ZenTao Community Edition 20.6: Enhanced User Interface for Easier Navigation

1. Download

Hello everyone! We are thrilled to announce the launch of ZenTao Community Edition 20.6! Following the initiation of our restructuring project in April 2023, we have invested over a year in development, utilizing the full strength of our product and development teams to create an entirely new user experience for our valued users.

This release focuses on significant enhancements in user experience and code architecture.

In terms of user experience, we have implemented a complete upgrade. First, we introduced a seamless refresh technology that significantly enhances the smoothness of system operations, allowing users to complete tasks more efficiently. Additionally, we optimized the theme colors, enabling users to personalize their interface settings according to their preferences or company branding, which enhances their sense of belonging and comfort with the system. We also upgraded the dashboard content, adding overviews and progress data for both products and projects. The product dashboard now includes annual and monthly progress metrics, as well as statistics on bugs and releases. Furthermore, we introduced two modes—simple and full—on the form pages, making information entry more intuitive and convenient, thereby improving work efficiency.

Regarding code restructuring, we made substantial improvements from the framework level down to the business code. As an open-source software, the refactored ZenTao is now more user-friendly and easier to maintain, while also delivering enhanced product performance and higher security. The restructuring work for version 20 includes several key aspects: we introduced a new UI library, adopting our self-developed ZUI3 front-end framework, which has significantly improved both user interaction and development efficiency; a new ZIN page development model allows for on-demand calls to front-end components through configuration, facilitating rapid page development and greatly enhancing efficiency; we also implemented strong type checking in PHP, which significantly reduces the potential bugs during inter-module calls; we covered over 3,000 methods in the Model layer with unit test cases, making the code more robust; in addition, we added extensive comments to improve code readability and clarify functionality; finally, based on the MVC architecture, we introduced two additional layers, zen and tao, within the business modules to optimize code encapsulation and organization.

The release of version 20 marks a significant breakthrough in both user experience and technical implementation. We believe this new version will provide users with an improved experience and greater work efficiency. We sincerely appreciate your ongoing support and feedback, and we will continue striving to deliver outstanding products and services!

3. Key New Features:

Related Forms:

• Optimized the layout structure for core forms (program, project, product, execution, requirement, task, bug, use case).
• Complex forms now feature a toggle between simplified and full versions, allowing additional fields in the simplified version to remain fixed.
• Enhanced the form editor for improved usability.

Product:

• Introduced a hierarchy for business requirements.
• Supports a three-tier requirement logic (business requirement, user requirement, development requirement) for detailed breakdowns.
• Only the lowest-level development requirements allow for task breakdowns, as well as associations with bugs and cases.
• The requirement list now supports both tree and flat views.

DevOps:

• Added branch list under GitLab repository
• Added tag list under GitLab repository
• Added commit list under repository
• Adjusted submenu for GitLab repository

Notification Center:

• The panel now features a notification center list.
• Notifications display the notifier, time, and content.
• Users can set retention periods for messages in the notification center.
• Message records can be marked as read with a single click.

Project

• Projects support association with business requirements, user requirements, and development requirements.
• When creating and editing projects, a switch has been added to restrict the types of requirements that can be associated with the project.
• The lists of business requirements, user requirements, and development requirements in the project have been merged into a single requirements list.
• In waterfall projects, a requirements menu has been added to the phases for requirement types.