PTS Release Notes/History

v2.9.5 (11-November-2004) New Feature/UI Update Release:

Added a new Severity attribute to the Tasks table. Previously, the Priority attribute has served two purposes: the desired order to complete tasks and the severity of the associated issue. These two attributes are not always weighted equally. The Severity attribute is now used to specify the relative seriousness of the issue, and the priority attribute is used to determine which issues should be resolved first. A SQL script has also been provided to migrate existing priority data into the new Severity column.
Fixed a query issue of the Task Summary Report screen.
Added the standard stylesheet to the Task Modify Confirmation screen for consistency.
Updated the Task Review screen to properly format table entries that contain blank priority values.

v2.9.4a (15-October-2004) Bug Fix Patch Release:

Fixed a problem that would cause a sql error to be displayed on the Task Browser screen if no tasks matched the current filter settings.

v2.9.4 (07-September-2004) New Feature/Minor Bug Fix Release:

Added timesheet date validation to Task Modify and Add Followup screens.
Improved session handling by adding persistence to Task Browser screen checkbox fields (ie. Search Summary/Details, Summary Reports, etc.)
Added the ability to search task activity during a specified date range on the Task Browser screen.
Added Actual Time to Complete (ATC) filter-by-tech capability. This enables a user to filter the ATC information for selected tasks by a specified tech and report the total ATC accordingly.
An adminstrator (level greater than 90) can now modify the specified tech for any work session entry on a timesheet using drop down lists.
Modified the word wrap style for followup comment text boxes to better preserve line breaks created by the user.
Fixed a minor problem that would occasionally cause work session times to be displayed with a precision greater than two places past the decimal.
Fixed a problem that would cause a followup tech to be recorded as the current assigned tech instead of the logged in user on the Task Modify screen.
Performed some cleanup in the Task Search Results table code: removed some vestigal code, added comments, updated task retrieval database queries, etc.

v2.9.3 (05-June-2004) Minor Bug Fix/Enhancement Release:

Added validation to Timesheet screen to prevent a timesheet update if any session's end time precedes its start time or if any session time exceeds 24 hours. Infractions of these rules are pointed out during any attempt to submit the timesheet page - all entries on the page are checked, not just recent modification attempts. Focus moves to the first error field if there are any violations.
Added stylesheet to project-related screens to improve consistency.
Fixed issue that caused a database error when switching from Project Review screen to Task Browse screen.
Replaced "Close" button images for "Close Task" and "Close Project" functions to differentiate from "Close Window" function.

v2.9.2 (14-May-2004) New Feature Release:

New Open Task Summary Report added. Provides a report which displays the number of open tasks matching search criteria at specified intervals, grouped by priority. To use, check "Summary Reports" checkbox on main task browser screen, select "All" for task state selection, select any other required filter information, and click the "Update" button. The date/interval selection window will appear. Select start date, end date and number of days for reporting interval. The report will appear in the popup window as an Excel spreadsheet suitable for charting.

v2.9.0 (30-Apr-2004) New Feature Release:

Added new Timesheet Editor screen to enable better tracking of individual work session times. This screen provides the capability of editing start times, end times and descriptions for work sessions for a task. The screen updates session durations and total work time on the fly as changes to individual sessions are made. Non-administrative users can view/edit any of their own work session information, and adminstrative users can alter work session information for all users.
Main task browser screen now displays the total accumulated work session time for all selected tasks.
A less than optimal fix for a problem that caused the Generate Excel mode to stay locked on until the user logs out of the system has been applied. The problem was created as a side effect of the session management facility. The system now avoids storing the Generate Excel setting in the session to prevent the situation. This configuration switch will be put back into the session store in a future release.

v2.8.1 (28-Feb-2004) Minor bug fix:

Fixed taskgroup_id query parameter that could restrict displayed tasks on the initial display of the main task browser screen.

v2.8 (08-Feb-2004) Significant New Feature Release:

Added task start and stop fields and calendar popups to followup section of the task modify screen.
New Multi-Task Dependency Tracking feature. Tasks can now have multiple task dependencies. Two new screens were added to facilitate this feature: a Dependency View screen and a Dependency Edit screen. The edit screen enables task browsing using the main task search mechanism, and adds checkboxes next to any matching tasks to provide dependency selection. Existing dependencies not matching search criteria appear in a second section on the Dependency Edit screen.
Session Management facility added. PTS now remembers task and project search criteria across screens - even after logout. The session information persists for an administrator-configurable timeout period. (Defaults to 8 hours.)
Converted the project and release selection drop down lists to multi-select lists on the main task browser screen. This makes it possible to search for tasks in more than one project and for more than one release at a time.
Ported PTS software to MS-Windows. With the exception of email notification, all functionality in PTS can now be served up from an Apache server running on Windows.

