Collaborator Release Notifications

Welcome to Collaborator v10.0!

Collaborator 10.0 is the latest release from SmartBear Software’s dev collaboration team.  This new version introduces a lot of fantastic new features!   

 

New Collaborator Versions: Community, Team and Enterprise

In this release we are introducing 3 products that share the name Collaborator.  Our previously free CodeReviewer offering is still free and is now called Collaborator Community.  In 10.0, Collaborator has become Collaborator Enterprise and we have added a brand new mid-tier offering, Collaborator Team.  Collaborator Team is a perfect blend between our Community offering and Collaborator Enterprise.  It is designed for those organizations that do not need document review or the rich customizations that are currently offered in Collaborator Enterprise.  We are really excited about being able to meet the needs of more teams!

 

Visual Studio add-in

Create and participate in reviews all while staying in Visual Studio.  That was the focus of our Visual Studio add-in.  In Collaborator 10.0, we have release this new add-in!  It supports any of the SCM’s that Collaborator already supports.

 

Download the Visual Studio add-in

 

Configuration instructions

 

Team Foundation Server

Collaborator has supported Team Foundation Server for a long time, but we’ve improved support in version 10.0.  We have added gated check-ins.  This ensures that files cannot be checked into TFS unless they have been through a Collaborator review.

 

TFS Triggers Documentation

 

RTC Improvements

More quickly and easily add changesets to Collaborator reviews.  Here are the details:

• Right click on a workitem (workitems view in Eclipse) and see two menu options: “Add to Review” and “Add to Review with Children”. These menu option adds changesets from the workitem to a new or existing review
• Right click on a changeset (links tab of an RTC workitem) and see a new menu option: “Add to Review”. This option adds the selected changeset to a new or existing review.
• Right click on a workitem (links tab of an RTC workitem) and see a new menu option: “Add to Review”. Choosing this option will add the selected changesets from the workitem and add them to a new or existing review.

RTC Integration

 

Document Review

Users can now use the scroll wheel of their mouse to navigate from one page of the document to the next.  Moving the mouse cursor over the diff view of the document will allow the mouse wheel to scroll to the next or previous page.  This change makes document navigation more intuitive than the current next and previous buttons.

 

COBOL Support

Collaborator 10.0 now supports .cbl and .cob file extensions.  In addition to those extensions, there is now an “Ignore Sequence Number” option in the diff viewer display settings.

 

GitHub

We’ve continued to improve our GitHub support in Collaborator 10.0.  We have added the ability to configure the polling interval at which Collaborator checks for changes on the GitHub server.  Additionally, we add links back to the GitHub commit or pull request.  These links can be found in the Chat section of Collaborator’s Review Summary screen.

 

Version Support

With the release of Collaborator 10.0, we will no longer be support Collaborator versions 8.x and older.  Also, we have deprecated our legacy API (--legacy-api) and will be removing it in a future release.

 

 

To learn more about Collaborator 10.0, please check out the links below.

 

Download the latest release of Collaborator.

 

You can view the full list of fixes and improvements here.

 

If you have any questions about licensing, please contact sales. If you have any technical support questions, please contact SmartBear Support.

 Best Wishes,
Justin Collier & The SmartBear Team

Welcome to Collaborator v9.5.0!

Collaborator 9.5 is the latest release from SmartBear Software’s dev collaboration team.  This new version introduces enhanced security for our customers and easier trial experiences.   

 

Security Improvements

 

• SSO: Collaborator’s initial offering for Single Sign On adds support for jasig CAS and other SSO implementations that support Apache Tomcat 8. With SSO being the single source of authentication, users can access all web applications including Collaborator without having to log in to each one separately.  In addition to convenience, having a single end point for authentication allows for increased security and a smaller attack surface for things like phishing attacks against your organization.  Users logging into Collaborator can feel confident that they are providing their credentials to a trusted source.

 

• General: Collaborator 9.5 includes many security fixes and patches to ensure that Collaborator is using the most secure and stable versions of web components available.

 

Trial Experience

• Hosted trial option: You can now try Collaborator for 14 days in the cloud. If you decide to move forward, the data can be easily transferred into a production environment.

 

• Improved installer: The Collaborator server installer has been improved to make the install process easier than ever before. In less than 5 minutes, Collaborator can be up and running with its basic configuration.

 

To learn more about Collaborator 9.5, please check out the links below.

Download the latest release of Collaborator.

 

You can view the full list of fixes and improvements here.

If you have any questions about licensing, please contact sales. If you have any technical support questions, please contact SmartBear Support.

 Best Wishes,
Justin Collier & The SmartBear Team

Welcome to Collaborator v9.4.0!

 Collaborator 9.4 - the latest release from SmartBear Software’s peer review team.  This new version continues to improve upon our GitHub integration.

 

It is also important to note that we will be deprecating several features with this release.

 

GitHub

We continue to improve our GitHub integration with this new release.  Since we introduced our GitHub integration in Collaborator 9.2, we’ve received plenty of great feedback about how to improve the experience.  One suggestion that has been included in the 9.4 release is the ability to add GitHub repositories via the CLI.  This allows Collaborator administrators to quickly and easily add GitHub repositories in bulk.

 

Deprecation

There are a number of items that are being deprecated and are no longer needed within Collaborator because of improvements to the product.  Here is the full list:

 

• Print-to-review: This capability was introduced so that MS Word documents could easily be added to a review. This is no longer need because a Collaborator MS Word add-in is now available.

