Welcome to the help section. These pages somehow contain both documentation and help about XPWeb.

Important

• Surprised to see some links or actions are not available? Read about login.
• Can't export to XML? There might be an explanation here.

Navigation

Navigation through XPWeb sections is made with links at the top of each section.

• The links at the very top of the navigation bar link to sections that don't really depend on a project.
• Just below is the project you have selected as being your "working project".
• Links that are below the project name depend on the project you have selected. These sections will not be available until you select a project.
• Other sections are:
  • Home (at the very left)
  • Help (you managed to end up here ;-)
    By default, the Help link brings you to help related to the current section.
  • Login: just below the help link.
    Displays the current logged user if any.

The current section is emphasized with white background.

Version check

To check if you are running the latest version of XPWeb, just visit home section and click on the link below XPWeb logo.
You might also have configured it to check automatically if a new version is available, when you log in as admin.

Print display

Most sections of XPWeb can be displayed in a lightweight version.

Click on the button to popup a print view of the section where you might be prompted to choose parameters.

Note that print displays have been made the lightest possible, so it is not possible to modify or insert items.
Also, the "print" button at the top will directly print the page, but does not appear on the printed page...

The print button only appears whe a specific print display is available.

XML

Most sections of XPWeb provide an XML export.

Clicking the button brings you directly to the XML version of the page.

This button:

• does not appear on some sections where XML is not available (example: Home, Doc).
• turns to grey if you are running XPWeb on PHP 4.x or less.
  XML export is only supported on PHP 5.x or more.

Skins, themes

There no full skins or themes support for XPWeb.

But because it uses CSS it is possible to define your own stylesheet and "customize" it.

To override or modify existing style classes you just need to create your own XPWeb_local.css file and place it in /XPWeb/View/style/ directory.

You can also apply XSL stylesheet to the XML output... be imaginative!

Display of an item

XPWeb items are stories, metaphor words, links, projects, members, etc.

Items are based on a type, an id, and most of the time a description.
The header of an item displays its title and id.
The title and description (in grey italic) are displayed in the main area.
Most of the items can be modified or deleted. The modify / delete links appear at the bottom of the item. On good web browsers, these links appear only when you move the mouse over it.

Example of a task (move your mouse on the item if you don't see modify / delete links)



On this example, the item also displays start and end date, weight in terms of ideal days, responsible member, and theory and actual completion.

 Mini / maxi an item

Any item can be "minimized" by clicking on its header.

You can try yourself by clicking on the blue header on the previous example task, and the task will be reduced to its title and completion.

Clicking again anywhere on the "minimized" item makes it "re-maximized"...

Open / close an item

Some items contain other items.

These items "with included items" can be open / closed, which means to show / hide included items.
This is made by clicking on the button.

You can try it by clicking the button on the following story that contains 2 tasks:


Clicking the button again will close the story...

Mini / maxi / open / close all items of a list

When a list of items is displayed, it is possible to "minimize" / "maximize" many of them at a time.
This is done by simply checking the items that you want to minimize or maximize, and clicking the "Minimize all" or "Maximize all" button.

It is possible to select / unselect all items by checking / unchecking the checkbox beside these buttons.
Only the checked items will be affected by your action.

If the list contains items that can be opened, then there are "Open all" and "Close all" buttons too.

On the above example, a list of stories:

• Click the button to minimize all the stories you have checked.
• Click the button to re-maximize them.
• Click the button to close them.
• Click the button to open them. Note that if a story was "minimized" and you choose to open it, it will be maximized before to be opened.

Note that the button bar and checkboxes don't appear when printed.

Create a new item

New items can be created by clicking on insert links

For instance, click on the Insert task link below:

You must then input all the necessary information in the layer that appears to create the item.

• Hitting cancel just closes the frame,
• Hitting ok creates the new item. The page gets reloaded and focus goes to the new item.

Note: on good web browsers, the rest of the page becomes brighter (but not on this example).

Modify an item

Items usually have two links, modify and delete.

When a modify link is hit, the "normal" display of the item disappears and all the fields are now inputable.

For instance, a click on modify in the frame of an existing task makes a window like this one appear:


Where you can modify all fields.
Note that in this case you can also move the story.

• Hitting cancel just closes the frame, the item keeps unmodified.
• Hitting ok updates the item. The page is reloaded and the focus goes to the modified item.

Delete an entity

When delete is hit, a confirmation message such as this one is displayed:



In some situations different actions can be taken before the entity is removed, like when you want to delete a story:

Story -31 - delete

Move tasks to:  
Delete tasks

In either case, the actual deletion is done only when ok is hit.

Regular expression patterns can be used when inputing a description for an item. These patterns are used to transform the displayed text.

Items are: projects, team members, user profiles, iterations, stories, tasks, metaphor words, web links and categories.

Using defined patterns

Regular users should only worry about using patterns.

When focusing on a description input the list of avaible patterns is displayed.
Patterns are just listed with their short description.
For instance, something{a phrase} means that something{word} and something{a phrase} will be matched.

What replacement will be done should be explained by your administrator.
However some patterns are already defined by default when XPWeb is installed.

