The roadmap for 1.3 version is published here and, as you can see, the goals are sorted according to priority values: there are top priority features and medium priority ones.

We have not been able to hit this estimated deadline on April 2012 and, because of this, we have had to delay the release date. So, we had pending to set a new point in the calendar and, besides, to take this opportunity to close the final list of features to be packed in the 1.3 version and announced them publicly.

In the early stages of the release cycle, the roadmap is just a declaration of the intentions. However, as time passes you gather more information about the progress and you can make a final decision of the features that will be in and the ones that will be left aside for a later occasion. At present, we are in this second scenario for the 1.3 version and, because of this, after discussing it among us we have agreed on the final list of features that will be shipped in LibrePlan.

And we do not make you wait more for the disclosure of this information ... although a bit of mystery is always good to capture attention ;)

• New estimated date for LibrePlan 1.3: Week 24 (mid-June)
• Final feature list:
  • Top priority tasks. All will be included:
    • Scenarios disability
    • Improvement in WBS setting up behavior
    • Inclusion of currency
    • Warning about new features
    • Permission enhancement
    • Resource-user binding
    • Help & documentation
  • Medium priority tasks. Among them will be included:
    • Vertical line to show with the start of the project
    • KPIs per project
    • Subcontracting module
  • Other new sponsored features defined after the roadmap meeting which were considered interesting to be incorporated into LibrePlan 1.3 are:
    • Money based cost monitoring system
    • Expenses tracking

• It has as clear target to do questions and to reply to them. Messages are organized in threads and they have: one message which is the question and zero or more messages which are replies to the inquiry.
• Questions are tagged with any word which can help to identify it. Example of tags are the topic of the question, the language in which is done, the module of the program they are about, ...
• Questions and answers can be rated.

Together, the above features, allow people to find the information they are looking for easily and, in case the information was not present yet, to write a new question asking for help.

As long term purpose, with this new site we would like to gather a big and useful collection of questions and answers. They will ease the adoption of LibrePlan as planning tool for sure and we hope to achieve it little by little.

Therefore, we are going to start by inviting you to sign up. You just need to visit ask.libreplan.org, and create a user account. From then on, you will be able to start contributing to our LibrePlan repository of questions and you can help us it two ways: making inquiries and replying doubts from others. Besides, if you reply a lot of things you will have the privilege of appearing as one of the people who knows more about the program ;)

Finally, we would like to say that ask.libreplan.org will be our preferred and recommended place to use from now on to ask anything about LibrePlan. So far we had the SourceForge.net forums for this purpose and, for this reason, we are going to keep them up and running for some time. However, as time passes we will cancel them, because we want to avoid the duplicity of communication channels and because we think that the Question/Answer formula is faster, better and funnier.

The major developments in 1.2.3 are the next ones:

• Money based cost monitoring system.
  Previously to this version the cost of the project was monitored using hours as measurement unit. The number of hours allocated in a task is compared with the total tracked worked hours and, in this way, is possible to know if a task is consuming more or less hours than expected.
  
  Now, with the money based cost monitoring system implemented LibrePlan gives a step further. The project manager not only can monitor the cost in hours consumed but in spent money as well.
  
  To control the task cost in money a new field, the budget, has been added in the WBS screen of the project. And the money already spent in a task is calculated using the worked time tracked, the type of worked hours  (standard, overtime,...) and the cost of each resource hour according to the value defined by the cost category the worker belongs.
  
  You can read the following blog post where this feature is explained http://blogs.igalia.com/mrego/2012/03/28/money-cost-monitoring-system-in-libreplan/
• LibrePlan interface will be available in a new language, Polish, thanks to the work done by Krzysztof Kamecki. With it, it is already possible to use LibrePlan in 9 languages: Dutch, English, French, Galician, Italian, Russian, Spanish, Polish and Portuguese.

Besides these main features, many fixes have been included for the issues filed by the LibrePlan users.

Finally, as usual, you can test the new version on-line, download it and read more information in the release notes.

