, and
probably even a better implementation to the email notifications.
What would be great is if in the email notifications they had a
link to a blurb or a tut for setting up the RSS feeds. I think that
is such a great feature that is definitely not widely promoted.</p>
<p>Yeah, the ToDo lists in Basecamp always struck me as being much
too basic for issue tracking, I think it would be much more of a
deal breaker than the [perceived] lack of notifications in
Lighthouse.</p>
<p>GREAT tip about the links, I implemented them into one of my
projects. Very nice.</p>
<p>Thanks again,</p>
<p>Christian</p></div>Christian Naths