Collaborator Feature Requests

Collaborator (and all Web-based tools, really) should retire any use of Adobe Flash.  The same functionality is now available natively in standards-compliant HTML5 browsers, which are commonplace at this time.     Flash Player is a never-ending source of security issues, causes grief for IT administrators, and is constantly pining for updates.  If it weren't for Collaborator, I could remove the flash plugin from my system entirely and enjoy improved security.       ... View more

For iterative projects, there will often be a review created for the same work product at each iteration, and typically the general details and participant list don't change much between reviews.  Would be great to be able to clone the general details of the previously completed review (review title, participant list, template, custom fields, etc), then all a user would have to do is verify the copied review details are correct, upload the new file, and click begin review. ... View more

In larger reviews, there are sometimes many chat windows. As the review progresses, sometime chats are "done", in that there is nothing more to discuss. These chats now polute the general chat space, and the "accepted" icon is removed if the author uploads another file (often causing the reviewer to look at old chats). Please add an ability to "close" a chat, where the "accepted" icon is kept on that chat line. Perhaps even the (sometimes long) chat bubble could be minimized once closed.. ... View more

When a user attempts to upload a file that is in the "restricted file types" list (a .SH file for example), Collaborator does not indicate to the user that the file was blocked, causing confusion.    The Collaborator server should indicate to the user that some of the files were blocked because they are on the restricted file list. ... View more

It's annoying to get thrown out of Approval in several cases; but some cases are valid. Either way, what can be further annoying is not having Code Collaborator indicate any information in the code review webpage on whether or not reviewers had previously been in the Approval state.   It would be nice, if the State column, indicated in some way, that users (reviewers/observers/whatever) had previously been in an Approved state but now are not.   With so many code reviews going on, it's easy to second-guess yourself on "didn't I approve this already"?  And having the tool help keep oneself up-to-date on such matters would be handy.  Also, as an Author, it'd be nice to see the same information; as that may help lead the author to know which subset of reviewers really needs to pay more attention to the review (because perhaps the reviewer's that need to re-approve in this case were and are actively and responsively enganged with the review, but some subset of other reviewers are behind needing to get to it still). ... View more

If a Reviewer (or Observer) is in the Approval state, then it is totally unnecessary, and indeed quite annoying and time-wasting, to have that reviewer taken out of Approval upon that reviewer being poked.   It would be much better, if Poking a user (via individual Poke or via Poking Everyone) left users in their state of Approval.   This would allievate issues such as: 1) Author clicks "Poke Everyone" (perhaps because several reviewers need to look at the review), but the unintended consequence is that it can throw a couple other reviewers out of Approval (thus wasting their time, because nothing else changed up to that point that would have otherwise thrown them out of Approval).  Sure, the author could have individually poke only the necessary subset of users, but that less desirable alternative basically leaves the "Poke Everyone" button mostly useless. 2) Similarly, an Author may accidentaly poke a specific user; maybe missed the State column's claim that the user was in Approval and then miss-poked the user.  Either way, it's the same downsides as above, but with no alternative via Code Collab.   In general, Code Collaborator has several annoying and time-wasting cases of throwing reviewers out of approval; this is one of them; please do fix!  Thanks 🙂 ... View more

We would like to be able to use participant custom fields to keep track of process roles for our participants (for example, Jane is the Software Tester and Mark is a Mentor, and Julie is the Auditor).  Right now because these fields cannot be set by the person setting up the review, it puts the onus on each participant to log on and change their field.  It would be great to allow the person setting up the record to enter this type of participant information which would be more efficient and less error prone than the current workflow supported by Collaborator. ... View more

The list of current reviews (or "Action items") only allows just less than 8 items to be visible, no matter what the size of my browser window causing me to scroll if there are a larger number of reviews open.   Could we have a splitter bar that could be moved down to make that list view larger and have more items visible without scrolling? ... View more

Currently doing Peer Reviews with LabView does not work.  The users would like to be able to put comments on the LabView diagrams.  Saving each file to pdf to be able to comment on each is not a great solution.  There can be many files and files are coordinated with each other. ... View more

When you generate a report in the WebUI, you can print it, and you can copy the link to include in your bookmarks, email etc.      It would be nice if I could save these reports within the WebUI itself.   They would be accessible from any location where you executed the WebUI, and possibly be available for other users to run.   On the basic side, users could have a ‘my reports’ section where saved reports could live.   On the complex side, reports could be public/private (checkbox) and maybe restricted by group or public.     Reports are such a powerful tool for data extraction and analysis, yet managing them within the UI could be so much more efficient.     (I thought I had submitted this previously but I can’t find it in the forum…) ... View more

Collaborator is configured such that once any defect has been found in any file of a review, then no files in that review can be removed.   Your only option is to delete the review and make a new review.   This has been proved to be an inconvenience.   We’ve had people add files to a review they should not have. We’re human – it’s going to happen.   There is currently no way to remove those files from an active review; and deleting the whole review would lose defects found on files we do want to be reviewed.      SB support says this is expected behavior, but I think we users would benefit if this were allowed.    (It could be customizable via Roles to allow at all, or limit to certain roles).  ... View more

When i want to go from one page to the next for a review material have to press the NEXT buttons. It means that when I go from page 1 to page 2 I have to press once the next button for the document from left and then the button NEXT for the document from right. I would like to have this switch from one page to another synchronized for both documents and this synchronization to be activated with a "tick". ... View more

Any change that I make in the display settings when reviewing (e.g. disable “Text: Show Markers” for document review or select “Orientation: Side by Side” for code review) will be gone when I go back to the overview screen. Please allow me to save my settings. ... View more

The coloring scheme of the defect status does not help in getting a clear overview on where you are in the processing of defects. This is due the use of only bright colors that draws attention for everything; even for defects that are already processed (green). The defect list is a Christmas tree. I have seen a lot of complaints from users about the coloring scheme that Collaboraot uses for a long time so apparently there is a philosophy behind it. Please allow a user to configure his own coloring scheme (and save it permanently). ... View more

It has been observed that once the user logins to the Collaborator and all the floating user licenses has been consumed he is not shown the initials (login names) of all users that are already logged into the system.   Please let us know how we can enable this service or if this is known issue from your side as we need this service of letting the user who's exceed the license to knows which all users are already logged into the system. ... View more

Hi, So I don't know if these already exist or will be feature requests. Collapse folder - Every once in a while we have a situation where we have to deal with rather large code reviews. In this situation it would be nice to be able to collapse folders in the Review materials section so you don't have to keep scrolling a lot back and forth. Makes the code reviews a lot less intimidating too. Personal Note - Is there a way to write notes to yourself when doing code reviews? There have been several times when I have wanted to write a note to myself saying "Check X again after checking Y file" or something along those lines. So when I revisit the old file I will remember to do this. Now I don't want these personal doodles to appear to everyone and create unnecessary clutter, so it would be nice to have this as an option. Right now I just open a text editor and leave notes there but it's more convenient to leave notes at the location you want, think Kindle notes.  Both are just nice to have kind of features but would reach help in the user experience if it were available. ... View more

In collaborator it would be nice to be able to have emojis in the comments. ... View more

Could you add multiple selection of Checklist Templates for a Review Template? (Example: In Collaborator, multiple custom fields can be choosen in a review template.) ... View more

Submitted on behalf of Microsemi (Formerly PMC-Sierra)   The motivation for us stems from the cause that usually even project admins have to contact system admins to uncancel a review. It'd be great if there was a feature enhancement for group admins to be able to uncancel a review.   Maybe add a new setting that will allow, "Everyone | Group admins | Author | Creator", to UNCANCEL reviews.     ... View more