Code Collaborator on UserVoice

Support creating reviews in RTC after code is submitted [updated]

2012-02-03T14:28:08-08:00

Currently using the RTC plugin, you can create a review before you submit the review, or you can make it happen on a specific state change. I work in on a large team where people use different ways of doing code reviews, and hence not everybody wants a collaborator review done on a particular state change. Moreover, not every issue needs review. Some defects are hairy and require a review, while others ore a simple css change and so you don't bother. I'd like to be able to selectively create a review, even after the code has been submitted.

Alvin Richardson said:

There are two scenarios that I'm looking for:

1. I want to open a review on some smelly code so that I can collaborate on how to approach refactoring it before any change sets are created.

2. A change set that has already been delivered is flagged as needing additional reviews. I want to be able to add change sets to a review at any point.

Support creating reviews in RTC after code is submitted

2012-02-02T15:03:38-08:00

rsshilli suggested:
Currently using the RTC plugin, you can create a review before you submit the review, or you can make it happen on a specific state change. I work in on a large team where people use different ways of doing code reviews, and hence not everybody wants a collaborator review done on a particular state change. Moreover, not every issue needs review. Some defects are hairy and require a review, while others ore a simple css change and so you don't bother. I'd like to be able to selectively create a review, even after the code has been submitted.

"like". While I'm reviewing code, and I see something clever, i'd like to "like" it, eg facebook [updated]

2012-02-02T00:20:35-08:00

Just like facebook and google buzz. It's as good as a "standard" now :-)

Roy said:

This from the man who added our "poke" feature? Will, you're going to get us sued by facebook ;-)

Option to disable subscriptions by template

2012-01-31T14:56:15-08:00

hj33 suggested:
To extend the idea of customizable workflows, a per template setting to enable or disable review/file subscriptions could be useful. The idea is to create an informal review template that does not include all subscribers to a review when only a couple of reviewers are needed.

"like". While I'm reviewing code, and I see something clever, i'd like to "like" it, eg facebook [updated]

2012-01-31T12:41:09-08:00

Just like facebook and google buzz. It's as good as a "standard" now :-)

Will West said:

There's a lot of potential fun here. Instead of hooks, how about an RSS feed of 'liked' snippets, say 10 lines of context on either side of the liked line, with a link back to the liked location in the review? These would make good 'fun fact' entries as well.

What about attribution? I'd be inclined against attribution in the RSS to prevent it being used as a sneaky 'unlike'.

Label the reviewed files with Code Collaborator Review# to SCM

2012-01-30T14:06:29-08:00

Ritesh Athwale suggested:
Code Collaborator shall be able to label to each file with the review # in SCM once review is marked done.

Remove restricted reviews from search results [updated]

2012-01-30T11:32:42-08:00

When Restrict Access to Review is set to Group-based or Participants, all reviews still show up in search results. CodeCollaborator should limit (or have the option to limit) the search results to show only those reviews that you have access to.

Garen said:

I understand why some would want to restrict the search results, but I also consider it a feature: users are able to at least "see" what material exists that they don't have access to, which can allow them to request access to it.

It would be nice to retain the ability to still display some review information in search results to certain users (but still restrict full access to reviews).

Attach a file to a comment [updated]

2012-01-30T04:19:36-08:00

I would be useful to be able to attach a file to a comment. You might want to add a design drawing, or a datasheet, or anything that makes the comment more helpful.

Allan Todd said:

Nice idea. I can think of adding sketches, spreadsheets, Word docs, ...

"like". While I'm reviewing code, and I see something clever, i'd like to "like" it, eg facebook [updated]

2012-01-30T04:16:53-08:00

Just like facebook and google buzz. It's as good as a "standard" now :-)

Allan Todd said:

Nice idea. Perhaps best done through a hook so each site can customise how this is done (e.g. tag it in a company wiki, intranet page...)

Allow indentation in comments [updated]

2012-01-30T04:11:18-08:00

When reviewing code, sometimes I want to suggest better ways of doing things and so want to include snippets of code in my comments. Code Collaborator trims all leading whitespace on a comment line and collapses multiple whitespace characters down into a single space, which makes it hard to format code snippets.

Allan Todd said:

Not vital but it would be helpful.

Add a new state to mark defects as 'Not a defect' or 'Rejected or Deferred' [updated]

2012-01-30T01:38:44-08:00

Currently defects has option to show either 'Mark as fixed' or 'Mark open'. Practically, author may find few defects logged by a reviewer may not be really defects and he/she may discuss the same with reviewer and align that it is not a defect. So, we should have a way to mark those defects as 'Not a defect' or 'Rejected' or 'deferred'. Without having this, the defect count gives wrong metrics as few of them are actually not 'defects'.

