Live Demo of OnTime V11 (a Preview)

April 22, 2011 by Hamid Shojaee

I promised that after the local Scott Guthrie event, I would provide a sneak peek at the OnTime V11 UI and get a chance to preview the disruptive performance improvements we’ve made. Here it is:

Watch the video on YouTube

What do you think? (leave a comment)

Tagged with: OnTime V11

Categorised as: Development, Tools

Scott

Very impressive. I am looking forward to this release.

http://www.axosoft.com Hamid Shojaee

Thanks Scott!

http://deconflations.com Duncan

Whilst this looks good I will be interested to see what progress you have made on the Windows version… web is really a side issue for our team…

http://www.axosoft.com Hamid Shojaee

Duncan, the focus has been on making the Web version sooooo good, you wouldn’t want to use the Windows version. The future is the web. Easier deployment, easier management and accessible everywhere. I suspect the reason you guys chose OnTime Windows to begin with is because the User Experience of OnTime for Windows was superior. If the reverse were true, then all the reasons to stick with Windows goes away.

http://deconflations.com Duncan

I agree the UE is important but also we work on a single site with no external access so forcing things into a web browser doesn’t help us at all, still it is impressive to see what you have achieved.
Tim

so are still using webforms or have you switched to asp.net MVC?

http://www.axosoft.com Hamid Shojaee

Tim, most of OnTime V11 is built on MVC.

Ed

I’m impressed–I hope your Windows App is as fast as that (FWIW, I’ve never been impressed with the speed of the Winodws app).
Lindsay

Will the new scratch pad feature be available to Windows users as well?

http://www.axosoft.com Hamid Shojaee

We don’t anticipate the initial version of V11 to include the scratchpad for Windows users.

thomas burg

We use OnTime 10 and host it internally. We do see performance issues both with the Windows and Web client if we are connecting from remote. The issues are somewhat spurious but they do not seem to appear when connected locally to our server running OnTime.

Will this “performance issue when logging in from remote” be better with the Web client of version 11.x ?

http://www.axosoft.com Hamid Shojaee

Yes, absolutely. Remote users using the web version of OnTime V11 will experience a huge boost in performance.

Sebastian Huisman

Hi,

The performance is nice, but what about the most requested and voted features and improvements of the lost YEARS like spellchecker, better text-editor, merging tickets, better time controll, etc.?

A good tip; Stay focussed on tuning the main features first.

http://www.axosoft.com Hamid Shojaee

Sebastian, I couldn’t agree more with your statement of “Stay focused on tuning the main features first.” That’s exactly what we did with V11. It wouldn’t matter how many features we added if we didn’t get the ones we already had “tuned” to be at their best.

http://www.CSMiSolutions.com Mike G.

I’ve been using OnTime for about 5 or 6 years and with each release the product just keeps getting better. The speed in V11 looks amazing!

While I no longer work with a team in India, performance was always an issue for them even when we moved to the OnTime hosted edition located in the London data center. Hopefully the speed of V11 will resolve any performance issues for global teams.

http://www.axosoft.com Hamid Shojaee

Mike, thanks for the kind words. Yes, we definitely expect that global teams will also see a huge boost in performance.

LT

This looks like really good stuff. We’re only using the internal windows version as well…partially because of speed issues. A few questions:

1. What about the integrated Visual Studio stuff? No changes to that?

2. I’m with Sebastian on a few things. I still find it so much easier to pull up OneNote (or something else with a great editor) when I’m trying to log notes on a task that I’m working on. The editor components in OnTime are hard to work with, fonts don’t work consistently, not easy to create bullets, etc. I want everything to be in OnTime, but still find myself going outside at times because of those issues. It sounds like we’re waiting until v12 for any of that to be addressed? or maybe the editor components in the web app will now be better?

3. Moving to web would be great for access outside the office, but there are still times when that access is limited. Still no plans for any offline aspect of OnTime?

4. I presume you’re working out the issues with IE9?

Thanks for some good insights. I can see why you are excited about this!

http://www.axosoft.com Hamid Shojaee

LT, thanks for your comments. Let me address them here:

1. The VS add-in will continue to be supported for V11. Not much has changed in that regard.

2. The editor in OnTime V11 Web is all new. It’s a solid editor and we expect fonts, bullets, etc. to all work perfectly.

3. We currently don’t have plans to provide “offline” access of your OnTime system. We think the value of OnTime comes from real-time data and increasingly people are connected everywhere.

