SuperSatellite

Getting my Fixx

// July 10th, 2008 // Scripts, Software, Web

I have not, and will not claim to be the tidiest person on the planet.  What I am, however, is a very organized unorganized person.  That is to say, while my desk looks like a mess to you, I absolutely know where every little thing is on it (so don’t touch anything).  Where my failing is, is that I tend to be forgetful, especially through the course of a day where I tend to switch tracks several times going from task to task.  This is especially a problem at work, where I will tell someone I’ll get something done, get distracted by some other problem, then forget about it.  This set me on a mission to find some software to help me out.

When I’m doing stuff over in dotCMS land, I am usually working with JIRA issue tracking software.  That’s what they use for dotCMS development tracking, and we’re using it to manage tasks on our site redesign project with them.  So I used that as a baseline.  While it isn’t the most clean, modern looking interface, it is very functional.  Besides, it’s also what I’ve gotten very used to, it’s comfortable.  But, it’s also not free.  There are some other systems out there I looked at, like JTrac, Eventum, Bugzilla, and a few others, but for various reasons, I didn’t run with them.  For instance, Bugzilla was too involved to install, and wouldn’t be very portable, Eventum I gave a pretty fair shot, and it  was very nice and very flexible, but had a very dated interface.  Most of the others I came across you had to pay for, or they were just too watered down.  Naturally, I posted to Twitter about my hunt, and along came the name of a product my search hadn’t turned up: Fixx.  Immediately, their interface certainly jumped out as the cleanest of the bunch, and they made used of AJAX (Asynchronous Javascript And XML) to speed things along.  It supports multiple projects which can have parts/components, you can give client access to projects, create custom resolutions and priorities, manage version releases, and even tie it in to Twitter for notifications.  It even supports OpenID.

Like JTrac, Fixx is a Java based system, and with my usage of dotCMS, I’m not uncomfortable working with that these days.  All that means is that you better make sure you have the Java JDK installed, and have your JAVA_HOME environmental variable set.  Fixx is not free for groups, but it is free for single user usage, which is exactly what I was going for (there is an educational license discount if you want to use it at a school or college).  When you download it, it comes prepackaged with Apache Tomcat, and running the startup file will set up a webserver on your machine on port 9000.  So, to access your new tracker, you just open http://localhost:9000/ in your browser.  In my case, I tossed it on my server at home, punched a hole in my firewall, and set up a subdomain on that port so that I can access it from any machine that I’m at.  All said, this was all surprisingly painless.  Before I put it on my server, I was even running it right off a thumb drive for a little while testing it out.

So, with it up and running, I jumped right in.  I’ll give them credit, they took their goal of a simple but flexible issue tracker to heart, and seem to have made a nice run of it.  While Eventum is pretty crazy powerful, the interface is dated and cludgy.  Fixx isn’t so flexible, but it’s just plain nice to use.  It makes me think of why Twitter remains so much more popular than Plurk.  Plurk is better, with more options and features, but there are times when simplicity really sells.  And Fixx still gives you enough options and controls to make it worthwhile.  You can do unlimited projects, set project leads, make your custom resolutions and priorities, set sub areas, move tasks to new projects, and plenty more. Basically, all the “important” functions are there.

Creating a task is as simple as most others: click the link, fill in the fields, and save.  But the interface that displays the task is soft and easy to look at (compare that to Eventum some time).  Information is easy to find, and it’s laid out in a manner that makes sense.  All your controls open up right on the screen, so you can move the task, resolve it, log time, attach files, comment, etc all on the same page without jumping around.  And again, they have tried to keep the options trimmed down a little, and aim more to make it fast, easy, and straightforward.  To me, this is absolutely perfect for the worker or freelancer doing a lot of things on their own.  For a larger group, the Bugzilla or JIRA path makes a bit more sense probably, but even then, there’s not much that those do that Fixx can’t.  The one big exception being nested tasks, or making a task dependent on others.  You can’t designate a task as a parent to another one or such.  That’s one big area I’d like to see change (and I already put in a feature request on the matter).

Overall, I’m impressed.  I haven’t seen another free issue tracker that is nearly as polished as this one is.  It also is perfectly suited to my particular needs.  I think anyone who needs a hand getting some of their tasks organized could stand to benefit from an install of this.  Heck, I even created a project for development of my Grayplicity Wordpress theme, so now I can keep a nice bead on what I need to do to improve it, and store recommendations I want to follow up on as they come in.  What about you?  Is there a system that you are partial to, or maybe on online project tracker that you think is very good?  Share your thoughts.