UPDATE: If you are upgrading from previous version maybe you are having some problems with the browser cache. You can find more information in the next link:
http://ask.libreplan.org/questions/25/problems-upgrading-to-libreplan-123

• For the first time RPM packages are going to be provided for the main GNU/Linux distributions based on this package format. This has been a contribution done by Juan A. Suárez Romero. In LibrePlan we want to make it easy to install LibrePlan in as many platforms as possible and we will continue giving steps in this direction in future. In this way, if you have experience in a platform and you want to help us in providing a installation method for it, contact us and we will be glad to count with you help.
• LibrePlan interface is going to be available in two new languages, French and Dutch, thanks to our growing translators community. French community of LibrePlan users is important and we are sure that they are going to receive it with open arms. We have been receiving questions about the possibility to have LibrePlan in French and, now, thanks to the work of Stephane Ayache, Guillaume Postaire and Philippe Poumaroux, this is finally possible. With regard to the Dutch translation, we would like to thank specially our translator Jeroen Baten, because of his enthusiasm, his active attitude and his participation in the community. We are glad to have you among us Jeroen!
• Two new planning features have been added. The first one has consisted of including a graphical representation of the project start date through a dashed black vertical line on the Gantt time axis. This visual clue will be helpful for the project managers because with it they are going to have a more complete and instant view of the project plan. The second one has been the highlight of the violated dependencies on the Gantt chart. Violated dependencies happen when the logic dependencies between tasks conflict with the tasks constraints and in the project is configured that constraints have precedence over dependencies. Now it will be easy to detect these anomalous situations on being painted the violated dependencies in red.
• User experience is a thing that we have been taking care from the project start. This version is not an exception and we have included some work in this area. A first enhancement in this field has been the inclusion of the project status information in the Gantt chart. Now it is displayed next to the breadcrumb. Besides, we have included a grey color to represent a closed project - finished, canceled or stored - in the projects planning view, which is the home page of the application where all the company projects are painted in time. So, from now on, the color code in this window will the following: Projects without any allocated task and not closed will be painted in light blue, projects with some allocated task and not closed will be painted in dark blue and closed projects will be displayed in grey. Finally, a small usability improvement has been incorporated in the progress management window. Now, to measure task progress will be a bit faster because the focus is automatically set in the textbox of the row just created for the new progress value.
• LDAP authentication system has been improved to prevent some undesirable situations. On one hand, LDAP users will not be able to change their password in the LibrePlan interface when LDAP authentication is switched on. On the other hand, LibrePlan administrators will not be able to manage the LDAP user roles if it is configured that they are imported from the lightweight directory.

Besides these main features, many fixes have been included for the issues filed by the LibrePlan users.

Finally, as usual, you can test the new version on-line, download it and read more information in the release notes.

The meeting had two parts. In the first one, it was decided the estimated date to release LibrePlan 1.3 according to the availability of the people contributing to the project in this period. It will happen during the first weeks of April.

In the second part, a set of features was identified as candidates to be included in the roadmap for 1.3. Afterwards, this set of features was globally assessed in the developers mailing list and a consensus was achieved about them. In the wiki you can find where contributors are going to be working during this time and the completed ones will by included in the version 1.3.

But ... let's stop talking and let's start to work to improve LibrePlan and to release a good 1.3 version ;-)

• Interface in Italian as an option. LibrePlan is fully translated into Italian thanks to the work done by Giuseppe Zizza. With this there are 6 language currently available: English, Galician, Italian, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish.
• Upgrade notification module. Now users will be able to know from inside the program when a new version of LibrePlan is available. This will be warned with a small message visible to users with administrative privileges.
• Timeplot chart values are displayed on putting the mouse pointer over the chart lines. This is very helpful for two things. First, to analyze the exact load values in the resource allocation analysis charts. Second, to know the exact earned value indicators at a date. Apart from being displayed the raised values are kept visible so that the user can do other operations or focus his attention on other parts of the screen without having to remember them.

As usual you can test the new version on-line, download it and read more information in the release notes.

FOSDEM is the acronym for The Free and Open source Software Developers' European Meeting and is a two-day event organized by volunteers to promote the widespread use of Free and Open Source software. It takes place in the beautiful city of Brussels (Belgium) once a year and they say that FOSDEM meetings are recognized as "The best Free Software and Open Source events in Europe".

The lighting talk will take place at Ferrer room from 11:20 to 11:35 AM on Sunday 5th of February and we invite you to attend. If you do not know the project, you will leave the room with a good outlook of LibrePlan (present and future).

And if you are already a LibrePlan user, FOSDEM can be a good opportunity to meet in person and listen to your opinions, suggestions about features that you miss in the program, ...

In LibrePlan, one of our core values is to manage the project in an open way and this is the reason why we like to participate in events like FOSDEM. In the last year we have participated in the LinuxTag, Libre Software World Conference and Open Source World Conference and we want to continue in this line.

It will be a public encounter and all LibrePlan developers, collaborators and users are invited to attend. The purpose is to debate and give priority to the features that will be included in the next version (LibrePlan 1.3).

We think that is a good idea to prepare things in advance, and for this reason, we are going to open a period to gather opinions and feature requests from now on and until the meeeting date. To coordinate this brainstorming our aim is to use the development mailing list. In this way, we have started the process by sending an e-mail announcing this topic and asking for opinions there.

