Posts Tagged howto
Troubleshooting Tips: HelpDesk Setup
Posted by Olga Kouzina in help desk, howto on May 5th, 2010
Sometimes people get errors with HelpDesk setup (for Windows authentication enabled). Most of these errors can be eliminated by some simple troubleshooting actions :
1. Check for the highlighted sections in Admin -> General Settings:
2. Check HelpDesk web.config (it’s C:\Inetpub\wwwroot\HelpDesk\wwwroot\web.config by default):
3. Check Virtual Folder for HelpDesk:
4. Check Virtual Folder for TargetProcess:
5. Check TargetProcess Application Pool:
6. Add your user to IIS_WPG group if after step 5 Application Pool is stopped:
7. Check if Windows authorization is enabled for MS SQL Database, and if user is properly mapped with TargetProcess database.
See TargetProcess HelpDesk Installation Guide for more information.
Support: Checklist for Performance Problems
Posted by Olga Kouzina in howto, support on April 22nd, 2010
If you experience some problems with TargetProcess performance on your server, don’t be in a hurry to blame it on the product. Most likely, these problems are related to hardware and software configuration on the server.
We’ve put up a page on TargetProcess web-site with some tips on how to speed-up investigation of performance issues:
http://targetprocess.com/support/faq/Performance_Problem.aspx
TargetProcess Specific “What is Where”
Posted by Olga Kouzina in howto, support on February 19th, 2010
We did our best to provide the complete information about TargetProcess on the web-site and in User Guides. Still, judging by the questions people send in, there’s a need to write some sort of guide to our support documentation and videos.
Even if you’ve been working with TargetProcess for a while, we’d still recommend to look at this blog post on TargetProcess do-it-yourself training for some useful learning tips.
If you’re looking to get a demo of what TargetProcess does as an agile project management tool and decide if you need to sign-up for a trial, go to our Product page with all its sub-pages. Note, that Download page includes plug-ins listed on the Integration page, as well as TP Tray and HelpDesk.
Free Edition, one of the sub-pages, is worth a special note. This is a sign-up page. BUT one thing to remember is that even if it’s FREE edition, TargetProcess is fully functional and comes with all the updates for free as well. The only limitation of free edition is the amount of licenses which is 5. So, there’s no need to sign-up for new free edition trials over and over again if you want an upgrade. You’re entitled to fully functional TargetProcess software with all the upgrades and new releases for free, if you’ve got a team of 5. If by any chance you forgot your account name, or you’ve lost your installation file, or you haven’t had time to look at TargetProcess and want to resume the evaluation, just email us and we will send you all your account information. We keep it and it’s out job to provide it when needed.
Support is your main destination as an eager TargetProcess user :). You can post ideas and requests to HelpDesk from there, read User Guides, watch videos, and contact our live chat. TargetProcess System Requirements are also there along with Microsoft Web Platform Installer required to run TargetProcess on-site edition.
On to User Guides. We’ve got .pdfs mostly, but TargetProcess User Guide comes online and is searchable. You can type in any term there and look at search results.
It might take us time to get back to you with personal answers, although we usually answer within 24 answers. But what if you need this answer right away? You might find it yourself with no waste wait time if you use those tips.
Enjoy working with TargetProcess 
New: Bug Pain Plugin - No Pains!
Posted by Olga Kouzina in plugin, whatis on February 17th, 2010
We’ve got an interesting new tool in TargetProcess 2.18.1 — Bug Pain plugin. It emerged from our own “bug pains” to empower decision making for QA team as they pull some bug to fix, with no Product Owner involved.
Disclaimer: QA Team are aware of product development strategy, they just needed some help with bugs prioritization when Product Owner is not available to talk.
Bug Pain value in TargetProcess depends on “Severity, “Visibility” and “Class” values as below:
“Severity” indicates bug severity per se. This could be some grave error that ruins the whole release or a small UX flaw. We’ve got the following “Severity” values:
5 - Much anger & crying - No workaround
4 – Anger & swearing - Difficult workaround
3 – Annoyance & frustration - Easy workaround
2 – Confused
1 – Laugh if notice
“Visibility” indicates how many users are likely to spot bug and how soon. E.g. it takes 10 steps to reproduce bug (random not straightforward steps), in a browser used by 1% of people - or this is an error on Login Page for 100% users as they attempt to login. Our Visibility values are:
1 - ~5%
2 - <50%
3 - >50%
4 - ~100%
“Class” shows relevance of bug in the context of product development strategy. This value can differ for each particular company/project/product. Speaking of TargetProcess, improving usability is paramount for us at the moment. So, a bug with usability related Class will be more important than a bug found by Trial User. Here’re the Classes we’ve got:
1 – No customer, Security
2 – Free/Trial user, Cosmetic
3 – Paid Customer, Usability, Whoops
Bug Pain is calculated based on this formula:
[Bug Pain] = X * [Severity] + Y * [Visibility] + Z * [Class],
where X, Y, Z are specified in the plugin setup (8, 5 and 4 respectively). These values have been identified experimentally based on common sense for a cloud of bugs and may vary for each particular company/project/product:
Next, bugs can be filtered by Bug Pain value. The most important and urgent bugs will be on top of the list and should be fixed first:
This plug-in is a helpful tool for Product Owners and QA Teams as they prioritize bug fixes.
Bug Pain plug-in comes out-of-the box with TargetProcess now.
How To Create ANY Custom Workflow with TargetProcess
Posted by Olga Kouzina in customization, howto on January 29th, 2010
TargetProcess allows to create virtually ANY custom workflow. What you need is a little bit of thinking and creative approach.
