Tackle, A simple Scrum Team Management tools hosted in CodePlex, is very easy to use and simple. As others Scrum Team Management tools, Tackle deployed as a BS application, it has a fat server and thin clients which only require an appropriate Web Browser, such as Windows Internet Explorer or Fire Fox.
I am used to ScrumWorks Basic, which is hosted in JBOSS 4 and provides both a Java Web Application and a Web-based client. but unfortunately, the company has release a new version of ScrumWorks, they only provide a commercial version which called “ScrumWorks Pro”,and no longer support the free version which called “ScrumWorks Basic”.
It is the reason why I am searching a new tool to support my Scrum work.
I have spent a lot of time on studying Microsoft Dot Net framework(this site is built on the ASP.Net2 using DotNet Blog Engine V1.4.5), so I focused on DotNet terrain, finally, I saw Tackle and decided to try it. I wrote this article for recording and sharing my experience on it.
Pre-requirement:
Before your installation, you must have the following software installed in you server machine:
- Windows XP sp2+ / Windows Server 2003 / Windows Vista. It may support Windows 7, I am not sure about this.
- IIS 5+
- Microsoft DotNet framework 2+
- Asp.Net Ajax Extensions.
- Windows Install 3+
- SQL Server 2005+, express-editions can be supported.
Further more, if you choose SQL Server 2008 as your database, you should install Windows Install and Windows Power Shell first, the two software will be installed by the default installation of SQL Server 2008 Express+.
For me, I’d rather choose SQL Server 2005 Express than 2008 version, because:
- The size of downloaded files is quite different, the 2005 is about 60M but 2008 is about 600M!
- The system requirement is quite different, the 2008 need a whole administrator-access and we must provide two user passwords,the Administrator’s and Network-User’s.
- The last reason is that I think the extra services, i.e. report service, are useless for me.
There are some links to download resource from Internet:
Install IIS
It is quite simple to install IIS into Windows Servers and Vista. For Windows XP, you may need to install Windows XP2+ first.
Install DotNet Framework
Register ASP.Net to IIS
Navigate to the directory of Microsoft Dot Net framework, and then run “aspnet_regiis –i” to register ASP.Net to IIS.
As you can see in the preceding, there may be not only one frameworks you have installed, go to the directory named “v2.0.50727”.
Install SQL Server
Note that you must install the SQL Server in mixed login mode.
Install ASP.Net AJAX
Install Tackle
Note that you must input a right user name to “Tackle Administrator” in the dialog “Tackle Web and Database Settings”.The user name must be same as the name which you currently login into the server. For instance, I logon in my laptop with user name “jeasonzhao” and want to install Tackle into this laptop, the user name must be “jeasonzhao”.
So, you have installed all of the Tackle and it’s requirements.
If you encountered the following error when navigating the site:
HostingEnvironmentException: Failed to access IIS metabase.
The following steps may be help for resolving this issue:
cd C:\WINT\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727
aspnet_regiis -ga administrator (Grant IIS access right to user named “administrator”,the user name should be currently user logon in you server.)
aspnet_regiis –i (Install ASP.Net,re-register the ASP.Net to IIS)
iisreset /noforce (Restart IIS instance)
Then you can start the IIS now,and using your web browser navigate to “http://localhost/Tackle”. If you can not see anything or some error occurs, you should read the install guides carefully, there are some trouble-shooting in those documentations.
If you encountered the following error when navigating to show reports or Burn Down chart.
Parser Error
Description: An error occurred during the parsing of a resource required to service this request. Please review the following specific parse error details and modify your source file appropriately.
Parser Error Message: Could not load file or assembly 'Microsoft.ReportViewer.WebForms, Version=8.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a' or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified.
Source Error:
Line 1: <%@ Page Language="C#" MasterPageFile="~/MasterPage.master" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeFile="SprintTasksReport.aspx.cs" Inherits="SprintTasksReport" Title="Tackle - Sprint Task and Resources Report" %>
Line 2:
Line 3: <%@ Register Assembly="Microsoft.ReportViewer.WebForms, Version=8.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a" Line 4: Namespace="Microsoft.Reporting.WebForms" TagPrefix="rsweb" %>
Line 5: <asp:Content ID="Content1" ContentPlaceHolderID="ContentHolder" Runat="Server">
You should install a report view first, an easy way to get the DLLs is from : http://download.csdn.net/source/743898, download the files , extract all of them into /Tackle/bin, and restart IIS then you can view reports and charts. There is no obvious need for installing Microsoft Report Viewer 2005/2008.
I do not want to show more details about how to manage a project and how the User-interfaces looks like, you can found more interesting pictures/screenshots from : http://tackle.codeplex.com/Wiki/View.aspx?title=Screenshot&referringTitle=Home
Note that Tackle has no user interface for login into, it use the use current login into server as Tackle user.
At the end of this article, I have to make a short brief of the source code of Tackle, because some guys may get a error message that his right in Tackle is “read-only” rather than “administrator”.
Some guy has asked “where is the source code of Tackle?”, the answer is all of the source code is in the IIS virtual directory that you have installed into your server. There is no extra/customized library,and all helper/bean classes are reside in the directory “app_code”.
The function which handling login and permissions is in source file “MasterPage.master.cs” and named “protected TackleError.ErrorCode AuthorizeUser()”.