Allan Todd said:

Agree 100% with Roy & Srikanth's comments -- we use "Delete" and "Track Externally" in exactly these ways.
Furthermore there is the "no smoke without fire" argument -- unless you have a reviewer being wilfully perverse then the fact that someone saw something wrong is an indication that the code / comments / documentation could be clearer.

Custom word for "Defect" [updated]

2012-01-30T01:35:44-08:00

- Admin configurable word to use for "Defect" - also possibly use correct SCM-specific word for "changelist"

Allan Todd said:

Very useful feature in v6 -- we are planning to change from "Defect" to "Action Item".

Configurable "Wrap to Beginning" functionality [updated]

2012-01-30T01:27:45-08:00

Allow the user to configure whether they want to automatically "Wrap to Beginning" when iterating through changes in a file, or stop at the end of the file. This would be preferable to the current implementation which pops up a modal dialogue once the end of file is reached. In this case a popup dialogue does not seem necessary and disrupts the flow.

Allan Todd said:

I voted for this as it is worded but the best option is the suggestion to add a "Next File>" button to the popup box.

Delete files from review [updated]

2012-01-30T01:23:19-08:00

code collaborator should allow deletion of file from review, if uploaded in error by author. Currently, author has to delete review ad recreate new review.

Allan Todd said:

This could be handled like the (very useful) redacted comments in CC v6, i.e. the file is still listed but clearly marked as "to be ignored".
As ebrown says you can delete changelists before comments are made, but it is too easy (for me at least!) to not realise until too late that the changelist includes things I shouldn't have included.

Provide a search capability within the file that you have selected so you don't have to page thru [updated]

2012-01-27T01:11:46-08:00

Currently there is no file search/grep capabilties when performing the diff. If the reviewer is looking for a very specific text/function, they have to page thru the entire file which is time consuming and tedious

Ian Badcoe said:

I have run out of votes, and do not know how to get any back...

But putting aside the total lameness of this forum as a support medium...

I would _kill_ for this feature. It is the single thing that makes codecollab less than useful. At present I have to use CC to just indicate which files/phrases I should be looking for and then go search the depot in DevStudio to perform the actual review. AND even when doing that, you stop me selecting and copying the interesting strings in the CC window.

Actually, maybe select/copy is the single most annoying thing, but this is very close behind it.

Maximally cumbersome or what?

Add a user preference for changelist rollup setting [updated]

2012-01-27T01:07:39-08:00

Would be great to be able to set a default of "roll up all changelists"

Ian Badcoe said:

Would that leave a user who didn't like the default setting having to change the setting in each refresh of each review? If so, that would barely be an advance over current...

Display Subversion Revisions in the Select Revisions step [updated]

2012-01-26T22:52:21-08:00

When using the Code Collaborator GUI with Subversion, you can add a Revision to a review. In the "Select Revisions" step of the GUI's wizard you have to type in the Revision number(s) you want and then click an Add button. It would be great if instead you could just pick a Revision(s) from a pre-populated list. The list could be really long, so the implementation would have to be smart about populating it - do just part of the list initially, then more as the user pages down, etc.

Anonymous said:

The list could be filtered and sorted by date, user, etc.

Add a user preference for changelist rollup setting [updated]

2012-01-26T14:07:51-08:00

Would be great to be able to set a default of "roll up all changelists"

John Lockhart said:

A feature of this type didn't quite make it into the initial 7.0 release, but we will revisit this for the first service release. Given that most of your reviews are going to be similar in terms of the number of changelists, would it not be best to let the Admin set the default display for all new reviews and then let the user switch if desired, e.g., the default is overlay, but a user can change the view if desired.

Support addgitchangelist natively [is now planned]

2012-01-24T09:40:54-08:00

SmartBear provides an unsupported bash script called 'addgitchangelist' so that a particular git commit (along with all comments) can be added to CC. This is much more useful IMO than the existing commands for adding git diffs. It would be really nice to have this built in to the client so that I could do 'ccollab addgitchangelist XYZ'.

Support addgitchangelist natively [updated]

2012-01-24T09:40:54-08:00

Will West (admin) responded:

this is currently available in the 7.0 beta.

