The Blog at Jumptree, a guide to project management, business, coding and anything else that we can think of.

The major coding for Jumptree Project v1.1 is now complete and we’re entering the testing phase now.

In addition to SQL Server 2005 support and Files Management, there is now batch editing for tasks, discussions, and files.

We’re also excited to announce the most requested feature: a Calendar!

Projects, Milestones, and Tasks will each have their own calendars and the Dashboard will have a calendar that displays everything together.

Here’s what the Dashboard Calendar looks like (click to enlarge it):

As for full internationalization, we decided to push it back to a later upgrade as we want to implement support for localized language packs as well.

Jumptree Project v1.1 is a free upgrade for existing users.

Sasha Sydoruk asks, “Where are all the cool startups that run on ASP.NET?”

Well I’m not sure if we’re considered cool enough, but we choose ASP.NET over Java for a variety of reasons.

ASP.NET is easier to setup and deploy

Since Jumptree Project is download software, we needed to ensure that we could readily support our customer’s installation and deployment process.

Have you ever run into problems deploying a Java application and then having to spend hours going through your configuration files and resolving library conflicts? Fun!

Java may be multi-platform, but there are numerous middleware implementations of J2EE—each with its own quirks. So instead of spending time improving your application, you end up having to answer support calls on why your Tomcat application doesn’t work on IBM Websphere.

With .NET, the environment is pretty much standard—so it’s a lot easier for us to provide support.

It’s easier to develop in ASP.NET because it’s just so RAD

The .NET platform supports a vast array of libraries that makes a developer’s life a whole lot easier compared to traditional ASP and Java.

There are a few Java frameworks that stand out, like JSTL, JSF, Struts, Spring, etc., but to make them work together is a painful and convoluted process.

ASP.NET isn’t that expensive

Yes, Java is free. Java Editor Eclipse is free. Java runtime is free. Apache/Tomcat web/servlet server is free.

Free is good.

And this may be the biggest reason why a lot of startups choose something other than .NET.

However, for US $375 you can join the Microsoft Empower for ISVs program and get a whole lotta software, including Visual Studio, Windows Server, SQL Server, Office, MSDN Premium Subscription…

Of course $375 vs. Free isn’t really much of a fight, but do consider the hidden costs—like how much easier it is to setup a .NET environment.

Great community support

There are a lot of great .NET blogs and resources such as The Code Project, 4 Guys From Rolla, NetFx3, and CodePlex—a site hosting open source projects.

And if you run into any problems, just check out the asp.net forum where Microsoft actually has employees answering your questions! Gotta love it when a multi-billion dollar company is trying to promote something…

One platform, multi-language

What happens if your C# developer decides to leave halfway through a project?

Don’t worry because you can just as readily hire a VB.NET developer to continue the work because the .NET platform can interpret both languages.

And if you don’t like C# or VB.NET go ahead and try Ruby or Python.

The whole product

In Crossing the Chasm, Geoffrey A. Moore describes the concept of the whole product:

The concept is very straightforward: There is a gap between the marketing promise made to the customer—the compelling value proposition—and the ability of the shipped product to fulfill that promise. For that gap to be overcome, the product must be augmented by a variety of services and ancillary products to become the whole product.

Page 108, 2002 Edition

Essentially, the whole product is the sum of the product plus anything else that might benefit the customer, such as technical support, add-ons, and system integration.

So by choosing .NET, we can leverage all the work that Microsoft has done to promote it. And when the time comes, we can more easily integrate our project management software with popular Microsoft products, like Outlook, Excel, and SharePoint.

What are you good at?

Ultimately, you should choose a language that you are familiar with and good at. I could have spent time learning Ruby on Rails, PHP or any of the other trendy languages, but I just needed to get started.

And so when I had to choose between Java and .NET—well…that was an easy choice.

Over the past few months we’ve received tons of feedback from customers and trial users so we have a good idea as to what we need to work on first.

Our goal is to release the v1.1 update in November 2007. The big 3 fixes and enhancements will be:

1. SQL Server 2005 support
2. Internationalization
3. Files Management

Other than that there are a few bugs and GUI issues that we’ll work on as well.

We thank all our customers and trial users! Stay tuned, we have a lot more to come!

We got tons of emails asking about bulk pricing and this was something we wanted to do as well.

So here it is!

Introducing the 10 User License Pack and the 100 User License Pack.

The 10 User License Pack has a 10% discount while the 100 User License Pack has a 15% discount.

So if you want to buy 25 User Licenses, then you would get:
2 Ten Packs + 5 Single User Licenses = 25 User Licenses

Thanks for all the feedback so far. Please let us know if you have any other recommendations and suggestions. We’re listening!

First of all, we would like to thank all the BETA Testers. We really appreciate all the time you put into helping us make Jumptree Project better. So thanks everyone!

For existing BETA users who are purchasing v1, here’s how you update without losing your data.

1. Back up your database (just to be safe)

2. Delete everything in the BETA directory EXCEPT the config files

• PMAppSettings.config
• PMDDBConnection.config
• PMEmailSMTP.config
• web.config

and the

• App_Data folder

3. Unzip Jumptree Project v1 and upload everything except the config files and the App_Data folder.

4. In the App_Data folder, open up CivionLicense.xml and enter in the information from the purchase email.

If you have any problems, please email us at support@jumptree.com or visit our Forum.

Also, check out the Jumptree Project Support Manual for further reference.