Tips for working smarter and faster in Assembla

Assembla’s system is super flexible to meet the needs of almost any team or project. In order to get the most out of your Assembla projects, here are some tips and tricks to help you and your team work smarter and faster. Do you have any tips and tricks you want to share? Email tips@assembla.com or tweet your tips with hashtag #AssemblaTips.

Sections:

Task Management (Assembla’s Ticket Tool)
Code Repositories (SVN, Git & Perforce)
Collaboration Tools
Other Tools and Project Configurations

Task Management (Assembla’s Ticket Tool)

Tip: Add custom status workflows to match your process. 

How-To: If you want to change the name of an existing column, you just need to double click on the name of the column.

You can also create new statuses and rearrange their order by going to the Tickets tool > Settings sub-tab > Status and Workflows section. The order the statuses appear on this page is the order they will appear in the status dropdown on tickets, and the order of the columns from left to right on your Cardwall view. Check out the following gif to learn how to create or re-arrange new columns.

Tip: Create custom ticket fields for more detailed ticket requirements. For example, adding “Due Date” using the date custom type or “Tester” using the team list custom type.

How-To: Go to the Tickets tool > Settings sub-tab > Ticket Fields section. You can create new custom fields, rearrange the order of ticket fields, set required fields, and define default values for ticket fields. When setting new custom fields, you can choose between text, numeric, list, team list, date, date/time, and checkbox options.

Tip: Use Assembla’s markup language to quickly reference tickets, commits, files, embed images inline, and much more.

How-To: Reference another ticket by typing in #{ticket number} such as #112. Link to a file with [[file:{file name}]] such as [[file:screenshot.png]]. Directly embed an image inline with [[image:{file name}]] such as [[image:screenshot.png]]. See all markup language shortcuts.

You could use the markup language shortcuts by directly typing the syntax into any text area OR by using the toolbar above the text areas.

Tip: Create tickets using email.

How-To: To create a new ticket, you can send an email to “<space-url-name>@tickets.assembla.com”. If you attach files to it, the files will also be uploaded in the ticket. Your project name is displayed in the url of your project after /spaces/. For example: https://www.assembla.com/spaces/assembla-development/… would be assembla-development@tickets.assembla.com

Tip: Change the default view so when team members visit the Tickets tool, they immediately land on the view that is most important - List, Planner, or Cardwall.

How-To: Go to the Tickets tool > Settings sub-tab > Default Views section and select the desired default view.

Tip: Create an ‘Epic’ or ‘Story’ to manage tickets relationships. This ticket relationships will help you break up bigger tasks into smaller, more manageable chunks.

How-To: When creating a new ticket, select Epic or Story from the plan level dropdown. When you create an Epic, the left hand “Related Tickets” section will have a link to quickly “Add new child story.” When you create a new story, the left hand “Related Tickets” section will have a link to quickly “add new subtask.” You can also add and modify relationships from any ticket via the Related Tickets subtab.

• Epic
  • Story
    • Subtask

Tip: Build team filters to get the desired list of tickets for your team.

How-To: Visit the Ticket List view and click on the “Filter” expansion menu on the top left side of your screen. Build the desired filter and click the ‘Search’ button at the bottom of the panel. Once you have the desired filter built, give your filter a name, check the “Share with team” checkbox, and click the ‘Save’ button. Now visit the Ticket Settings sub-tab > Default Views section and select the desired “default list report.”

Tip: If your team uses estimates, you can enable estimates and choose between different types:  by total time (hours), by points, or size  (small/medium/large).

How-To: Go to the Tickets tool > Settings sub-tab > Ticket Fields section and select the desired estimation type from the Estimations section. You can also disable estimates from this section.

Tip: Identify “stuck” tickets that have not change status for a defined amount of time. Sometimes these tickets are either not important (can be moved to another milestone), have been forgotten about, or need some assistance.

How-To: Go to the Tickets tool > Metrics sub-tab > Stuck Tickets section. Define the amount of time and see a report of “stuck” tickets.

Assembla's Cardwall also has an easy way to visualize "stuck" tickets. If the ticket didn’t have any activity for 14 days, a spider appears on the ticket. As days go by, the ticket will be covered by a large cobweb.

If you don't like spiders, you can always disable it in your Cardwall settings by going to the Space's Tickets tool > Settings sub-tab > Cardwall section.

Tip: Quickly get an at-a-glance view of the status of stories in progress.

How-To: Go to the Tickets tool > Metrics sub-tab > Stories Lifecycle section. Here you will see a list of all stories, the number of active tickets, a progress report, and the story owner. Click on any story to open it up and see more details.  


Tip: You can Import your tickets from Jira and other tools into Assembla’s Tickets tool.

How-To: Go to the Tickets tool > Settings sub-tab > Export & Import section. Select the type of file you want to import and browse for your file. After selecting your file, click on the “Import Tickets” button.

Code Repositories (SVN, Git & Perforce)

Tip: Import a SVN or Git repository from another provider into an Assembla repository.

