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Getting Started on Crossroads Labs

Quick Links:
Register As A New User
Login To The Site
What is Crossroads Labs?
Site Wide Functions
Searching The Site
Project Specific Functions
How To Sign Up For A Project
How To Search Within A Project
How To Register A New Project

Register As A New User
To register as a new user, click on the new account link on the top right side of the page and fill out the form.

Login To The Site
You can login by clicking the log in link on the top right side of the page. You must enter your username and password to participate. You can browse the site without logging in.

What is Crossroads Labs?
Labs is a mashup of Sourceforge and Google Labs, aiming at community-based development for Crossroads and the church at large. Labs hosts projects that our community works on together. Each project has its own area within the Crossroads Labs site. Participation is open for all projects.

Getting Started Once You're Logged In

Site-wide Functions
You have five options from the top menu to browse the site (located in the dark grey bar). These site-wide options are available anytime and are not dependent on a single project.

• Home This is the introduction page for the Crossroads Labs. You can read the latest news from projects you have joined, get general help about GForge . the Collabrotive Development Environment (CDE) that Crossroads Labs uses, or get a brief overview of the different projects on the site.
• My Page Your personal page contains information about the projects that you are signed up for including the tasks you are assigned, forums you are monitoring, news, etc. You can also edit your preferences, edit your profile, keep a journal, and register a new project.
• Project Tree This page lists the various projects that are being hosted by Crossroads Labs. You can browse projects by topic, programming language, development status, etc. You can find out more about a project by clicking its name.
• Code Snippets The purpose of this archive is to let you share your code snippets, scripts, and functions with Crossroads Labs users. You can create a "new snippet", then post additional versions of that snippet quickly and easily. Once you have snippets posted, you can then create a "Package" of snippets. That package can contain multiple specific versions of other snippets. You can browse snippets by language or category.
• Project Openings The Crossroads Labs Project Help Wanted board is for non-commercial, project volunteer openings. Commercial use is prohibited. Project listings remain live for two weeks, or until closed by the poster, whichever comes first. (Project administrators may always re-post expired openings.) Browse through the category menu to find projects looking for your help. If you're a project admin, log in and submit help wanted requests through your project administration page.

How To Search The Site
To search Crossroads Labs, use the search bar at the top of the page. You can search for the following:

• People You can search for login name or the complete username. The search is not case sensitive
• Software/Group You can search for projects registered on the site.
• Skill You can search for specific skills listed by users on the site. Only public skills profiles can be searched.

• Summary The project summary page show summarized information about the current project including project description, project members, latest file releases, public areas, news, etc.
• Forums Every project can have its own discussion forums. When a new project is created, three forums are automatically created . Open Discussion, Help, and Developers. The forums have two very powerful options. Save Place is a function that registers the numbers of messages already inserted in the forum and will highlight new messages the next time you return. Moniter Forum sends every post to the forum to your email.
• Tracker The tracker is a generic system where you can store items like bugs, feature requests, patch submissions, support, etc. Trackers are reffered to as .Artifact Types. and individual pieces of data are .Artifacts.. .Bugs. is an Artifact Type, while a bug report would be an Artifact. The default trackers are:
  • Bugs Used for bug tracking
  • Support Requests Users can insert support requests and receive support
  • Patches Developers can upload patches to the software
  • Feature Requests Requests for enhancements to the software should be posted here
• Lists This page shows the list of available mailing lists. You can subscribe, unsubscribe, or edit you preferences for a specific mailing list from this page. Clicking on List Name Archives will allow you to browse the archives of selected mailing lists.
• Tasks The Task Manager is similar to the bug tracker except you can insert a start date and end date of an item, the number of hours for an item, you can have multiple assignees to the item, and you can handle dependencies between the tasks. Tasks are organized in subprojects.
• Docs The Document Manager is a simple way of publishing documents on the site that relate to the project. You can submit a new document, view existing documents, or edit documents.
• Surveys Surveys allow you to ask questions to the members of the project and view the results.
• News The news section allows you to insert news relative to the project. News can be monitored similar to tracker items and forums. News will also be displayed on the project homepage and the site homepage once its approved by the administrators. News is generally used to announce software releases, milestones, or significant changes in the project.
• SCM This page contains information on the project's version controlling. It also displays some statistics about the selected project.s SVN tree. More information to come.
• Files The page is used to list the files for the project. Files can be divided in different packages, and all packages can be monitored by the users.

How To Search Within A Project
Once you are browsing a project, you can use the search bar at the top of the page to search for different items related to the project. You can search all the tools within a project or you can specify where you would like to search. Specific tools you can search are Trackers, Forums, Tasks, Releases, Documents, and News.

How To Register A New Project
To register a new project, login and go to the my page section. Click on the Register Project link in the menu at the top of the page. You need to provide the following information to create a new project.

• Project Full Name The name of the project
• Project Purpose and Summarization A brief summary of the project
• License You must select a license for your software
• Project Public Description Provide a description of your project for people to see from the Project Summary Page
• Project Unix Name Provide a unix name of your project. This name must respect the following rules: it cannot match the unix name of any other project, it.s length must be between 3 and 15 characters, it must be in lowercase, and only characters, numbers and dashes are accepted.