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Closed 10 years ago.
I've been asked to create a website in SharePoint within the next couple of weeks or so and I'm entirely new to SharePoint.
Does anyone have any good examples/tutorials on how to do some basic operations such as creating custom forms, using basic CRUD operations, with a custom SQL Server database?
Also is there any way to code in ASP.NET (with code-behind pages), but use the SharePoint look and feel and authentication stuff?
SharePoint is not quite like what you're used to. My two main gripes are:
Deployment:
If your requirements are for a single production site (no staging/test/development sites) your best bet is probably to go with the SharePoint Designer and hack stuff together directly on the production site (yes I know it's dirty).
If you need those other environments you should produce deployment packages for everything (no xcopy deployment). Deployment packages are a PITA IMHO and are very easy to get wrong.
IIS
SharePoint basically takes over your IIS installation and introduces a new set of rules for where things are located etc. One gotcha is "ghosted" files. i.e. whenever a file is changed using the SharePoint Designer the file is backed up to a database and from now on IIS will only use the file in the database, so there is no use changing the one in the file system.
To sum up:
In my humble opinion if you are making a site where uptime isn't that important and you can afford to make mistakes in production, SharePoint can be good enough with the designer. If you are making a CMS site where you need the code to go through multiple environments before it reaches production, (with continuous integration), I can think of no other .NET based CMS that does a worse job. You will spend a LOT of time grokking how to get the deployment routines to work for you, and you will spend a LOT of time with issues relating to "ghosted" files
Good luck.
Technet has a bunch of virtual labs for SharePoint products.
The first thing to remember is that SharePoint is just an ASP.NET application. It has a ton of framework, and various things like security, etc, built-in. But from your perspective, you can just build a Web Control, and basically deploy it right to the server. Check out this post from MikeG, and especially look at SmartPart on CodePlex. That will help you get up and running without too much fuss. Since you are using standard web controls, you have access to CodeBehind. The one caveat is that your assemblies have to either be deployed to the GAC or granted Full Trust in the config files - something SmartPart will help you through.
SharePoint Designer is just FrontPage, rebranded. It very much could help you with some basic stuff, and might be worth looking into if this is an occasional thing. But if you are going to be doing any kind of long term work, I highly recommend taking a class on developing SharePoint applications. It can be quite a beast, and you may find yourself in quicksand faster than you think.
A very good start, to get you rolling in the right direction, is Microsoft site for SharePoint Development, at http://www.mssharepointdeveloper.com/. This will get you a long way towards understanding what you need to prioritize in your learning efforts.
To answer your second question, in short: yes, you can create pages that use code-behind, just like regular ASP.net. The longer answer is a bit beyond the scope here since it requires a better understanding of how SharePoint works with master pages, customized pages, and the layouts or application pages concepts in SharePoint.
Get Ted Pattison's book, Inside Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0. It's an absolute must if you are going to do any sharepoint develelopment.
We build our Sharepoint apps through a combination of SmartParts (as mentioned above) for simpler apps and _Layout applications for more complex stuff.
A _layout application lets you build a traditional ASP.NET web app and pretty much plop it right into Sharepoint. Here's a link to get you started.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb418732.aspx
Perhaps the fastest and easiest way to get started is by using the SharePoint Designer application that is part of one of the Microsoft Office versions. If you just need to create simple Forms, Microsoft InfoPath will go along way. I would then go ahead and buy a book on SharePoint development since its a big landscape. Channel 9 is a good resource for SharePoint bits as well.
I just started using SharePoint about 3 months ago. I learned all of the basics and got a good foundation for SharePoint using the Pilothouse Consulting SharePoint training DVD (http://www.pilothouseconsulting.com/dvd/sharepoint-training-dvd-development-benefits.html). It was very helpful and all of the tutorials, demos, and code examples for development are in C#.
The fastest way to get up to speed is to use smartpart.
It allows you to build ASP.NET usercontrols and deploy them in sharepoint.
http://www.codeplex.com/smartpart/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=10697
Sharepoint designer/CAML:
- Nice for starter apps.
Visual studio tools:
painfull
documented very bad
bug ridden
Very heavy deploy cycle..
IMO Microsoft has to come up with something better.
Until then, smartpart is great.
Related
I have a company that needs a document management system.
