Hi, guys! A two-week waiting for the new update was not in vain. This Riter version is aimed at improving stories management. As you know, this element allows you to distribute tasks within a project, organize team work and track its current state. Recently some useful features were added to a story page to increase your opportunities. Read about the last changes in Riter - do not miss the chance to make its usage more productive!

Adding topics to stories

Now you are able to create topics and assign them to stories. What's a topic, you ask? Each project should get a specific set of related keywords which simplify identification and filtering within its stories. Topics allow you to understand the essence, purpose of the tasks. They can be used by developers to group stories of a particular project by some criteria (for example, "feature", "bug", "frontend" and so on). A group of all project stories will be displayed on the right of every story page (below the users section) in an assigned or unassigned state.

Developers can enable and disable topics which describe the task in the best way by clicking on their names. They can also add their own topics to the list, after that new values become available throughout the current project. To add a new topic, put the cursor after existing items and write a required word. Press "Enter" to add it to the list of topics. Topics which are already on the list will not be included twice. You can see some of the first topics in a story card on the main project page.

Discuss tasks before performing

Another interesting feature is addition of annotations to a story. All approaches to project development recommend starting work with its discussion with other team members. A comment textarea includes full markdown support. It also allows to attach files (see below) and upload them to a safe storage.

Attaching files becomes easier

Attaching files may be useful during the creation and discussion of a task. We use our own Vault8 service to upload and store files from Riter users so that you should not worry about the security and reliability of processing your data. You can attach not only images but also other types of files to a story description or annotations. There are some ways to do that:

• You can drag-and-drop a file to an appropriate form. It will be added to the textarea as a markdown link to the Vault8 storage.

• Image uploading from a copypaste buffer is also available. Copy any image into a copypase buffer and use an insert command ("ctrl+v" or "cmd+v") while editing a story description or annotation to paste it. A reference to the image with "image.png" name will be generated.

• Use an annotation toolbar to paste an image from a hyperlink. You will find a corresponding icon ("Image") in the menu. Insert an image URL in the opened form.

• You can also use an Open File Dialog to choose data from your local storage. Click on the "selecting them" link below an annotation textarea to do that.

Note, that if you use the first way to upload any file except of an image, it will be added to your comment as a usual attached file. However, an image will be shown to other users as a picture just on the story page (without downloading). If you wouldn't like to let them see it right there, delete a symbol ! at the beginning of the generated link. Then Riter will not show the image inside your comment or description content.

Create a story in one line!

It is much easier to manage small tasks, therefore you will probably often need to create them. Our team tried to simplify this process as much as possible so now you can create a story just in line without leaving a main project page! How does it work? Each sprint section (besides an overdue one) includes a "New story" element which you used to click to add a task. In its lower right corner there is an arrow icon. Click on it to start creating a story in another way.

An opened form includes the following sections:

• A title. Unlike the previous version, it can also be used to assign topics and users to a story if necessary. Available input formats are listed below. A title is the only required field so you can quickly create a story by filling the only line.

• A description - a standart textarea with a markdown support.

• Estimated time. If the value is specified, a new story state will be changed to "Estimated". Otherwise it will be created as a "Draft".

You can assign topics to a created story by listing them in square brackets separated with a comma OR a space. The story title itself should be placed before or after tags, but not inside it. Use separate brackets for each topic ([feature] [bug] Title after tags) or the only one (Title before tags [feature, bug]). If a topic should contain a space, use a comma to separate tags - in this case a space will not be considered as a separator. If topics list does not include commas, you may use a space to isolate the values. Note, that user cannot create a new tag from a title, just assign an existing one. If you add an non-existent values to brackets, a task will be created anyway but without a false topic.

Adding users to a story works in the same way. Specify developers' nicknames in brackets after @ symbol. You are able to use single brackets for all users and topics as well as different ones. All the rules for assigning users are similar to topics. Note, that the same syntax can be used in a title on a story page, not only in a story card. Here're some possible format examples:

• [@john @sam battle north] Battle with white walkers - A new topic with title "Battle with white walkers" will be created. If the project includes users with nicknames "john" and "sam", the task will be assigned to them. Story topics "battle" and "north" will be set as active if they exist in the project.

• Tags can't be [inside] title. Only after or before [feature] [bug] - A story with topics "feature" and "bug" will be created if the project has such tags. The rest part of the string will be used as a title.

• [update @mike git] Title - A new story will be assigned to "mike", if such a user exists. Topics "update" and "git" will be enabled. As you see, you can write nicknames and topics in any order.

And some other changes...

Check out some more Riter updates which you can find useful:

• Adding a reset button to a stories searching field. Now you can quickly reset all filters at once by clicking the button. The page will be updated automatically.

• Expansion of markdown functionality for story description and annotation editors.

• Prohibition of change a story state to "draft" if it has timeintervals. If a story is in progress, it may be unsafe to allow to do that. We hope that this update will help you to avoid possible mistakes. Now you need to remove all intervals to set the story state to draft.

• Refusal to assign and unassign topics for completed stories. A story should not be changed after it is implemented and closed so it is useless to modify its topics.

Riter development team