Support addgitchangelist natively [updated]

2012-01-23T07:34:34-08:00

kr said:

please add it

Provide a REST API [updated]

2012-01-20T07:26:12-08:00

Provide an HTTP REST API so we can easily data-mine Code Collaborator to get data, reports and statistics for display on our intranet site.

Roy said:

We don't have a proper REST API, but you can get the sort of data you describe by using "ccollab admin wget" to pull the CSV formatted output of our reports.

Provide a REST API

2012-01-19T01:53:50-08:00

Steve Clibbery suggested:
Provide an HTTP REST API so we can easily data-mine Code Collaborator to get data, reports and statistics for display on our intranet site.

Add a random reviewer

2012-01-19T01:46:58-08:00

Steve Clibbery suggested:
Add a link to the participants section of a review to add a random user as a reviewer. We want to encourage more knowledge sharing among our team. A step further would be an admin option to automatically add a random reviewer to every review.

Anchor pending comment text to the original line when clicking on a different line

2012-01-13T14:54:27-08:00

hj33 suggested:
It should still be possible to move the line number before the comment is submitted through some user action, but it would have to be an intentional action (i.e. click the anchor icon to have a line drawn through the anchor icon to indicate you can now relocate the comment) vs. just clicking another line which can happen accidentally. Once the line number has been changed then the comment would automatically be anchored to the new location, unless the user repeats the step to move the line number.

Leave the "Finished" button area available. [updated]

2012-01-12T11:04:28-08:00

When a reviewer says "Waiting" for "something", the "Finish" button is no longer is displayed. If that reviewer changes their mind, they must comment, resulting in all reviewers being sucked back into the review again Instead, I believe the tool should only hide the "Waiting" button area if that reviewer is already waiting. It should leave the "Finished" button area available.

mhirst said:

We are having a big problem with deadlocked reviews. I've seen a case of an author sitting in "waiting" state for a couple of weeks after his reviewers clicked "Finished." He thought that they were not done. Many people will interpret "Waiting for any activity" to include "Waiting for someone to click 'Finished'". Generally speaking, we want the author to have full control over finishing a review. Clicking "Waiting" takes that control away.

Leaving the "Finished" button available seems like a good solution for the problem.

Add support to 'addchanges' for SVN changelists [updated]

2012-01-11T13:14:22-08:00

Subversion has a command, 'svn changelist', which allows naming a set of files in the working copy. Code Collaborator's 'addchanges' command should take an optional argument naming this changelist. If present, only the changes introduced by the files in the changelist should be uploaded to the review.

Anonymous said:

This is the single most useful feature I can think of for adding to Code Collaborator (command line and ccollabgui).

Ability to hypertext URL's [updated]

2012-01-10T13:41:06-08:00

Instead of displaying long URL's it would be nice to use hypertext to shorten the link.

JC said:

This would be useful for linking to an external bug database such as clearquest. One could track a defect externally and put the link directly to a new clearquest defect for direct access.

Ability to hypertext URL's [updated]

2012-01-10T11:15:15-08:00

Instead of displaying long URL's it would be nice to use hypertext to shorten the link.

Cody Casterline said:

While Code Collaborator doesn't currently allow inputting hypertext links in comments, if you're linking to things with a regular URL format (i.e.: something that can be matched by a regular expression), you might want to use our Automatic Links functionality:
http://codecollaborator.smartbear.com/docs/manual/6.0/admin_automatic_links.html

So, for example, instead of pasting in URLs to http://bugs.example.com/long/url/to/your/bug/number/1234

You could instead type:
Bug 1234

... which Code Collaborator would recognize and link to the appropriate place automatically.

Add a counter for changes in current file to help with navigation and evaluation.

2012-01-10T08:07:30-08:00

JC suggested:
Adding a counter in the file view would be helpful a couple reasons. It would help with navigation for a heavily changed file. The reviewer would know where in the file they are, and how much they have left. A feature could also be added which remembers this as long as the user is hitting the "next" navigation button Code Collaborator could bring them back to where they left off next time they open the same file. This would be useful for longer reviews when the current file is not reviewed in one sitting.

Allow author to specify which files a reviewer needs to review.

2012-01-10T08:01:21-08:00

JC suggested:
This would be very useful for larger reviews where there are certain files (a subset) of the review which a particular reviewer must review, but may not care about others. For instance a common change throughout the code base that must be made at once in multiple components. Authors can specify component owner's review their files only. Check boxes or other mechanism would be ideal. This also allows reviewers to "finish" their review without having to review all files and comments.