I have looked at SharePoint but it has far to many bells and whistles. The company wants something that doesn't have intranet portals, app downloads and all the other waffle (they simple don't have the skill nor the inclination to spend thousands learning it).
I am finding that SharePoint is a little like a fork-lift bus truck car. It trying to be everything to everybody which usually ends up useless to all.
My question is does SharePoint Foundation work out of the box as a document management system or is it like an engine you put your own code upon.
The more I read through Google the more conflicting information I come across without any clear definitions.
What I want to end up with is a document management system that has authentication and a simple page / screen / whatever to link / admin to those documents.
As per usual Ill probably end up having to write my own but it would be nice to not keep re-inventing the wheel.
SharePoint definitely has a learning curve, there's no getting away from that. However you don't need to set up all the "bells and whistles" if you just want a basic DMS.
To answer your question, you don't need your own code to get a SharePoint site up and running. You will however need to spend quite a lot of time figuring out what configuration you need for your needs.
We're using SharePoint 2010 Foundation as a simple document repository in a couple of web apps and it works fine. No Wikis, no versioning, no custom pages. That stuff is availablem but we don't need it so we don't enable it. The nice thing about it is the security which hooks into AD so authentication can be set up easily and it is robust. Our DMS solutions are accessed via the internet by users, and internally by apps, and SharePoint can handle that fine by setting up alternate access mapping so that you can get to documents via internal and external URLs.
I won't lie; I've spend a lot of long days cursing SharePoint, but it's still a far better solution than what I could have come up with myself.
In case your wondering, we're using 2010 rather than 2013 because we had been using WSS 3.0 up until this year and you can't upgrade directly from WSS to 2013. But since we only need the basics, doing a second upgrade to 2013 wasn't worth the effort.
The truth is Sharepoint can be used as a sort of document management system (ish). But in truth it is far to over complicated and has gone rather off at a tangent from the demos I was original given when it first came about in the beginning. Alfresco an Nuxio are probably much better. (but even they have their issues). You simple have to look at all three and make your own decisions as now I know this is not a simple question. I personally went for Alfresco but for very exact reasons, even it has some issues but generally speaking it is the best(ish) out of the three. (Nuxio would of been best except for its 'purchase your admin interface' model.
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Closed 10 years ago.
The Task
I've been given a task to build an online store. The site would support browsing products, online shopping and a forum. There would be two actors on the site - regular clients and privileged clients(with discounts). The products, sold on the site, would be pulled out from the db of some storage program and queued for modifications (like product name validation, adding missing details, etc) before they are displayed on the site.
That about covers the whole project.
The Inconvenience
Except that the client also requires that he can add/remove and edit content on the site.
What I tough would be a solution
So, in this case a CMS is what is needed.. Right? At least that's what I tough, tho I never used one. So I looked up some .Net CMSes and I chose Umbraco.
The Disappointment
After i saw how Umbraco is used, I no longer feel like this is what I need. I tough that a CMS for .Net would integrate with VisualStudio and not stand in the way of ASP.NET MVC developing. But it did. And now i'm back at point zero, since i have to choose either to use CMS and forget about .net or develop in .net and not being able to edit content...
The Question
How do i develop a site in VS using asp.Net MVC and support a CMS? Is that even possible ?
Meek
Usually when you deal with a CMS system you are working within the constraints of what that system allows you to do. For lots of uses this works really well, you create a site full of content and add a plugin for a common feature you want added to the site. Meek takes this approach and reverses it, as developers we commonly create a custom application for a customer, and then they need the ability to manage a limited set of content within it.
Then it is up to you to create a simple way to manage some content and images within you application. Using the Microsoft MVC framework Meek makes this task as simple as adding single assembly reference and a web.config entry.
http://www.gingerrant.com/meek/
Can't say I've ever used it, but it's the only CMS i've come across which seems to have this goal.
MVC Easy CMS
ery often you (as developer) creating websites need their pages and content to be manageable. There are too many free CMS platforms now but all their powerful features are not needed. You need only to write your code and mark some html zones as manageable. It will be nice to do this very quickly and without writing any server code specific for CMS framework. In this case MVC Easy CMS is the product you need.
