FAQ

Version 54, last updated by adam feber at Feb 12 03:46 UTC

The following page contains FAQs by topic. You can scroll through the page to read all the FAQs or click the bookmaked links below:

General Questions about Assembla

What does Assembla do?

Assembla provides tools and services for building software with high-velocity global teams.

What is an Assembla space?

An Assembla "Space" is a Workspace, typically representing a Project. Many companies and individuals have multiple projects and will create a project space for each project. Each spaces allows you to control the team members that have access to the project as well as the tools available within the project space by adding and removing tools available from the Admin tab of that space.

What does “inspired by open source mean”?

We have adopted the best practices from open source development, and applied professional recruiting and management. The result is fast, iterative development with globally distributed teams.

You can make up new ways to use it. Our first mission is to provide the tools for assembling and managing global software teams.

What about "inspired by Web 2.0"?

This means we release early and release often, with fast reaction times that aspire to be instant. It also means letting users add and manage content and ideas, since they are faster and smarter about it than we are. It means investing in a great product experience, rather than excess sales and marketing. It means making adoption free, fast, and fun.

Is the service free?

Public workspaces up to 1GB in size are free with no time limit. Professional/Private workspaces can be purchased at an affordable cost. See our pricing plans and payment options here.

Is it really open source?

Yes. You can download the source code and run it, modify it, and redistribute it for development purposes in accordance with the license terms- See our Breakout development project .

Can I get my own version of this software?

Yes, you can download the Assembla system as a virtual machine and purchase a license for commercial use- see our Private Assembla site.

What technical tools do you use?

We use Ruby on Rails. The development system works on almost any platform. Our production system runs on a cluster of Debian Linux servers with a MySQL database.

How do I report a bug or suggestion?

Add suggestions on feedback.assembla.com and bug reports on forum.assembla.com.

Back to Top | Ask a Question

Emails and Alerts

How do I disable the email updates on every change I make to the wiki?

Click the Stream tab in your space, then click "Email Notifications" in the top left of the page. Uncheck the Wiki Events box and click the Update Settings button.

How do I reduce the number of alert emails?

When you become a team member in a space, we set your account to receive email alerts about all events for that space. You can change this setting using the "Change Alert Settings" link at the top of the Stream page, as described above. Also, at the bottom of every email is a line that says "Please click here to set your alert preferences for this space." Click on that link, and it will open the settings panel on the Stream page for that space. You can turn off specific classes of alerts or turn off all email alerts by selecting Never from the "Email me when" dropdown menu.

How do I turn off all email alerts?

Click the Stream tab in your space, then click "Email Notifications" in the top left of the page. You can deselect alerts for specific tools, or turn off all email alerts by selecting "Email Frequency: Never"

Back to Top | Ask a Question

Can everyone see my name and address?
How can I create a way for people to find me on Assembla?

Can everyone see my name and address?

Your name and address data is tightly controlled. Other people can only find you if you make that information public.

How can I create a way for people to find me on Assembla?

Complete the "Skills" panel on your user menu, and select the box that says "Check this box if you want to appear in searches for talent".

Back to Top | Ask a Question

Workspace Management

How do I create a new space?

How do I delete a space?

An Owner of the space can go to the Admin tab in the space, and scroll down to the bottom of the page to find the "Delete this space" button.

What happens when I invite someone?

When you create a space, you can invite new team members from the Team page. We send them an invitation email message with your name on it. If they do not click through and register, we send them one reminder after 4 days, and another reminder after 7 days. They can decline the invitation and be deleted, and will be deleted after 14 days without a response.

What are View, Edit, and All permissions?

View permission allows you to see the space and its related objects – wiki pages, tickets, files, team members. Edit permission allows you to edit them. Space owners get All permission, which allows them to delete things and change team member lists. So basically, there are no permission restrictions for a user who has All permissions, he/she can do everything in a space, in every too, up to a space deletion. The two most common permission settings are Public=View and Team=Edit (for a public project), and Public=None and Team=Edit (for a private project).

What is the “Watch This” button, and what is a Watcher?

When you select “Watch This”, you add a Space to your Spaces list where you can find it easily. A Watcher does not get team member permissions. However, if you are on the watcher list, it is easy for the Space owner to promote you to a member.

What does “Stream” mean?

The Stream displays workstream events in chronological order, like discussion messages, tickets, and code commits. Assembla gives you the opportunity to see them all in one place, or filter just the items that you are interested in.

How do I prioritize tasks and issues for my team?

You can tag any comment or ticket item as an issue by giving it a non-zero priority. Our priorities go from 1 (top priority) to 5 (lowest priority). You can filter Tickets using any of the filter options in the upper right corner of the Tickets list. You can also create your own filters using the slide-out sidebar on the left of the ticket list. When issues are assigned to team members, they appear on the user Issues list. So, when you need to get some work done, set a high priority on the message where you brought it up. When you are ready to work, pull an issue off the top of the priority list.