Let’s look at the communication thread below:
Customer:I want to add a custom field to the story template; I would also like it to be (or not to be) a certain value for the story to be able to be marked done. Thanks.
TargetProcess Team: Can you give us an example of what you’re looking for this custom field to be, please?
Customer: I want to make sure that documentation is written before the story is closed. So maybe radio buttons? It could start as “needs documentation” then have options of “documentation written” or “documentation n/a,” both of which could be chosen for the case to be able to be closed.
TargetProcess Team: Unfortunately, TargetProcess doesn’t allow you to create such a “dependency” on the state of an entity. But you may create custom fields that are “required” fields; forcing someone to pick the status of the documentation (needs, written, or n/a) upon the creation of a user story. You could include “needs doc” as a state before “closed”.
As you see, basically, you could juggle with custom fields and custom states to get what you need.
Customer Support with TargetProcess HelpDesk-Solutions
Posted by Olga Kouzina in help desk, whatis on January 27th, 2010
We’ve implemented Solutions in TargetProcess HelpDesk about a year ago but sometimes people still ask what’s the surplus value of this feature. So let’s look into it now.
If you’re dealing with customers and with their questions/requests, the questions are the same very often, so as a customer support person/account manager you have to type in same answers to same questions over again.
That’s why we implemented the Solutions feature. You can think of all the typical questions, put them in to HelpDesk as Solutions and save your time.
See the general workflow of TargetProcess HelpDesk if you haven’t used it up to now.
How to Customize Columns in Kanban Board?
Posted by Olga Kouzina in task board on January 21st, 2010
People ask this question quite often as probably there’s no quick shortcut from Kanban Board/Task board to the screen where customization is done.
Now, let’s see how we can change/add states for User Stories in Kanban board. The key to customizing columns is essentially changing states for User Stories. So, here’s our Kanban board:
We’ve got 5 states for User Stories in there: Planned, In Progress, In Testing, Analysis, Done. Let’s suppose we want to remove Analysis column and replace it with Ready to Merge Column.
We need to go to Admin-Processes, and select the Process used for our Project (Kanban process in our case). Then we go to Workflow for User Story:
All of our existing states for User Stories are in there. Let’s now edit the states - replace the Analysis with Ready to Merge State:
Don’t forget to click Save in the Add/Edit Entity State window, then Save Workflow.
Now let’s see what happens with the columns in our Kanban board:
Ready to Merge column is right there!
This works the same for Task Board. You need to add/edit/remove states for Tasks in Admin-Processes-Task-Workflow-Change State to customize columns in Task Board.
Updated Rank Concept in TargetProcess
Posted by Olga Kouzina in whatis on December 8th, 2009
Quite often we’re asked about the concept of Rank in TargetProcess, how it is calculated, and how someone can change it, so in this post we’ll get more insight into that.
Before the 2.17.2 release, the concept of Rank worked to prioritize entities with the same Business Value e.g. for several Must Have User Stories - you could drag and drop some User Story and thus assign a higher priority. Rank was related to Business value: the higher rank, the higher value and the more important User Story was.
Starting from release 2.17.2 we have changed the concept: now Rank is not directly related to Business Value and it works more as Order concept than Rank. A number of our clients have requested this feature, so we implemented this to provide more flexibility for work with User Stories queue. For example, you might have a User Story with Nice to Have value, but for some reason it needs to be implemented first from all the queue of User Stories with all Business Values. Possible reasons for that: a developer who can do this User Story has no other tasks now, the Must Have User Stories are waiting on someone else etc. So this User Story can be placed on top of the list in Prioritize screen:
You can also reorder User Stories and Bugs in Iteration Planning area. In the screenshot below, “Galaxy Points” User Story has got a higher Rank although it’s got only Great business value as opposed to Must Have values of lower ranked User Stories:
See our User Guide for Rank Concept as well.
New Prioritize Screen in TargetProcess
Posted by Olga Kouzina in howto, usability on December 7th, 2009
The new Prioritize screen has been released in TargetProcess v 2.17. It comes with improved filtering functionality: now it’s possible to filter by State, Tags and Entity Type while prioritizing.
Let’s filter out User Stories in Open state from the Backlog:
prioritize backlog
Now let’s find User Stories tagged “kanban”, in Open state in the Backlog:
Next, let’s take a look at the User Stories and Bugs in In Progress state:
Let’s check which Entities have we got with “tags” tag:
Based on ExtJS, the new Prioritize screen loads really fast.
Enjoy prioritizing with TargetProcess
Simplest Way to Install TargetProcess
Posted by Michael Dubakov in Uncategorized, howto on July 11th, 2009
A very good thing happened recently — Microsoft released its Web Platform. Web Platform is just a set of tools with a nice installer. It includes IIS, MSSQL Server 2008 Express, .NET, etc. In other words, it has everything you need to run TargetProcess on your local workstation.
You need to download Web Platform Installer, run it and mark the following components to install:
- .NET Framework 3.5
- SQL Express 2008
- Internet Information Services
Web Installer
After that you may easily install TargetProcess using automatic installer.
Agile Software
TargetProcess is an agile project management software. It is designed to solve distributed teams problems and support agile development processes.
Key Features
- Full Agile Project Management Support (Scrum, Kanban, XP, Hybrid)
- Productivity Tools (Tp.Tray, ToDo list, dashboards, Inline editing)
- Customizable Development Process
- Subversion Integration
- Integrated Bug Tracking, Help Desk, Time Tracking
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