The main features of framework:
easy to install and uninstall
easy to make your static html to be dynamic using html attributes
very good performance of data managing
marking of manageable zones can be started at creating html design step
website's source code should not be changed during using CMS or after its removing
We support MVC 3 and MVC 4 with Razor as engine and C# as language at first version. We are on our way to implement VB language support.
http://mvceasycms.ism-ukraine.com/
seems rather neat after a quick play with it. obviously missing a lot of the features of a real cms (versioning etc) but great for a site where you only have a little bit of content that needs updating
It is possible, there are plenty samples out in the wild and "we" do it every day: using .net and allow our users editing content. That last thing is not a virtue of .net but of a thing called forms in HTML.
By using Umbraco or Orchard (MVC) you build your app on top of such a framework and extend it for the needs you have.
Although I doubt that you need a full-fledged CMS for editing productinfo.
Looks like you are however expecting a visual studio addin that generates the site for you.
If so then I would point you google and findout about several websites that offer online shops that you can visually customize without the need for programming.
Just sign up, fill in the blanks and y're up and running nice and comfy.
I have less information about share point (only basic info). Microsoft released SharePoint for web developers. Microsoft also said SharePoint has compatibility with other .NET technologies like Workflow Foundation, WCF, etc and it's easy way to develop web sites and web apps.
Also as I know ASP.NET has compatibility with .NET technologies and C#. And it easy for every one whom at least work with C# or VB.NET.
So with these advantages of SharePoint:
Why we must use asp.net instead SharePoint?
Why Microsoft develops ASP.NET (new version 4)?
What's major reason to chose one of these?
Is really developing base-on share-point faster and easier than asp.net?
SharePoint is an Application that sits on top of ASP.net (3.5 SP1 in the current SharePoint 2010 - No ASP.net 4.0 will be possible). They do override a lot of ASP.net built-in functionality (they have their own .aspx Parser and Virtual Path Provider for example).
With ASP.net you have a very well documented, battle-hardened, mature and stable platform with a good API.
With SharePoint you gain a poorly documented, bug-ridden, very limited application that handles a lot of features that you would have to code yourself (e.g., User Profile Management, Document Organization and Versioning and Social Features like Commenting and Tagging), although for the most point SharePoint handles them really poorly and does not allow you to override them, which means that you spend a lot of time rewriting them anyway and trying to integrate them back.
Basically my advice as a SharePoint developer since 2006: Use it when you absolutely have to, avoid it whenever you can and stay with just ASP.net.
SharePoint is good as a simple document management and very light social system. You can quickly customize smaller parts of it and add a lot of value to your company. But in the moment you need something that even only slightly different from what Microsoft envisions, you hit a wall that you can't pass. It's great for what it does, nothing more, nothing less.
I am a Sharepoint Developer... And let me say that I wish it was just ASP.NET! That would be great... It brings with it it's own paradigms which are pretty complicated.
ASP.NET and Sharepoint are 2 'different' technologies. Sharepoint is mostly built with ASP.NET, and delivers ASP.NET pages to a user.
You can use either VB.NET or C# with Sharepoint.
In my opinion, Sharepoint development is only quicker if you are planning on using it's in-built lists, user management etc. Though these do take time to learn. The cool thing about sharepoint is that you can develop web parts, and re-use these web parts on multiple pages throughout the installation.
Microsoft continues to develop both ASP.NET and sharepoint because they are two different beasts, with ASP.NET pages being deliverable through Sharepoint.
As to which is best for you, you haee to make that call. Do you need Sharepoint? Or would a pre-built CMS such as DotNetNuke be better? Or even creating your own site with Windows credentials management so you can use SSO (Single Sign On).
It really depends on what you want to get out of your install. Sharepoint is expensive, and developers for Sharepoint are also expensive because of the specialist knowledge.
As a developer... (I hope my boss isn't watching!!) I much prefer to build things from scratch than to use SP, but that's my job...
Don't use sharepoint unless you need it, check this article:
Challenges when using SharePoint compared to ASP.NET
If you just want to create a website, go for ASP.net.
However, if your company has a SharePoint installation and you want to integrate with that, you should go for SharePoint.
SharePoint is build on ASP.net, but has many extensions that allow data to be shared throughout the company.
However, if you are just building a website and don't need all that, ASP.net is the way to go.
