
Show HN: Zube 1.0 – Powerful project management for GitHub Issues - jenniferDewalt
https://zube.io/v1
======
jenniferDewalt
Hi! I’m Jen, cofounder of Zube and we’re thrilled to announce Zube 1.0 today.
Zube 1.0 is much more powerful than our beta version. We’ve added Zube
Tickets, which lets you create tickets that track groups of related GitHub
issues. Think ZenDesk for Github. We’ve also added an issue manager, which is
the fastest way to find and triage your issues on any platform. And there have
been many improvements to our scrum/kanban board like a new pull request
section and burndown charts.

We’d love to hear what you think of Zube 1.0 and I’m happy to answer any
questions you have in the comments here!

~~~
xGrill
Hey Jen,

Congrats on 1.0. Our development team uses a micro service architecture that
has 1 project spread across multiple repos, and I think the biggest problem
with most project management software with extensive Github integration is
that they are on a per repo basis. We can never get a holistic view of our
entire application without duplicating work into another Project Management
platform. Is there anything inside Zube that would alleviate this? How does
Zube handle multiple repos for teams?

~~~
jenniferDewalt
We're working on implementing multiple repos on one board right now and will
have that feature out in a couple of weeks.

Are you looking for adding several repos to one board or do you need a board
that displays issues from one or more repos as well as non-issue backed tasks?

~~~
lisivka
Just one board for all projects _per organization_, please.

I want to keep separate boards for my private projects, but one board for all
backend related projects (backend- _, aports-_ ) in another organization.

~~~
jenniferDewalt
Cool! That's how we're implementing it.

~~~
MartinMond
Will it be possible to group a number of repos inside one org as well? E.g.
repos A and B form one group and repo C is separate?

~~~
jenniferDewalt
Yep, that's the game plan!

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mbym
Oh, this is really cool. So when I create a "card" on zube, it automatically
creates an issue on github. And when I drag the card to "done" on your trello-
like board, it marks the issue as closed in github. The zube interface
definitely adds a lot of clarity with colours and birds-eye view. I'm excited
to use this! I think the onboarding could make it easier to quickly understand
this much (initially, I falsely assumed a "ticket" corresponded to one github
issue).

I just pushed to github with a commit message that closed the issue, (git
commit -m "... closes #1", as per [https://help.github.com/articles/closing-
issues-via-commit-m...](https://help.github.com/articles/closing-issues-via-
commit-messages/)) and sure enough, the "card" is now marked as complete in
zube, with a handy hyperlink to the corresponding commit in github. The
instant email confirmation ("Ticket #n closed") from Zube could be pretty
handy too, as the team grows. Nice work!

~~~
jenniferDewalt
Thanks for signing up! We definitely have some work to do with the on boarding
flow and documentation, especially around Tickets. Glad to hear you were able
to figure it out! :)

A Ticket is a place where you can link together multiple GitHub Issues that
doesn't sync with GitHub itself. The Ticket tracks the status of those issues
and updates it's status as the issues are worked on. This works great for bug
reports that need multiple tasks completed in order to be resolved, for
example.

------
philschatz
Oh nice! I like the ability to assign Issues by just dragging to a user and
the "Batch Editing" UI is pretty concise! Also, being able to create an Issue
without having a GitHub login seems helpful to get non-developers
communicating.

I'm a developer that grew frustrated with so many ticket tracking solutions
that force users to use the UI (Waffle and ZenHub store metadata that is not
in GitHub), a lack of hackable options, and making it difficult for non-
members to be involved in what's going on in a project. So, I created
[https://github.com/philschatz/gh-board](https://github.com/philschatz/gh-
board) .

Some features I haven't seen anywhere else, that gh-board does are:

\- real-time collaborative editing of Issues

\- showing related Issues/PR's

\- shareable URL's (for remote folks)

\- sequence diagrams, gantt charts, etc

\- CI and merge conflict status

\- "deployable" anywhere (using gh-pages or nginx)

Like other solutions, it also supports multiple repositories, Drag-N-Drop,
milestone planning. In the _very near_ future it will have a burndown chart,
batch editing, Issue creation, and load faster (using IndexedDB).

~~~
nathanstitt
I've used gh-board before and really like the ability to "merge repos" You can
view all the PR's across multiple organizations and repositories, which makes
it very handy for someone who's a member of multiple projects. Plus it's open-
source!

------
lihorne
We've been using Zube for several months now and are really impressed with how
fast the team has turned this into such a powerful platform. We quickly
switched from ZenHub to Zube because of how fast and easy it was to prioritize
issues and manage dev sprints (using milestones).

~~~
jenniferDewalt
Thanks for the kind words! Glad to hear Zube is working for you! :D

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quaunaut
How does Zube do in terms of performance when loading up?

One of my biggest issues with Waffle or Zenhub is that loading them up is
often a long wait- Zenhub can be 3-4 seconds(and often is just incorrect in
labels/assignments), and Waffle could be upwards of 15 seconds.

Does this do any caching on Zube's side and then real-time update it as it
goes, or am I in for a long wait again regardless?

~~~
jenniferDewalt
Great question. We built Zube is speed in mind even for repos with hundreds of
open issues. If you have over 1000 open issues you'll probably notice a lag on
any platform and it will take about 2 seconds on Zube. We're obsessed with
speed and we'd be happy to work with you to make things fast!

------
jmtulloss
Awesome work! I love how simple it is while still adding so much.

I know you've mentioned this elsewhere, but I was a bit confused by the
tickets. I get what they are, but who is the intended user?

One feature I'd like to see is custom statuses. I personally am a big fan of
"In progress -> Pending deploy -> Verify -> Done" instead of just "Done". It
makes it really clear what just went out with every deploy, and allows the
person who originally filed the issue to be the final arbiter on whether or
not it was actually solved.