How-To: For SVN, visit the Import/Export subtab of your repository and follow the import instructions. For Git, you can edit your local Git config file which is under the hidden folder named “.git”. Change the url line to the Assembla Git repository url and save the file. Now commit/push your repository to import.

Note: If you need to add a new SVN or Git repository you can do so in the Admin Tools section.

Tip: Use simple commit commands to reference or update tickets.

How-To: Link your commit to a ticket by using "re #ticket_number" such as “re #122” or use "<status> #ticket_number" to update a ticket status such as "Test #4" will change Ticket #4 status to Test. The status name in this case is not case sensitive.

Tip: Protect specific branches of your SVN or Git repository so only certain team members are allowed to push commits to a given branch.

How-To: Visit the repository’s tab within Assembla > Settings sub-tab > Protected Branches section and define what team members are allowed to perform what action to given branches.

Tip: Fork a Git repository.

How-To: Visit the repository’s tab within Assembla and simply click on the ‘Fork’ button on the top right of the page. You can choose to fork the repository within the existing project and create a new project with the forked repository.

Tip: Have more control over your repository code by installing server-side hooks. Assembla is the only repository provider that allows you to install and control server-side hooks in the cloud.

How-To: Visit the repository’s tab within Assembla > Settings sub-tab > Server-Side Hooks section for a library of ready-to-use hooks like reject commits if they are empty or reject commits with shorter commit message than MIN_LENGTH. If you want a different server-side hook, you can submit your own and we will add it to the ever growing library.

Tip: Use Assembla’s merge requests for code review when working on multiple branches or repositories.

How-To: Visit the repository’s tab within Assembla and click on the ‘New Merge Request’ button. There you can specify the source branch and the target repository and branch. ‘Create merge request’ button will enable only when there are changes between selected branches. Once created, team members can easily get changes, discuss, vote, and ultimately merge a request. This can be combined with the protected branches feature so only certain team members can merge to specific branches like the master branch.

Tip: Use Assembla’s compare feature to see changes in code between different branches, tags, commits and even repositories.

How-To: Visit the repository’s tab within Assembla and click on the ‘Compare’ button in the top right or the Compare sub-tab - both will take you to the same page. Select what you want to compare. From a comparison, you can easily create a merge request.

Tip: Review code using inline comments from both merge requests and the commits page.

How-To: If you’re in a merge request, open the “Files Affected” tab and expand the file diff you to comment on. Pick the line you want to comment on and click on the line number. A comment box will be shown and you can even mention other team members from your comment. If you’re in a commit page, the process almost the same after selecting the diff you want to comment on.

Tip: Share and discuss syntax highlighted code snippets with team members.

How-To: Visit the Snippets tool in your project’s main navigation. If the tool is not displayed, you can add it via the Admin Tab > Tools section. You can embed created snippets into tickets, wiki pages, message, etc. using the snippet’s markup code - example: [[snippet:project_name:1683]]

Collaboration Tools

Tip: Create labels to mention different teams or groups like @marketing or @support.

How-To: Go to the Team tab and click in the “Label” column for any team members. Once labels have been added, such as support, you can type @support almost anywhere in Assembla to get the support team’s attention.

Tip: Send an instant email to a user or an entire group (see lables above) using an exclamation point at the end of any @mention.

How-To: After any @mention, put an exclamation point with no spaces like @adam! or @support! and that user or group will receive an instant email with your request.

Tip: Use Assembla’s Google Docs and Dropbox integration to instantly share one of these file types with your team members.  

How-To: From a ticket or the Files tool, you have the ability to select a file from your computer OR attach a Google Doc or Dropbox file. When selecting a Google Doc or Dropbox file, Assembla’s on demand permissioning will instantly share the file with any team member when they click on the file link.

Tip: Use Assembla’s markup language to quickly reference tickets, commits, files, embed images inline, and much more inside of wiki pages and messages.

How-To: Reference a ticket by typing in #{ticket number} such as #112. Link to a file with [[file:{file name}]] such as [[file:screenshot.png]]. Directly embed an image inline with [[image:{file name}]] such as [[image:screenshot.png]].

Other Tools & Project Configurations

Tip: Change your email notifications settings to determine what events and at what frequency you want to receive emails.

How-To: Visit your projects Stream tab > Email Notifications sub-tab to adjust the desired email alerts and frequencies.


Tip: Link to other commonly used websites and tools from within your Assembla project with the Custom Tab tool.

How-To: Visit the Admin tab of your project > click on the Tools section > scroll towards the bottom and click on ‘Add’ or ‘Add another’ next to Custom Tab. Now click on the new custom tab in the main navigation and configure. You can define the url and set it to open as an iframe within the Assembla project or open a new tab on click.

Tip: Reorder the tool access bar to make the most important tools easily to accessible.

How-To: Visit the Admin tab of your project > click on the Appearance section > and scroll to the Navigation section. Drag and drop to rearrange the navigational order and select the desired tool in the “default landing tab is” dropdown. When you have made the desired changed, scroll down and click on ‘Save Changes.’