• WikiWikiWord (what is wiki?)
  (Uppercase followed by one or more lowercase/number, repeated at least twice)
  
  => a link to your wiki
  
  Example

  SomeWord and SomeOtherWord

  ... becomes

  SomeWord and SomeOtherWord
• {a phrase}
  (any phrase between "{" and "}")
  
  => a link to the metaphor section - see here for details
  
  Example

  {this is a phrase}

  ... becomes

  this is a phrase
• google{a phrase}
  (any phrase between "{" and "}" following "google")
  
  => a link to search on Google
  
  Example

  google{sourceforge manage eXtreme Programming}

  ... becomes

  sourceforge manage eXtreme Programming

Modifying / adding patterns

Patterns are defined in the Config file.
You can have a look at Config.inc.php file for example but remember if you want to add some pattern or modify an existing one (such as the metaphor one) edit you own Config_local.inc.php

Instructions are available in Config.inc.php but here's a quick description of how it works:

• Patterns just use well-known (by programmers mostly ;-) regular expressions.
  
  That means if you know regular expressions well you can fully describe your own patterns.
  
  For instance these lines in the config file might be a good "url pattern":
  
  
  addPattern("url",
             "A basic url",
             "url:(\b[^\s]+\b)\[(\b[\w\s]+\b)\]",
             "<a class=\"external\" href=\"\${1}\" title=\"\${2}\">\${2}</a>",
             "\${2} (url:\${1})",
             XP_PATTERN_SPECIFIC);
  
  
  Example

  url:http://sourceforge.net/donate/index.php?group_id=65370[help us]

  ... becomes

  help us
• For people who don't know regular expressions but still want to use -simple, limited- patterns, a few "special words" and constants are available.
  
  • Using _phrase_ in the pattern match or replacement will look for any phrase (list of words separated by spaces).
  • The last parameter can take the following values:
    • XP_PATTERN_LINK_TO_POPUP: a "popup" window similar to the old "metaphor" window will show up.
    • XP_PATTERN_LINK_TO_SELF: the link will be opened in the current window
    • XP_PATTERN_LINK_TO_NEW_WINDOW: the link will be opened in a new full sized window
    • XP_PATTERN_SPECIFIC: no modification is made to your replacement pattern
    For these values except the last one the "replacement pattern" (previous parameter) actually describes the URL that will be followed by XPWeb.
    Also, the first parameter will be used as the CSS class name.

A few more examples:

• Emphasize text between "*" and "*"
  
  
  addPattern("emphasize",
             "Emphasize text",
             "\*_phrase_\*",
             "<span class=\"important\">_phrase_</span>",
             "<em>_phrase_</em>",
             XP_PATTERN_SPECIFIC);
  
  
  Example

  *a test*

  ... becomes

  a test
• Set links to user description in a new window (ids must be used):
  
  
  addPattern("userLink",
             "User link",
             "user{_phrase_}",
             "Team.php#member__phrase_", // notice the double "_" => it's member_ + _phrase_
             XP_PATTERN_LINK_TO_NEW_WINDOW);
  
  
  Example

  user xxx [user{1}]

  ... becomes

  user xxx [1]

XML output

What should be done with a description when it gets exported to xml?
The default behaviour is to strip the patterns and just keep the matches.
But this is defined as another pattern that can be changed too.

Here are the results of the previous examples beeing exported to xml:

• Example

  SomeWord and SomeOtherWord

  ... becomes

  SomeWord and SomeOtherWord
• Example

  {this is a phrase}

  ... becomes

  this is a phrase
• Example

  google{sourceforge manage eXtreme Programming}

  ... becomes

  sourceforge manage eXtreme Programming
• Example

  url:http://sourceforge.net/donate/index.php?group_id=65370[help us]

  ... becomes

  help us (url:http://sourceforge.net/donate/index.php?group_id=65370)
• Example

  *a test*

  ... becomes

  a test
• Example

  user xxx [user{1}]

  ... becomes

  user xxx [user 1]

More information at php.net

We'd be very happy to receive your own patterns and maybe include them in future versions. Contact us!!

Install XPWeb

• Please check the included ReadMe file for installation / upgrading instructions.
• Once it is up and running, here is what you should do:

Start playing with XPWeb

1. Login with admin password in the Login section.
2. Create team members in the Team section.
3. Set up access rights profiles and affect them to members.
   Make sure you have one or more coaches or such members who will have rights to create and modify projects.
4. Log out from admin login.

Keep playing with XPWeb

Now let's say you have done the basic admin tasks.
Different situtations:

• You are more like a project manager:
  1. Log in with your member name in the Login section.
  2. Create new projects in the Project section.
  3. Add / modify project links in the Project section.
  4. Affect team members to projects in the Team section.
• You are more like a developper:
  1. Log in with your member name in the Login section.
  2. Play the planning game in the Planning section.
  3. Look for feedback in the Reports section
  4. Update the metaphor in the Metaphor section.
  5. Add / modify web links in the Links section.
  6. Display documents, cvs, test results.
• You are more like a "visitor":
  1. Browse with anonymous login, and, depending on your rights:
  2. Display planning in the Planning section
  3. Look how the project is going on in the Reports section
  4. Display the metaphor in the Metaphor section.
  5. Display documents, cvs, test results.