Ability to hypertext URL's

2012-01-09T14:14:45-08:00

hj33 suggested:
Instead of displaying long URL's it would be nice to use hypertext to shorten the link.

add server-side support for adding TFS changesets [updated]

2012-01-09T09:19:21-08:00

Like you have for Perforce and Subversion now, but for TFS.

Stephen Buck said:

Microsoft TFS is creating a large presense in the market place and our company has already started migrating to it as well. You will need to integrate with this tool.

Import PDF annotations as comments [updated]

2012-01-09T02:26:26-08:00

There are several different tools out there (in addition to Adobe's Acrobat, of course) that can annotate a PDF file with additional commentary. For example, PDF XChange Viewer Pro from Tracker Software. Would be really cool to have an option to import those comments into the review when an annotated PDF is added to the review. There appears to even be specific information available such as page number, x/y coord., etc. If the annotated information provided something in the way of a userid that could be mapped to a Code Collaborator userid, then attribution of the comment would not be a problem.

Mark Elson said:

Agreed. It would also be handy to be able to export a pdf file with Code Collaborator comments inserted as pdf sticky notes. Then, with the import feature described above, you could then get a nice round-trip thing going on here with external reviewers. (The ideal would be to make CC directly available to external users but some IT depts/companies would never go for that).

Add a "refresh" button in the "Page is too large to auto-refresh. You may refresh your browser for the latest." message

2012-01-06T15:35:21-08:00

David Karr suggested:
If I'm working on a large review, I get the "Page is too large ..." message. I'm fine with that. What's annoying is that the "Refresh" link is all the way at the top of the screen, and the "Waiting" and "Finish" buttons are all the way at the bottom of the screen. It would be nice if that floating "Page is too large ..." message also had a "Refresh" button so I wouldn't have to scroll all the way back to the top of the page to refresh, and then scroll all the way back down to get back to the "Waiting" and "Finish" buttons.

Option to allow author only to re-open completed reviews [updated]

2012-01-04T10:18:02-08:00

I recommend adding an administrative option to allow authors only to explicitly re-open reviews. This option can be either enabled or disabled by the administrator. Currently the option that is close to achieving that is "Allow Reopening Completed Reviews" which allows participants to re-open the review by making an additional comment. This is dangerous as it may cause accidental opening of completed reviews and inviting everyone back. Whereas if the author is the only person allowed to re-open the review by pushing a specific button for this, it would reduce the headache for the administrator.

mhirst said:

This looks like the same request as "Restrict review reopen privileges by role"

LDAP and Custom users [updated]

2012-01-04T09:49:03-08:00

Give Code Collaborator the ability to allow admins to turn on LDAP but to also create custom users for automation and scripts that would not be found in LDAP.

mhirst said:

Our Code Collaborator admins are also engineers who perform reviews. When the engineer is logged in to conduct reviews, he or she should have standard privileges thus restricting him/her to the given review process. We would prefer this person should log into a separate admin account if admin tasks are required.

Admins can provide better support if they are able to log in as a user to test functionality as a user would see it.

Admins tend to performs demos. We want to show demos from the user's perspective, not the admin's perspective.

We also don't want to propagate the one official "admin" user password to the various admins at sites around the world since the admin role can change at any time. This golden password is given only to the one or two designated "super-admins."

So it makes sense that each admin would have two login ID's: a) the LDAP for logging in as a user, b) something else for logging in as an admin.

Restrict review reopen privileges by role [updated]

2012-01-04T09:09:31-08:00

mhirst said:

We would like to have the ability for Authors to reopen reviews while reviewers and observers would not be allowed this privilege. (Though I wouldn’t be surprised if some other organizations might want to allow authors and reviewers to reopen reviews, but not give observers this power.)

Because some unit testing can occur after a code review is complete, we find that reviews are reopened fairly often when the author discovers a new bug. Often testing will reveal that a new file needs to be modified and thus subject to review (something that is difficult to catch by anyone other than the author). For this reason we have always enabled the “Allow Reopening Completed Reviews:” setting to allow reviews to be reopened.

Our code review process recently changed such that we now have a tendency to add a fairly large number of observers onto reviews. Now too often we have run into situations where an observer, days after the review is completed and code checked in, have made a comment in a review thus reopening the review. We feel that if a late comment is important enough, it can be put in an email to the author. If the author feels the new issue is significant but does not warrant creating a new review, then the review can then be reopened. Administrators can sometimes be hard to get hold of so we prefer not to rely on that path for reopening reviews.