4. The IE9 issue demoed in the video is related to drag-and-drop of attachments. Unfortunately, Microsoft continues to defy the rest of the Internet world by not supporting the HTML 5 features that all the other browsers support. However, the rest of OnTime V11 will work just fine in IE9.

Hope that’s helpful.

LT

Yes, this is helpful. I’ll wait to hear more about the under-the-hood stuff. You know we developers like to know that.

Also, I guess you can still attach files by using browse/select if the drag/drop doesn’t work? That wouldn’t be a huge loss for us right now, but I’m all for getting it all to work in IE9.

http://www.CSMiSolutions.com Mike G.

Hello Hamid,

You’ve stated that the editor in V11 is “solid”. Can you tell us which control you are using for this? For example, is it the Telerik HTML Editor control?

http://www.axosoft.com Hamid Shojaee

Mike, I can tell you it’s not the Telerik HTML editor. We’ll provide more details about what’s under the hood when we are closer to beta.

BB

Thanks for the peek at v11! Looks like some great stuff.

However… I have to take issue with one of your responses to LT. #3 – we may one day all be online all the time but we’re not there yet. My only option for broadband at home is satellite.. painful. That means on days I work from home, it’s way too slow to VPN into the work LAN and use Ontime and so I have NO access to a major tool and a major part of our workflow.

Additionally, what option do I have when I’m at a client site. We are often in our client’s offices (government) with no easy way to access out. It would be VERY nice to type a new incident or defect right on site instead of typing it into notepad (etc) and waiting to put it in the system when we’re back in the office.

The Microsoft Sync Framework was designed to address these issues so they obviously believe there is still a significant need out there. :->

Just some thoughts.

Our company loves OnTime. We very much look forward to the improvements you’re making and again, thanks for the preview.

http://www.axosoft.com Hamid Shojaee

I agree that there are still far too many times when we can’t be online. My argument was that those times are becoming less and less. For us to invest heavily in developing an offline client and addressing significant problems with synching for a relatively small problem which dies a little every day is not a smart way to spend our resources. So while I agree that it’s a problem, it’s just not one that we intend to attack. We believe it will go away with time.

Also, for the times when you are at client office, a mobile solution would work well. I can’t say more about that yet.

Matt

This looks good. When can we expect a preview of the Windows Desktop version? I don’t use the web version so I’m curious to see what’s new in the desktop version…

Thanks,

http://www.axosoft.com Hamid Shojaee

Hi matt. OnTime Windows edition will be mostly the same as it is now. The focus for V11 has been on the web client.

Matt

Thanks, I hope there’s some cool new features…

Paul C.

The UI improvements are awesome, I especially like the notepad idea. Will the new version have improvements to the iPhone app? My best ideas happen when I am away from my workstation, being able to get the idea documented ‘while it’s fresh’ would be a valuable asset.

http://www.axosoft.com Hamid Shojaee

Thanks Paul. As for iPhone improvements or mobile improvements, we can’t say much right now.

LT

I vote for WP7. Seems like a natural fit for the technology you’re using already…and I’ve got one that’s ready to serve as a beta tester.

Whitney

Can you tell me why you didn’t go with Silverlight to develop
the new web client? Am I right to say the whole new web interface
is HTML5, etc.?

http://www.axosoft.com Hamid Shojaee

Whitney, by not relying on Silverlight (or Flash for that matter), we ensure that every major browser can run OnTime V11. Silverlight currently has about 50% penetration and if you build for latest version, the penetration is even smaller.

http://www.IsisFS.com Peter

We are excited about these improvements. We want more, of course (really a compliment).

Please clearify if all demonstrated improvements flow to the “Customer Portal”.

As a “project managment tool” we want our Customer Portal to provide better interactions with our customers:
1. Reporting of open issues (project management reporting).
2. Means to more easily maintain help/training documentation. Which includes:
A. Better means to store and manage documentation.
B. Easier hosting of attachments (we are customer specific–>security).
C. Improvements to Hosted (wiki-like?) help systems?
2. Have security that others can’t see content that is not theirs.
A. Easier control over sharing content with particular customers.
The current complexity leads to lack of confidence and use.
B. Better ability to tell which customers can see the content.

Please clearify what improvements have been made in these areas.
We are willing to be a Beta site.

http://www.axosoft.com Hamid Shojaee

Hi Peter. Thanks for the compliments. The focus of V11 has been on the web interface, but we agree that Customer Portal is due for some major improvements. Hopefully we can get on some of that after V11 release.

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