I'll try to answer point by point:
SharePoint isn't a replacement for ASP.NET. It's an extension of the ASP.NET platform that simplifies the implementation of several common use cases that are mostly relevant to enterprise websites: document management, knowledge retention, collaboration etc... SharePoint relates to ASP.NET in a similar way that Wordpress relates to PHP: it's a specialized extension rather than an alternative.
Same explanation as in (1).
Use SP if the things you need to develop are in the scope of what SP provides, which is mostly enterprise solutions of one sort or another. Here's a good summary of what SP can do.
Again, it would be faster and easier if you're trying to develop the things that SharePoint is meant for. Also, SP isn't so well-documented, so if you're not familiar with it, you might have a slow start.
SP is a very powerful platform, however, it does seem to bring complexities to the table that otherwise may not be there with simple ASP.net. Plus when you move "OOTB" with SP it becomes a bit challenging with RTM, etc. I live in blogs with "weird" things that happen. I am not a full blown SP developer but have been working with it for over 7 years and well, I find building solutions that will work within SP, but not necessarily built withIN SP generally are going to be easier to maintain and controllable. Just my opinion!
I would compare all for you and its up to you to decide.
ASP.NET >> Its a programming language by Microsoft which means you would need Windows Server + IIS + Database server like SQL Server + some Anti Virus on the server.
Say now you need some more PC for your servers and so your costs go up all the time you need a new server
Sharepoint Server are again from Microsoft and so everything above applies.
I need some help figuring out whether it'd be a good idea to use a CMS or portal solution for my latest project, which is (currently) an ASP.NET MVC application that must serve multiple customers (being a company or some other entity with a list of users) from a single installation (that is, a SaaS solution).
In addition to the core functionality, which includes document management/publishing, I also need to provide basic social features (such as blog, forum, gallery, polls, etc.). However, it is imperative that content is only visible for the customer to which it belongs, and my evaluation of a bunch of CMS and portal solutions has shed little light on whether they support this. They're pretty focused on single-user installations, and documentation on how to integrate with an existing MVC solution is pretty thin.
Essentially I'm looking for some guidance to help me discard dead-end options (the product does not meet requirements, imposes too many restrictions, is not mature, etc.) and find unexplored options before getting too far ahead with the project.
My requirements for the architecture include:
Multi-site support (using a single domain for hosting)
Watertight separation of content between customers
Full integration across components/features
SSO (single-sign-on)
Single-site experience (shared header/footer, unified navigation, unified tags, etc.)
Ease of development and deployment
Custom logic will be written using C# and ASP.NET MVC and any products should support this
I want to stay in control
Solution should offer features but otherwise stay out of the way (for example, not force stupid idioms on me, like insisting on GUIDs for primary keys)
Active development community
No single-man efforts
Recent source control activity
Reasonable levels of documentation and maturity
Does not have to be open source
I have spent a fair amount of time evaluating products and components, which I'll briefly share here:
Umbraco
Does not support ASP.NET MVC (yet, as someone is bound to otherwise comment)
Great community support, active development
Seems to be lots of work to get started
Kooboo
No source activity (no updates for almost two months)
GPL licensed? (need something that allows for closed source applications)
N2CMS
Partial ASP.NET MVC support
Every customer must have a separate domain
Limited source activity (not dead but not vibrant either)
Orchard
Microsoft-sponsored (which means it's likely to be over-architected, code-bloated and slow, although it does have some well known and respected contributors/leads)
Built using ASP.NET MVC
Looks promising feature-wise (but is unlikely to be stable at this stage)
AtomSite
Feels reasonably mature and has decent documentation, albeit with holes
Built using ASP.NET MVC
Limited source activity, single developer
MojoPortal
Looks good for a portal, but probably requires custom logic to be built as modules around the product (I was hoping to avoid that kind of lock-in if possible)
DotNetNuke (DNN), CommunityServer and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS)
Definitely not my cup of tea ;)
BlogEngine.NET
Mature and feature-complete
No ASP.NET MVC support
Integration possible but not without lots of Web.config voodoo
Not sure if it supports customer separation
Given the list above I'm leaning towards AtomSite, N2CMS, Orchard or BlogEngine.NET. If I go with the latter I'll be using jitbit AspNetForum, which is a great match for my needs.