Another cool things would be integrations! If you have a ticketing system, it
would be great if that tied into the tools that the customer support teams
use. I use intercom myself, and it'd be handy if I could create a ticket out
of an intercom request and remember to follow up with that user after the fix
is deployed.

~~~
jenniferDewalt
Thanks! We created tickets with non-technical people in mind as way they could
report bugs, feature requests and the like without cluttering up issues for
developers. Since the tickets track the work on their linked issues, the
ticket owner has a clear picture of what the progress is on their ticket.

However, we've also seen dev teams hack tickets as a way to scope groups of
issues together, for a feature release for example, similar to epics in Agile
workflows.

Would you like to see custom statuses on board, the tickets or both?

We are really excited to add more integrations! Slack, ZenDesk and Intercom
are some of the big ones we're looking at.

~~~
jmtulloss
Oh I was thinking of the board, not tickets. But perhaps it's more relevant in
tickets? I'm not sure, just an idea.

Years ago I worked at a company that had a jira flow that worked with those
stages for tickets and I thought it was great. Haven't been able to replicate
that workflow since.

~~~
jenniferDewalt
Gotchya! We've been thinking about how to add some flexibility to the columns
without falling into the 'endless column' trap where teams end up with dozens
of micromanaged columns. It sounds like that level of organization would still
fit the paradigm.

------
ThePhysicist
Very nice tool, looks really polished and very functional! A while ago I also
built an open-source Kanban board for Github issues using React.js and
Material Design:

[https://adewes.github.io/gitboard](https://adewes.github.io/gitboard)

Unlike Zube and other tools (e.g. Huboard) you can use Gitboard without giving
anyone else acccess to your Github repositories, i.e. it runs completely
client-side within your browser and without an intermediate server between you
and Github. Currently it has much less features than Zube though.

It uses the Github API via AJAX and stores your login credentials in the
session storage of the browser. Here's the Github repository:

[https://github.com/adewes/gitboard](https://github.com/adewes/gitboard)

------
Kpourdeilami
Any plans for Gitlab support?

~~~
jenniferDewalt
We are definitely interested in adding GitLab support as well as other
integrations though I'm not sure when we'll get there.

~~~
jobvandervoort
Good to hear! Let me know if you have any questions, we're happy to help.

------
jasonshen
Really big fan of this approach - link the work up with the thing tracking the
work as closely as possible. At Etsy we use Github and JIRA separately and I
personally think it'd save time and reduce confusion if we were to move to
something like Zube. Nice job Jen!

~~~
jenniferDewalt
Thanks Jason! That is exactly where the idea for Zube came from! Trying to
keep two (or more!) data sources in sync is error prone and just generates
extra work for everyone. We made Zube to combat that problem.

------
x0ner
This looks really cool and is something I would love to check out, but the
permissions of the actual app seem pretty high. For us, our code is stored in
a private repository with no plan for any public release. Permissions for Zube
are asking to not only read the private repository code, but also have write
access to them as well. There's also requests to read/write web service hooks,
deploy keys and pull requests. Is this a byproduct of Github's design or does
the app really need all of these permissions to function properly?

~~~
jenniferDewalt
We totally understand your concerns and we take security very seriously. In
order to manage GitHub issues, GitHub currently requires the repo scope. If
there was a more restrictive scope just for GitHub Issues, Zube would use that
one instead, but there isn't. Zube requires the same permissions as many other
applications, the same permissions as Slack, for example.

On our side, Zube only accesses data related to your GitHub issues and never
touches your code at all. All of the calls Zube makes to the GitHub API are
whitelisted (on our end) to ensure that Zube only accesses the data it needs.
For extra security, we also encrypt your auth token before storing it. It’s
also important to note that your auth token is specific to Zube and at any
time you can revoke your token on GItHub.

~~~
x0ner
All that makes sense, thanks for the details.

------
alexwebb2
Estimation is a killer feature missing from Github Issues, and it looks like
you've got a points estimation feature, which is great.

Any plans to add hour-based estimation?

~~~
jenniferDewalt
That's a great idea and would be pretty quick to add. Would having either
points or hours for a repository work for you?

~~~
lisivka
If in hours, then implement it as combobox with predefined list of standard
estimates (1h, 2h, 4h, 1d, 2d, 3d, 1w, 2w, 3w, 1m, 2m, 3m, 6m, 1y).

~~~
jenniferDewalt
Got it! That makes sense, thanks for the breakdown.

------
kmfrk
This looks really awesome, best implementation of this I've seen by far

Personally, I'm really excited about this, but I also imagine a lot of
companies might use BitBucket for its free private repos.

The only think I kinda wish for is a way to see an overview across all repos.
The GitHub issues dashboard is so awful that I wish someone could take over
that job.

~~~
jenniferDewalt
Thanks for the kind words! We started with GitHub because that's what we know
and love but down the road we'd love to add more integrations like BitBucket.

Multiple repo views is a great suggestion. We're working on it now and we will
have it out in a few weeks!

------
nzoschke
This is great.

Trying to keep project management synced between Trello and GitHub is
busywork. GitHub is a major source of truth for a project, so tools that
manage it are really great.

I'll be giving Zube a spin.

~~~
jenniferDewalt
Awesome! Let me know if you have any questions. I'm happy to help!

------
mrmondo
Hey, any plans for Gitlab support?

~~~
jenniferDewalt
We'd really like to add other integrations like GitLab. We do have a bit of
work to do on our core product first so it may take a little while before we
get there.

------
bossx
Is this an extension or a standalone web app?

~~~
jenniferDewalt
Zube's a stand alone web app. Your Zube cards are two-way synced in real-time
via the GitHub API.