So we propose a change to the “Review Process Options” “Allow Reopening Completed Reviews:” drop-down selections:

From:

Don’t Allow
Allow

To:

Don’t Allow
Author
Author, Reviewer
Author, Reviewer, Observer

Support for ClearCase Visual Studio plugin

2012-01-03T05:33:49-08:00

Rotem suggested:
Support for ClearCase Visual Studio plugin, same as the eclipse one

Support addgitchangelist natively [updated]

2011-12-29T10:10:50-08:00

Garret Smith said:

I would like 1st-class server-side git integration!

Increase Text Size Limit in Oracle

2011-12-28T09:17:54-08:00

Cody Casterline suggested:
Code Collaborator uses conservative numbers when setting maximum text lengths for Oracle databases. (It respects values returned by JDBC.) However, Oracle can support columns with more text. Customer requests that we support this in Code Collaborator.

Add Versions support for ClearCase Remote Client (CCRC)

2011-12-27T11:31:42-08:00

ebrown suggested:
Implement add versions for CCRC files

Create a built-in way to archive review information

2011-12-22T09:04:29-08:00

Robert Volk suggested:
The comments and other bits of review information are stored in the database and are not affected by the archiving process. When opening a review file that has been archived, all review comments will still be displayed, and only the file itself will be removed. Create a process to archive this information also.

Filter files automatically added [updated]

2011-12-22T05:50:03-08:00

We have system where all code submissions are automatically sent for review. However not all files a suitable for reviewing. It would really useful if we could whitelist / blacklist file extensions being uploaded for review so that we could filter out files we need to submit but don't want in a review.

Jaseypace said:

I contacted support as well. They said to suggest it was added here as a feature.

Option to complete review when all files reviewed by at least one person [updated]

2011-12-21T07:19:26-08:00

Currently a review is not complete until every person has reviewed every file. We would like an option so that the review is complete when every file has been reviewed by at least one person. This would be useful for larger reviews where different people need to review different subsets of the files, where we need to know that every file has been looked at, but we don't want to force people to (pretend to) look at files that they know nothing about. It would also record the information about who actually reviewed which file, instead of the current situation where it is assumed that everybody reviewed and approved every file - especially when it is perfectly possible that there are some files that everybody merely rubber-stamped because they thought somebody else would pay attention to it.

Roy said:

In the product today all files do *not* have to be "reviewed" by all participants. However all reviewers do have to click "Finish" at the bottom of the Review Summary page for the review to complete.

You don't even have to open the files.

Add "Number of User Comments" column to Review List report [updated]

2011-12-20T22:11:05-08:00

The "Review List" report currently has a column named "Number of Comments". This counts user-entered comments *and* "accepted" marks. Add another column that only counts user-entered comments.

Anonymous said:

It's really a must have feature..can someone from SB respond here about their take on this

Option to complete review when all files reviewed by at least one person

2011-12-20T12:02:45-08:00

Anonymous suggested:
Currently a review is not complete until every person has reviewed every file. We would like an option so that the review is complete when every file has been reviewed by at least one person. This would be useful for larger reviews where different people need to review different subsets of the files, where we need to know that every file has been looked at, but we don't want to force people to (pretend to) look at files that they know nothing about. It would also record the information about who actually reviewed which file, instead of the current situation where it is assumed that everybody reviewed and approved every file - especially when it is perfectly possible that there are some files that everybody merely rubber-stamped because they thought somebody else would pay attention to it.

Komodo Edit/IDE Plugin [updated]

2011-12-19T03:52:37-08:00

Currently my team uses Komodo Edit and IDE and our Company would like us all to use Code Collaborator. I would switch to Eclipse, but it scares some of the notepad people.

Srikanth said:

Is Eclipse TCL plugin an option to consider since Code Collaborator already has a good Eclipse plug-in support?

jump to first action item [updated]

2011-12-19T03:00:40-08:00

When I have action items in a big review, the only way to get to the first action item, and the next one after that, is simply to scroll down the page until I see the yellow balloons. It would be very convenient, especially for big reviews, if there was a simple action that would scroll the page to the next yellow balloon.

Srikanth said:

There is already a way to do this! You can use the "< Prev" and "Next >" buttons on the top of the review page to go between action items.

Yet another way to do this is from the review summary page where instead of clicking on the filename from the review summary page, why not click the first balloon that shows up on the summary page itself? That should open the review as well as navigate to the first action item.

The above two comments were with respect to Code Collaborator v5.0.5026.