UPDATE: The script I wrote is no longer needed for the latest release of Pivotal Tracker, as pinned panes persist between browser refreshes. The script below is for the last release of classic Pivotal Tracker on June 20, 2013.
I like Pivotal Tracker. It’s a step-up from the cumbersome ticket tracking systems I’ve used in the past. As a manager though, it’s too cumbersome to see how my individual team members are doing and get an overall picture of how the team is doing at the same time. I’m only given a single backlog, which intermingles everyone’s tickets. I can see all tickets for a single engineer by using search, and I can pin each search results panel to get what I want. But if I reload the page, I lose all my efforts to build a usable dashboard. This is what I’m aiming for but without the hassle: a view of our current sprint (column one), our backlog (column two), our icebox (column three), and each engineer’s backlog (the remaining columns).
Yeah, the screenshot is a bit small here, but I’m not allowed to show you what we’re working on. With a little TamperMonkey grease, you too can have a comprehensive, and persistent dashboard. (GreaseMonkey if you’re still using Firefox.) Here is the script to pull it off. All you have to do is customize the project number and list of engineer name abbreviations.
// ==UserScript==
// @name Pivot Tracker Dashboard
// @namespace https://www.pivotaltracker.com/s/projects/
// @version 1.0
// @description Show Pivotal Tracker panels for each engineer
// @match https://www.pivotaltracker.com/s/projects/453961
// @copyright 2012, Ian Lotinsky
// ==/UserScript==
function main() {
setTimeout(function() {
var devs = 'mms, ay, hkb, bh, js, jw, np'.split(', ');
for (i = 0; i < devs.length; i++) {
$('.search .std').attr('value', 'mywork:' + devs[i]);
$('#search_button').click();
$('.pin_search').last().click();
}
$('searchString').clear();
}, 2000);
}
// Source: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2303147/injecting-js-functions-into-the-page-from-a-greasemonkey-script-on-chrome
var script = document.createElement('script');
script.appendChild(document.createTextNode('('+ main +')();'));
(document.body || document.head || document.documentElement).appendChild(script);
Now, this is a bit of hack, so not everything is roses. You still have to move tickets around in the standard backlog and icebox; you can’t move tickets around inside the developer backlogs since they’re just pinned, search result panels; and you need to refresh your browser from time-to-time to refresh the developer backlogs. It’s not as smooth as a first-class feature, but it gets the job done.
Ian Lotinsky 