v2.7 (24-Aug-2003) New Feature Release:

Added new stylesheet to all pages for improvements in appearance.
Added task attachment feature. A file attachment can now be uploaded and associated with any task. A link to an attachment will appear on the task details screen.
Supplied some missing HTML tags.
Popup calendars have been added to the Task Followup screen to provide the ability to track the start and stop times for work sessions on individual tasks. Reporting will be added that will summarize task duration based on this information.
A popup warning is now issued when the task or project close button is pressed to prevent accidental closure.
Increased height of multi-select boxes on the Task Browser screen.

v2.6 (12-Jul-2003) Bug Fix and New Feature Release:

New Task Grouping feature to allow linking related tasks within a project (for example, related tasks in a test case).
Major code cleanup in the Task/Project Browse screen.
Task/Project filter form display improvements.
Fixed troublesome field pre-select bugs in search filter form.
New PTS database automated backup tool with rotation support.
Added total selected task information to task selection summary on Task Browse screen.

v2.5.2 (08-Jul-2003) New Feature Release:

Added security roles to allow control of various features of the system.

v2.5.0 (03-Mar-2003) New Feature Release:

Added ATC (Actual Time to Complete) field to all pertinent screens to make it possible to compare task estimates (ETR) with actuals.
Added client-side (Javascript) column sorting capability to the task browse screen. The table can be sorted in either direction by column clicking on the desired column heading.
Cleaned up the task browse screen to facilitate the new sort-by-column feature.
Added the ability to automatically generate an Excel spreadsheet of task search results. Clicking on the "Generate Excel" checkbox and pressing the "Update" button on the task browse screen will cause a pop up Excel spreadsheet to appear.
Added some improvements to the default color scheme for various screen features. The user can now set the task browse result table header row independently from the rest of the screen by defining the "bgthcolor" preference.
Added Release Notes link to Login screen.
Other minor code fixes (ie. fixed missing closing </TR> tags on the task browse screen).

v2.07 (29-Jan-2002) PHP4/MySQL Updates:

Removed a number of calls to addslashes() that were used to write quoted fields to the database. Newer versions of PHP and MySQL didn't need these calls and their presence caused extra backslashes to appear in read-back database fields.
Updated several database functions in db-mysql.inc for compatibility with recent versions of MySQL

v2.05 (4-Jan-2000):

Added "Release Specification" feature. Task browser screen now allows selection of a Release tag as part of the task filter. Selection method is by a drop down list of available releases. Releases tags are added to the system through a new "Release Names" link on the maintenance screen. Release name selection is also allowed on the New Task and Modify Task screens. A new database table (releases.mysql) has been added to the system to hold the release names, id numbers and descriptions. A new "release_id" column was added to the "tasks" table to hold a pointer to the corresponding row in the "releases" table.
Modified task summary chart on the task browser screen. The status and task class entries now display the full status and task class names instead of the single-letter abbreviations. The task class, status and priority information are in bold type to differentiate them from the labels.
Modified the email generation code for the task-modify feature. The status and task class information are now displayed as full words instead of single letter abbreviations. Also, the highly annoying <br> line delimiters in the generated mail message have been replaced with newlines.
Fixed extraneous '\' quoting problem that occurred when modifying a task summary or problem details. Using single or double quotes should no longer be a problem.
Added "ETR" as an order-by choice. When this option is selected on the task browser screen, tasks that appear in the browser list will appear in order of smallest ETR value to highest, with unestimated tasks appearing at the top of the list with ETR values of "unknown".

v2.04a (6-Nov-1999):

Changed modify task and followup task to include the name of the user submitting the change. This additional information is displayed on the post mod/followup review screens.

v2.04 (31-Oct-1999):

Added the task classification code. This includes changes to the maintenance screen which allow control of new and existing task classes; a change to the task add and modify screens which allows selection of a task class for the TID being created/modified; and a multiple selection list on the task browser screen that allows filtering by task class.
Cleaned up the Status multi-selection list on the task browser screen to make it more intelligently turn on/off the selections and remember previous selections.

PTS 2.00 - Revision: 4-Oct-1999:

PTS 2.00 is a composite of PTS 1.72.00 and 1.71.33-daa, with many additional features and bug fixes. Most notable among the new features are the task detail/summary search capability, repair time estimate tracking and task/project broadcast notification.
Updated documentation, along with a more detailed change list, will be added shortly.