 

• SOAP API: We transitioned to our JSON API, which provides significantly more capabilities.

 

• XML RPC: This is the protocol that was used within the Collaborator Client. In Collaborator 9.2 the XML RPC calls were completely transitioned to use the new more efficient JSON API.

 

• Visual Studio add-in: We are currently building a new VS add-in to support VS 2013 & 2015. The add-in will be similar to our more fully featured Eclipse plug-in.

 

To learn more about Collaborator 9.4, please check out the links below.

 

Download the latest release of Collaborator.

 

You can view the full list of fixes and improvements here.

If you have any questions about licensing, please contact sales. If you have any technical support questions, please contact SmartBear Support.

 
Best Wishes,

Justin Collier & The SmartBear Team

Welcome to Collaborator v9.3.0!

 Collaborator 9.3 is the latest release from SmartBear Software’s peer review team.  This new version is introducing several great capabilities including:

Numbered Pushpins

One of the challenges of document reviews is clearly indicating what comment is associated to a specific pushpin on a document.  With Collaborator 9.3 we’ve introduced numbered pushpins.  Each conversation now includes a specific page number and pushpin number to assist in easily finding the pushpin that is related to the conversation in question.

 

Review Details PDF

The Review Details report can now be saved as a pdf file from the CLI.  This is extremely helpful for customers that want a report of every review that has been completed.  Many customers like to store this report on shared drive for reference.  Now, that process can be automated via a script and Collaborator’s cmd line client.

 

Archive to Zip

Many regulated industries are required to retain data for long periods of time.  Because of this, we’ve added an Archive to Zip feature which allows a review and all of its contents, including the Review Detail report, to be archived to zip file that can be stored in an approved repository location for future reference.

In addition to data retention, this feature can also be used during audits.  If an internal or external audit is occurring, the review can be archived to a zip.  This saves the team time since they will not need to gather all of the information together.  They can simply click the ‘Save to Zip’ button and email the auditor the required data.

 

GitHub Name Mapping

Building upon the GitHub integration released in Collaborator 9.2, we have added automatic user name mapping.  If a user name in GitHub is the same as a user name in Collaborator, an automatic mapping occurs.  If they don’t match up, the name mapping can occur manually under the individual users’ settings.

 

Download the latest release of Collaborator.

 

You can view the full list of fixes and improvements here.

If you have any questions about licensing, please contact sales. If you have any technical support questions, please contact SmartBear Support.

 
Best Wishes,

Justin Collier & The SmartBear Team

Welcome to Collaborator v9.2.0!

 
Collaborator 9.2 is the latest release from SmartBear Software’s peer review team.  This new version is introducing several great capabilities including:

 

GitHub Integration

GitHub is the largest code hosting service and many companies are using GitHub to manage their repositories.  In Collaborator 9.2, we are providing a way to create Collaborator code reviews based off of a pull request workflow.  Many teams find this workflow to be easier and we want to ensure that you can use this workflow with all of the great features that Collaborator offers. 

 

Jira Integration/Plugin

There is a new plugin that installs into Jira and allows Collaborator reviews to be created by clicking a button in the Jira Issue.  It will automatically attach SVN/Git commits associated with the Jira issue to a review.  We’ve also added the ability to create a Jira ticket from the Collaborator Review Summary screen. 

 

IntelliJ Plugin

This has been a requested capability for some time and we’re excited to announce that our phase1 plugin is now available.  If you’re using Git or SVN, you can now easily create reviews from within the IntelliJ interface by adding commits to a review.

 

Electronic Signatures

Collaborator has offered e-signatures for some time but we’ve improved the capability by attaching them to Review Templates.  With this change, electronic signatures can be required based on the template that is driving the review versus the previous global setting which required e-signatures on all reviews.

 

 

Download the latest release of Collaborator.

 

 

You can view the full list of fixes and improvements here.

 

If you have any questions about licensing, please contact sales. If you have any technical support questions, please contact SmartBear Support.

 
Best Wishes,

Justin Collier & The SmartBear Team

Welcome to Collaborator v9.1.9101!

 
SmartBear Software is pleased to announce the release of Collaborator 9.1.9101.

You can view the full list of fixes and improvements here.

Download the latest release of Collaborator.

If you have any questions about licensing, please contact sales. If you have any technical support questions, please contact SmartBear Support.


Best Wishes,

Justin Collier & The SmartBear Team

Welcome to Collaborator v9.1.9100!

 
SmartBear Software is pleased to announce the release of Collaborator 9.1.9100, a new version with several great changes! 

• We’ve continued to work on the JSON API and have now set the GUI client to use it by default. Details about using the JSON API
• We’re tracking user file activity and displaying it in the Details report under a new section titled ‘Overall File Activity’.
• The ‘Approve’ button at the bottom of the review summary screen is now dynamic. It displays ‘Send to Rework’, ‘Send to Completed’ or ‘Send to Inspection’.
• Reverted files are removed from the review.
• MS Word Add-in: Check out the SmartBear Developer Network to learn more!

 

Remember that the SmartBear Developer Network is designed to help our customers expand and customize our products.  Feel free to build plugins for your own team to use but we would also love to share your creations with other Collaborator users.  If you have something to share, just let us know!

You can view the full list of fixes and improvements here.

Download the latest release of Collaborator.

If you have any questions about licensing, please contact sales. If you have any technical support questions, please contact SmartBear Support.


Best Wishes,

Justin Collier & The SmartBear Team