ianmjones

Well, as expected once the CaseDetective for FogBugz beta 1 was released, things got a whole lot busier around here.

I’ve had a tonne of great feedback on the first beta, and have been working hard on Beta 2.

One of the biggest problems I expected users of CaseDetective to have would be actually connecting to the FogBugz database, I imagined that there would be configurations that I’d not tested that would have problems, but tried really hard to counter this (including making the connection method options sparse and testable outside of caseDetective). Well, this fear has turned out to be true, but not in the way I’d thought (if I’d expected it then I guess I would have tried to make sure it wasn’t a problem!).

Turns out that a lot of people use Digest and Integrated Windows authentication on their FogBugz websites, not to actually log into FogBugz (it don’t do dat), but on their web server that hosts their installation of FogBugz. This is a right royal PITA, as it pretty much requires that you use IE to use FogBugz and meant that I’d have to find a way of supporting Integrated Windows authentication in CaseDetective.

Well, Fog Creek came to the rescue, I asked Michael Pryor whether he’d consider telling me how they encrypt the passwords in FogBugz, if I know that then I don’t need to use the FogBugz web site at all. Of course he told me straight away, and I’m working on getting it integrated into CaseDetective.

I should have asked Michael months ago when I first approached this problem, but instead I went around the houses and implemented the web logon stuff instead. Michael even (verbally) slapped me over the wrist for not sending him the first Beta before making it public, he said he’d be more than happy to give it a test on a few of their different configurations, I should have done so. Michael also set up a Copilot session where he showed me a couple of the problems he had with CaseDetective, which helped immensely (Copilot is way cool by the way, a breeze to use).

I don’t know what my problem is, every time I’ve asked Michael and Fog Creek anything they’ve always helped me out, but still I’m reticent to ask. I think I’ve learnt my lesson now, Fog Creek seem really happy to help me out, and I should not be shy to ask.

I’m hoping to have Beta 2 ready in a week or two, depending on how well this work goes (It was going well, but I’ve hit a stumbling block that’s taking a lot of research and testing to get over) and free time to actually do the work. Got a few real life things happening over the next couple of weeks, and my current day job is taking a lot at present too due to an impending Beta, Pilot and release.

No rest for the wicked!