In the first part it went helping around Web-based services, almost any small enterprise can a performante developing efficient and nevertheless inexpensive companies IT. Today I would like to present further tools used by us. These are aligned according to our business model – software was based – with priority to our “production processes”.
Perhaps you ask yourselves: Google, CentralStationCRM, drop box, Colmex and still continue now it? That sounds after innumerable isolated solutions and an enormous complexity. Which however all services have are in common that they are to be served simply and intuitively. And they co-operate to the majority smoothly – or need at all no interfaces.
Bugtracking
As software we document manufacturers nose, as soon as you are near carried us to be noticeable or by our customers at us. These categorize and evaluate we then, in order to process it in a meaningful order and combination. Around this process to illustrate we use 16bugs as Bugtracking service. There is a free variant, which is sufficient for us so far. We can assign arising errors to the individual ranges of our application and solve there them so together. Clearly more efficiently, than optimizing several times in the same “corner”.
16Bugs is ago relatively intuitively operable of the Usability. It is not completely self-describing and at the beginning needs one a little time, in order to have the Workflow and categorization clearly. As soon as can one is settled however simply new of nose/error accordingly put on and this process.
Mercurical and Bitbucket – version administration & Hosting for software development
Bitbucket is a service of Atlassian. I made earlier experiences with software of Atlassian by Jira and Confluence. Two tools, which did not convince me in things Usability. With Bitbucket it concerns a Hostingservice for the version administration Mercurical. The topic is anyway very technical, therefore one will not come with the mechanism and the use around a basic stick at knowledge in the range around. Who has the basic knowledge, but is perhaps inexperienced: Train is worthwhile oneself. How does the use of Bitbucket function? Small changes to our software projects are fed, after they were tested locally on our computers, into on-line version administration. There the changes are then united with the actual software and can be brought in into the live system.
For the sake of completeness: Mercurical is the version administration, Bitbucket is “only” a Hosting service. In combination a rather good team.
Here one sees, how can be parallel worked in several branches. As soon as the development is final, the subproject with the main project is united (merge).
To the fact it is great that one can work in different Branches (branches). There is a master Branch, which always is at the nähesten at the current Live system. We plan for example a new feature can we this on basis of the master Branches, but completely uncoupled develop. The advantages are obvious: if a small error in the Live system arises, we can repair these briefly in the master Branch and update the Live system. The changes for the new feature flow only into the Live system if we brought the two branches together. Otherwise the largest advantage of a version administration is naturally in the fact that we can jump at any time back. For example, if individual changes are to be cancelled.
By Mercurical and Bitbucket our complete process of development and programming over Testing became more flexible up to the Deployment (Live scolded from changes) clearly more simply, faster and. We can recommend this combination really most warmly.
Activities in Social network
For our activities on Twitter and Facebook I use primarily the service Hootsuite, in order to supervise certain terms and to send messages away purposefully and if necessary temporally planned. So individual Keywords on Twitter can be supervised, in order to be able to start if necessary communication with Hootsuite to the own Streams (e.g. all messages of my contacts).
Lately I use additionally and strengthen the official Twitter Client for Mac. One gets mentions of its accounts or direct messages so immediately after publication with a small message faded in. In particular for the service speed in Social network rather helpfully. So one does not have completely to leaf so frequently by the Twitter Stream, because one receives the most important things in such a way.
Finally to the comfort of Cloud services
Although everything Web-bases our data in the Cloud, therefore, to be stored, we use mostly local software for comfort reasons. In our case it is the Mac software. Apple mail, iCal and the directory integrate themselves with our CRM and google Apps – in addition, the same is valid for the Windows counterparts Outlook and CO as well as for mobile terminals (iPhone, iPad & Blackberry). Googlemail and the calendar also are so good, the classical Desktop mail program and the calendar clearly rather use I. If I am on the way or at another computer, I can have owing to Cloud technology nevertheless all information.