Finally, we would like to encourage you to participate and enrich the debate with your feedback, with your wished features and by explaining the things that you regard as more important to achieve. Help us to make LibrePlan better!

Besides, with this new version, the project has a new image and a revamped website.

This new major version comes with important new features apart from all the bugfixing done since the 1.1 major release. Among the new features, these are the most relevant ones:

Migration to ZK 5 Community Edition.

LibrePlan uses ZK framework as UI toolkit and in this release has been migrated the interface from ZK 3.6 to ZK 5.0.
 
ZK 5 was incompatible with version version 3.6 and this movement have implied:

• Reimplementing LibrePlan custom UI widgets in ZK 5.0 architecture
• Providing an implementation in ZK 5.0 for widgets in 3.6 version which changed their license and which are not open source anymore.
• Reviewing all the application windows and to do small configuration and formatting changes.

This allows us to get advantage of the latest innovations in rich web interfaces and enjoy both the performance  and  architectural enhancements of this new ZK version.
 

Resource allocation engine enhancements.

The planner engine has been improved with three new functionalities:

• Task movements in Gantt view keeps the configured allocation function. Before this, if you configured a stretches function or sigmoid function in a resource allocation and the task was moved because a dependency or constraint set by the user, the allocation function applied in the new point was the flat function. Now, the configured stretches or sigmoid function is used.

• Manual allocation automatic detection in advanced allocation. Now if the user changes the allocation of a task in advanced allocation window, the type of allocation is automatically tracked as manual.

• Manual allocation locking support in Gantt view. So far if a task had a manual allocation and was moved in the Gantt, the custom allocation was lost and a flat function was applied. In this version, a keep manual allocation strategy has been implemented. It consists of disabling the automatic movement of those allocated tasks in the Gantt by being configured with a START IN FIXED DATE constraint after the manual allocation. If the user wants to move these tasks, he has to change in first place the allocation function used and, in second place, has to remove the constraint. In this way, the manual allocation configured is not lost by accident.

Sharing state between perspectives.

The project planning in LibrePlan is achieved by using several perspectives:

• Project scheduling (Gantt).
• Project details (WBS).
• Resource load
• Advanced allocation.

Until this version, the user had to save before abandoning a perspective to avoid losing the changes on going to another. To improve this, in this release, the planning data has been shared among all the project perspectives and on saving in one of them, all the planning data is stored.

This a more natural way of creating the project plan. Now the user can move freely among the project views configuring different things and, on reaching a desired state, he can ask to persist changes.

Besides, with this new feature, the loss of changes by accident is prevented on a perspective change without saving first.

LDAP authentication and authorization module.

In this version the possibility of using LDAP as backend for users has been implemented.
 
An LDAP authentication and authorization module has been developed. With this, it is possible to use the users configured in the company directory without the need to create them in LibrePlan manually.
 
 The main features of this module are:
 

• User passwords saving in LibrePlan database after right authentication option. This allows the LDAP users enter the application if the LDAP is off-line.
• Role matching support. It is possible to map LDAP roles to LibrePlan permissions. Two strategies are provided: Group strategy (all the users under a node) and property strategy (property of the node user with all the role values).

My account area

It has been developed a new top level menu entry called *My account* with several options with a per user scope. This means that they are operations that concern only to the connected user which is configuring them.

The operations included in this zone are:

• Personal data. User can manage his contact information.
• Application preferences. User can select the language of the application and if if the load charts of the planning windows appear folded or unfolded  by default.
• Password administration. User can change his own password.

Functional tests.

One of the maxims of LibrePlan is to create a project with good quality. For this reason in this version functional tests to the project have been incorporated into the project.

Functional tests are black-box tests in which the interface of the program is tested. The tool which has been chosen is Sahi and it allows verifying that all functionalities keep working successfully.

An initial set of Sahi tests have been developed and they will be increased as time passes.

Other minor tasks implemented:

• Internationalization. Some strings were not being translated accordingly to the language used under certain conditions.
• Default login auto-completion is now configurable, you can disable it from the configuration window.
• Now when editing contents, information identifying the element being edited is always displayed on the page heading.
• Work reports minute detail level support has been added. This allows users to specify how many hours and minutes they have devoted to each task. Reports have been updated accordingly to include the work time in minutes too.
• LibrePlan web services have now a new method to export only one entity  by specifying its code.
• Russian and Portuguese translations. Apart from English, Spanish and Galician now LibrePlan is also available in Russian and Portuguese.

You are invited to download LibrePlan 1.2, test it in the on-line demo, read more information about it in the development wiki. Do not hesitate to contact us if you any question or you need further information.