I'd probably prefer to use a custom ASP.NET MVC solution and individual components as this is likely to give me the greatest amount of control, but on the other hand, it'll make site theming and integration harder. What combinations have you tried, what worked well and what didn't? Anything important I'm leaving out of my evaluation? Any other relevant advice?
I'd appreciate it if the answers were not simply endorsements of your favorite product or way of doing things, but something that would help me choose or eliminate solution candidates given the requirements outlined above.
With the level of requirements you've specified, I'm personally going to have to lean towards the custom approach. You can hire someone to do the design (view) portion of the site for you, or you can buy a theme off the internet from site designers and customize it to your liking. (Sometimes just having somewhere to start is enough for intermediate level customization).
Multi-site support (using a single domain for hosting)
You're probably going to want to have control of your hosting environment, either a VPS (Virtual Private Server) or a dedicated box. This is still possible on shared hosting but not reccomended.
Watertight separation of content between customers
You'd probably have to spawn a unique app-pool for each customer with thier own services user for 100% seperation.
Full integration across components/features / SSO (single-sign-on) /Single-site experience (shared header/footer, unified navigation, unified tags, etc.)
This is going to be the tricky part. This Example may have some useful insight for you in the development process, but you're going to want a unified login service and have all sites use it or link to it.
Ease of development and deployment
This is where it gets tricky. Development ease comes from your background I think. MVC is definately the right choice in this respect then, knowing a lot about the right ways of going about building a site in MVC will aid in this process. Keep up to date by reading community blogs and listening to podcasts like Hanselminutes or DotNetRocks will help keep you in touch with the newest and greatest tools/technologies for making your site get off the ground quickly and effectively.
Deployment is the tricky spot. MSDeploy still isn't quite there. But if you can you probably will want to come up with a Dev -> Staging -> Release publish structure so you can test your code in a staging (mimiced production) environment.
Custom logic will be written using C# and MVC and any products should support this
I want to stay in control
If you develop the site in ASP.NET-MVC, you'll be able to build common libraries that you can use not just in your site, but also in your custom tooling. This will greatly reduce your code duplication and helps make sure operational unity is achieved. (Everything works the same way).
Solution should offer features but otherwise stay out of the way (e.g. not force stupid idioms on me, like insisting on GUIDs for primary keys)
While you'll have control in this situation, I'd strongly reccomend GUID Primary Keys. This allows Merge Replication, which can help you easily restore backups or use failover DB servers when things go awry.
Active development community
.NET has a great community out there, (including this one) and you should get lots of support if you ask for it politely.
No single-man efforts
Not sure what you mean here, You'd be the Single-Man unless you hire help, but even 2 people can do great things given a little time. Even one-man can do great things, but the framework you're running on here is backed by a commercially funded huge team.
Recent source control activity
Doesn't really apply to .NET, but a lot of the libraries that you may use (NHibernate, MVC Contrib, AutoFac, Etc...) will have lots of activity and constantly being improved.
Reasonable levels of documentation and maturity
.NET and most of the production level libraries developed for .NET (Mentioned above) actually have a pretty good degree of documentation. There's multiple paid & non-paid sources of information for .NET alone, and most libraries (are well supported by the community and known on StackOverflow)
Does not have to be open source
Look for support libraries that are LGPL (i.e. you can use it in commercial software, but if you modify the library you have to release the new library code if you release the binary.) You're pretty safe here, your site dosen't have to be open source if you use these libraries to support your development.
Well, that's my 2cents. The project you've described is no small job, you're looking at a considerable amount of work even if you go with a pre-built solution (mainly hacking it to work the way you want). I imagine your biggest hangups would be SSO & Security for the pre-done solutions. Not to say it's impossible, just tricky and the end result may not be exactly what you're looking for.
Also, look into OpenID, it may be the best solution for linking all your sites together and most pre-built systems can easily be ported to use it.
Take another look at MojoPortal. The CMS is awesome and the main developer , Joe Audette, is very responsive. I'm have several installations of the CMS running single and multiple sites.
I would lean towards a CMS based solution. Having a tested and production ready software not only reduces the development time but also helps in continuous upgrade and reduced bug count.
