16bugs

Hi everyone,

Today, we experienced an unexpected downtime of about an hour (17-18 GMT) due to a faulty patch panel.
We worked closely with our data center to make the downtime as short as possible.

The patch panel has now been changed and everything should be back as normal.

We understand that you rely on 16bugs as an important part of your business and I would like to personally apologize with everyone for today’s issues.
We will add a complimentary week to everyone’s subscription as a way to apologize for what happened and to thank you for using 16bugs.

Please, contact support@16bugs.com for any issues or requests.

Take care,
- Michele Finotto
16bugs Founder

Recently, we had had a few issues working with Basecamp and Campfire due to changes to their APIs.

In the past few days, we decided to rewrite all of the code we use to communicate with these apps and we’re now happy to say everything is back as normal. Only issue is you need to update your account details for each of the services you use because 37signals decided to switch from a username & password type of authentication to a token based one.

Please, send us an email if you notice anything strange: support@16bugs.com.

A few days ago, we announced projects archiving and now we’re ready to announce two more features we’d long wanted to add.

The first one is multiple uploads at the same time. Before, you were forced to upload files one by one, instead you can now upload all the files you want in one go, either when submitting a new bug or when you’re sending a comment.

Then we’ve added a submenu next to “Bugs” to allow you to better filter bugs sent to a projects. You can view those assigned to you — either new, open or closed —, those you sent and the ones assigned to other developers.

To improve the user experience we now remember where you came from when you go to a bug’s page. Basically, if you filter bugs — e.g. new bugs assigned to you — and click on a bug in the list, you are taken to that bug’s page. Links on that page to go back to the list will no longer take you to the generic list — all open bugs —, instead they will take you to the list you were looking at when you clicked on the bug — in this case, new bugs assigned to you.

We hope you will enjoy these new features! And remember, use coupon code GIFTMAS when upgrading your subscription to get 50% off.

Stay tuned for more!

We’ve just introduced a new feature we’re sure you’ll like: it’s now possible to archive closed projects so they will no longer clutter your account and, most important, they won’t count against your used projects. Basically, when you archive a project you automatically have space for one more project. Archiving is available only on paid plans.

We’ve decided to up file storage limits, too, so you can now upload even more attachments to your bugs.

We hope you’ll enjoy these two updates and given it’s holiday season, we would like to share a coupon code with you to get 50% off when you upgrade your subscription — either from free to paid, or from a smaller plan to a bigger one: GIFTMAS.

When we released the new version, we introduced bug ids limited to the company, which we deemed as a very important improvement. However, we decided not to use those ids in URLs to keep backwards compatibility.

Lately, we realized how useful it would be to be able to have a way to build URLs using the internal bug id, for example, to use the autolink feature provided by OS X SVN client Versions, and generally speaking to be able to provide a quick link to a bug without having to log in.

You can now use the following schema to access your bugs: http://yourcompany.16bugs.com/b/XYZ (where XYZ is the bug’s internal id).

Basecamp has become the de-facto standard for project management for small development teams: it allows everyone on the team to easily communicate with each other and with clients, without having to wrestle with emails, CCs, etc. Everything is there and you know you can always send a message to the people you need to talk with it with a simple push of a button.

We use Basecamp every single day and thought it might be extremely useful to be able to import projects and clients from our Basecamp account into our 16bugs account, so we decide to integrate the two services.

Simply go to your company’s “Settings” tab and you’ll see a Basecamp box in the sidebar. Enter your details and you’re set! Now, when you create a new project or a new group, you’re offered with the opportunity to import it from Basecamp.

You can also bind already created members with their Basecamp counterparts: go to the “All People” tab and click the small Basecamp icon next to the person you’d like to bind. By binding all of the members, they’ll automatically be added to projects you import from Basecamp, if they have access to it.

This feature is available on all plans!

And it’s not over. There’s another app from 37signals we’ve integrated with 16bugs: Campfire.

Campfire is a great tool to chat with your team, so we thought it might be very useful to receive notifications about new bugs and updates in your chat room if you’re already there chatting with your teammates.

To activate it you need to be on a paid plan, then simply goes to your company’s “Settings” tab and right below the Basecamp box you’ll see a Campfire box: enter the details and off you go.

We recently introduced a 30-day free trial on all new companies, but if you’ve already created your company and you’d like to try out the new Campfire integration along with all of the other features available on premium plans, simply drop us an email and we’ll enable the free trial on your account.

Instead, if you’re ready to upgrade your account, here’s a coupon to get 50%-off on your first invoice: GIMMECAMPFIRE.

There’s more in the working, so stay tuned!

We’ve been putting a lot of effort in making 16bugs one of the best bug trackers around, but we recently realized the real juice is available on paid plans only, which might deter some from trying 16bugs at its fullest.

We’re quite sure you’ll love 16bugs after playing with it for a while, which is why we’ve decided to provide a 30-day free trial on all new companies. When you create a new company, you can now pick any plan and you’ll get a 30-day free trial after which you’ll decide wether you’d like to keep it or not.

If you’ve already created a free company, just send us an email stating your company’s subdomain and the plan you’d like to try and we’ll enable your free trial.

Stay tuned for another update coming before the end of the week! :)

Just a quick update to let you know we’ve added spam filtering for those using anonymous submission: bugs and comments submitted by anonymous users will be filtered for spam.

Of course, you can recover false positives or mark a comment that passed the filter as spam.

Stay tuned for more updates coming very soon.

If you haven’t tried Fluid, yet, you should. With it, you can wrap web apps in their own standalone Safari-powered browser. This way, the applications will live in your Dock just as a regular app would do. You’ll be able to close your browser, but still have a look at your favourite web apps.

The app is free and runs only on Mac OS X. If you’re on Windows or Linux, you can check out Prism which is similar to Fluid, but developed by Mozilla.

16bugs is a great candidate for a dedicated app, so here is an icon you can use with Fluid. :)

Today, we’re announcing one of the most wanted features of all times: replying to notification emails!

When you receive a notification email simply hit the reply button in your email client and enter the comment you want to submit above the line:

========== Reply ABOVE this line to submit a comment ==========

It’s that easy! No need to login to your account, which is extremely useful when you’re on the go and have only access to a mobile device. Keep in mind you can’t post attachments using this method. If you need to upload a file you’ll still need to log into your account.

But there’s one more thing…

Posting a comment via email is awesome, but what if you could update the bug, too?

Simply add a line like this anywhere in the reply area (it won’t appear in the comment on the website):

@16bugs: assign:user status:verified priority:high

Parameters don’t need to be exact matches: the closest match will be picked automatically. For example, assign:doe will match a developer named John Doe, status:v will match status Verified and priority:s will match priority Severe. You get it. :)

This feature is available on all paid plans, so if you haven’t upgraded, yet, here is a chance to upgrade your account with a 50% discount for the first month: simply use coupon code IWANTEMAILS at checkout.

We’re already working on a bunch of new features…SVN integration anyone? Keep an eye on the blog to know what we’re up to and subscribe to the feed if you haven’t already.