Can I use Google to search Assembla?

You can use Google to search the public areas and workspaces of Assembla (try it here). Google cannot search your private workspace. Please use our integrated search function to search private workspaces.

How do backups work?

The optimal way to Import/Export data is via the REST API.

The Amazon Backup section in the Admin-Resources page allows you to set up automated daily backups to your Amazon S3 account. We preserve backups for each day.

The manual backup function in the Admin-Resources page will dump your space information in JSON format (except for binary files). The only automated import for JSON we currently support is for the Ticket Tool (via the Settings page); this allows you to migrate tickets from one space to another. The workspace components included in your space backup are as follows:

brandings
documents
drawings
estimate_histories
flows
image tool drawings
job_agreements
job_agreement_comments
job_messages
job_postings
job_responses
job_statements
messages
milestones
scrum_reports
space_tools
tasks
tickets
ticket comments
ticket_reports
time_logs
users(only id and login)
user_roles
wiki_pages
wiki_page_versions

The JSON backups simply allow you to store your data in another place as desired. We can restore it upon request via support ticket: http://www.assembla.com/spaces/AssemblaSupport/support/tickets. Currently we are only able to restore tickets and milestones via backup file.

The manual export function in your repository tab dumps your repository data for download. You can import that dump to a space using the Import/Export tool in the repository tab.

Back to Top | Ask a Question

Tools

What are Tools?

Tools are features or applications that you can add to a Space. They appear in a new tab on the top. The permissions are set so that Team members have the correct permission to use attached tools.

Are Tools really On-Demand?

Yes. Just go to the space Admin page, find your tool in the Tools tab, and click on "Add this tool". We give you a complete application a few seconds later.

What Tools can you provide?

Lots. We offer Subversion, a source code management system, and Trac, a software ticketing and project management system. If you select the Trac tool, you get both of them integrated. The full list of all our tools and features can be found here.

How do I login to a Tool?

Use your Assembla login name and password. Many tools will automatically log you in if you are logged in to Assembla.

I accidentally deleted my tool. Can I get the data back?

We have a secret backup directory where we keep deleted tools. Try not to make us use it.

Back to Top | Ask a Question

Trac and Subversion

How can I import or export a subversion repository? Trac tickets?

You can find forms for importing and exporting svn repositories in Trac. Go to your Trac and log in as a space owner. You will see an Admin tab on the top right. Select Admin, and select “Data Import/Export” from the left menu. There is a link to export the svn repository, and a form to upload a zipped Subversion repository dump. There are also forms for uploading and exporting trac directories. We currently use trac 0.10.4.

I get a "propfind error" when I try to commit. How can I fix it?

This error happens when you try to use subversion from behind a proxy firewall that does not allow web dav requests. You can bypass the proxy by using "https" with your subversion URL, instead of using http.

Can I back up my Trac instance or Subversion repository?

We have never had an instance of data loss.

We backup internally every day.
Subversion, on the new servers, is backed up in real-time after every commit.
You can back up your trac and svn data from the Trac admin menu. Go to trac and log in as a space owner. Select the Admin tab in the top right. Select "Data Import/Export". You will find options to export your subversion repository and trac database.
If you subscribe to commercial spaces (for a low monthly fee) we will automatically send your subversion repository to your Amazon S3 account every night.

Can I edit my Subversion repository to remove a version, or remove old files from old versions?

No. Subversion does not support an "obliterate" command that removes old versions. This is a subject of some controversy in the Subversion community.

To get rid of your old versions, you will need to create an empty subversion repository, commit the current version of the code to it, and then import it over the old repository. You can do this locally, or you can make a new space on Assembla with a blank repository.

In Assembla, the Subversion import and export are in the Trac/Admin tab, in the Import/Export submenu.

All the svn entries on the trac timelines are in GMT. Anyplace I can set the timezone appropriately?

Yes. Trac does not have a feature for setting user time zones, but Assembla does.You can view your ticket and svn events in the Stream page, adjusted for your user time zone. Please remember to set the time zone in your user profle.

Can I deploy source code from SVN to an FTP server?

Yes. Our SVN tool supports a post commit hook (an URL that can be called after each commit) which you can use to run any script in a remote pc and do the deployment. We also provide a Webhook Tool which also triggers calls to other applications (or servers) when an event occurs (it can be a svn event, or wiki page, ticket, etc) with some extra information related to the event. We are working on a tool that will allow you to easily publish to an FTP server. Also, we are working on a Server Tool that will create a staging server and provide some automatic deployment scripts.

I see an Error validating server certificate for subversion.assembla.com message. What is that?

Some SVN clients do not acknowledge our SSL certificate. You should be able to store an exception to accept the certificate permanently so that you don’t get that message every time. The fingerprint you should use is ae b0 b6 94 14 5f 4b 28 d2 82 68 ae e9 18 85 b3 ea 36 ee f2

Back to Top | Ask a Question