If you go down this route, you may want to also consider Sitefinity. Not only does it support all the features required by you, but also is built on .NET and supports MVC development. The product is built by Telerik, the makers of UX tools.
Disclaimer: I am employed by Telerik.
I've recently come across phpFox which is a social networking/forums/community site CMS. This may be of use to you and is fairly inexpensive.
The solution for the site of our company has become EBIZ CMS: full-featured site that includes social networking, online store, features a presentation, a forum, create HTML pages and much more, including the maintenance of professional technical support, so we do not even need help for installing by a programmer, and it is only US$ 9/month!
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What tools/plugins do you use for checking in/out code?
how to communicate changes made to the code, how to make request for new functionality?
How has your team solved this?
See this previously asked question:
Multiple Programmers in Software Development. How do we work on the same code and ensure it is always updated?
There are a lot of good answers to this question, and they apply to small and large teams.
For source control, we use Svn with the Tortoise SVN client. We've used other source control systems in the past, and have found this one to be the best for our needs.
I would recommend you use SVN for source code management, if you are using visual studio you can get numerous plugins for IDE integration.
http://subversion.tigris.org/
http://www.visualsvn.com/ = SVN Server & VS Integration
Try to set up Continuous Integration for this you can use Cruise Control .Net or Hudson. Cruise control can be set up to do a build on each check in and the history is shown on a web page.
http://confluence.public.thoughtworks.org/display/CCNET/Welcome+to+CruiseControl.NET
http://hudson-ci.org/
For requesting new functionality you could use a ticketsing system, wiki or Google Wave any one of these should enable you to keep track of requirements.
Hope this helps.
You can pretty much use any tools for small development teams you wish. There are lots of options.
Personally, my team uses SVN for code, and Trac for tracking - mostly because it's very cost effective for a small team. However, there's nothing C#/.NET specific about that setup.
If your team has MSDN subscriptions, you might want to consider Team Foundation Server. It has many features for integration with Visual Studio that are (arguably) superior to some of the alternatives.
You should use one of the many available source control repositories. Trust me, you won't know what you did without it :)
There are plugins for Visual Studio for working on a team, but personally I've never used them.
I've done team projects with both Subversion and Mercurial... just make sure to check in the solution and project files, and all related code.
Everyone will also need to be running the same version of Visual Studio.
For requesting new functionality, you might want to consider an external solution like Trac or Bitbucket or some other free system that includes issue tracking.
Well, how small? I work on a team of 5, and we communicate well with IM, or just dropping by and talking. That being said, the team is pretty responsible, so you can trust everyone to carry their weight. I would suggest you use subversion for source control if your company doesn't have anything.
We're a team of 3 C# developers.
For version control, we use AnkhSVN, an open source SVN client that integrates with Visual Studio.
For project management, issue tracking and feature requests, we use Redmine.
What tools/plugins do you use for checking in/out code?
Mercurial -- once you've used a DVCS, it's hard to imagine going back. Everybody uses their own favorite editor; usually, that's Emacs, which comes with support for many VCSs, including Mercurial.
how to communicate changes made to the code, how to make request for new functionality?
Changes are tracked in version control. You can look at the changesets as you pull them, or browse the web interface. Or just ask people at lunch what you're working on -- no developer is an island. New functionality is tracked, along with bugs, in the bug tracker.
How has your team solved this?
We're a small team using C#, but nothing here is specific to C# or small teams. I've used very similar systems with other size teams, and other languages/platforms.
We have a team of three and currently use Source Gear Vault for source control and Fogbugz for bug/feature tracking. Source Gear integrates into Visual Studio nicely and works over http which makes it easy to access from anywhere. Check ins and outs can be done directly in Visual Studio or a standalone client.
Source Gear also integrates with Fogbugz.
Used to use Visual Source safe and would never go back...
I work on a small team of 1-5, depending on the project.
What tools/plugins do you use for checking in/out code?
We use Git with Github for new projects, and TFS for some legacy work.
I see a lot of people recommending a certain provider without telling you why. I have used TFS, SourceGear, SVN (a little), and Git. I prefer Git because it stays out of my way. Git is command-line based. My typical source control workflow is a handful of simple commands, but learning those commands took a few tries.
how to communicate changes made to the code, how to make request for new functionality?
We use Pivotal Tracker for story writing and organizing priority.