Installation

Installing Lighthouse Keeper is easy. After you have downloaded the disk image simply mount it by double clicking on it (if it isn't already mounted). Then drag Lighthouse Keeper to the Applications folder. You may want to put Lighthouse Keeper in your dock for easy access.

First Launch

If this is the first time you have launched Lighthouse Keeper you will be greeted with a sheet to help you set things up. Simply enter your login details for Lighthouse and the first account you wish to download data from (don't worry if you can't choose, you can add more accounts later). Click Next and Lighthouse Keeper will begin to download your projects, milestones, users, ticket bins and tickets. Once it has finished click Finish to start using Lighthouse Keeper

Registration

If you have launched Lighthouse Keeper before but haven't registered you will be greeted with the registration sheet. This pops up on launch until you register Lighthouse Keeper. You are also limited to viewing just 1 project and retrieving updates manually until you register. If you haven't purchased a licence yet you can go to our store by clicking on the Buy Licence button. Once you have bought a licence, enter the details from your email into the text fields and click Register. If you do not wish to register Lighthouse Keeper yet you can click Later to use Lighthouse Keeper with the limitations.

The Lighthouse Keeper Interface

Lighthouse's UI is similar to many applications on Mac OS X such as Apple's Mail application. On the left is your source list (1). This contains your projects, milestones and ticket bins. In the top right is the ticket list (2). This shows all the tickets in the projects, milestone or ticket bin selected on the left. Select a ticket in this list to view its details below in the ticket details pane (3). To modify, create or search tickets use the toolbar items (4) and to modify milestones and ticket bins use the buttons at the bottom of the source list (5). To find out more about these in detail use the links on the left of this page. The Activity Viewer (6) lets you keep track of what Lighthouse Keeper is currently doing.

What is Lighthouse Keeper?

Lighthouse Keeper is a desktop client for the Lighthouse issue tracker, offering support for managing tickets, milestones and ticket bins.

What is Lighthouse?

Lighthouse is a powerful yet easy to use issue tracker built by the folks at entp. It helps teams track the progress of their projects and collaborate.

How do I search by a certain field in Lighthouse Keeper?

The search field in Lighthouse Keeper supports the full searching syntax of Lighthouse. To find out more visit the Lighthouse help page

Why doesn't Lighthouse Keeper support feature X?

Lighthouse Keeper is still fairly early on in its life and doesn't yet support all the features of Lighthouse such as Changesets and Messages. These will all be implemented as Lighthouse Keeper matures.

Theme Basics

A theme at its most basic is a folder with the name THEME.lhktheme and containing a single HTML file called index.html. You can add any other files, such as images and style sheets to this folder, but the HTML must be contained within the index.html file.

Tagging basics

Lighthouse Keeper uses a set of special tags to insert ticket data into a theme. These are surrounded by curly braces, e.g. {title}. Some tags also have attributes, which are in the form: name=value and appear within the tag after the name. A small number of tags have open and closing tags. These tags are often used where there are multiple versions of that piece of data that Lighthouse Keeper will loop through. Any content placed within these tags will be duplicated on each pass and any tags within the content will be replaced with the appropriate data. Lastly, some tags can also be used in conditional statements, so you can have a default value shown if they don't exist. Conditionals are presented in the form:

{if TAG}

	    Enter content here for if TAG is set

	{else}

	    Enter content here for if TAG is not set

	{endif}

The {else} clause can be left out if you don't want to have any content if the value isn't set.

Tags

Below is a list of tags, any attributes they have and a description of what the tag is replaced by

{title}

Description: The title of the ticket.
Conditional?: NO
Attributes: None

{number}

Description: The ticket's number.
Conditional?: NO
Attributes: None

{state}

Description: The ticket's state.
Conditional?: NO
Attributes: None

{stateColour}

Description: The the colour of the ticket's state (doesn't include preceeding hash sign).
Conditional?: NO
Attributes: None

{body}

Description: The ticket's body.
Conditional?: YES
Attributes: None

{assignedTo}

Description: The name of the user the ticket is assigned to.
Conditional?: YES
Attributes: None

{milestone}

Description: The milestone the ticket is in.
Conditional?: YES
Attributes: None

{updatedAt}

Description: The the date the ticket was last updated.
Conditional?: NO
Attributes: format - The date format to use, in the Unicode standard.

{createdAt}

Description: The date the ticket was created.
Conditional?: NO
Attributes: format - The date format to use, in the Unicode standard.

{reportedBy}

Description: The name of the user who reported the ticket.
Conditional?: NO
Attributes: None

{tags}{/tags}

Description: The ticket's tags. Any content put between these tags will be duplicated for each tag.
Conditional?: YES
Attributes: None

{tag}

Description: The actual tag. This needs to be placed between a pair of "tags" tags.
Conditional?: NO
Attributes: None

{history}{/history}

Description: The ticket's history. Any content put between these tags will be duplicated for each ticket version.
Conditional?: YES
Attributes: None

{comment}

Description: The comment added to this version. This needs to be placed between a pair of "history" tags.
Conditional?: YES
Attributes: None

{posterName}

Description: The name of the person making the change and/or comment. This needs to be placed between a pair of "history" tags.
Conditional?: NO
Attributes: None

{date}

Description: The date of the change and/or comment. This needs to be placed between a pair of "history" tags.
Conditional?: NO
Attributes: None

{changes}{/changes}

Description: The changes between the current version and previous version. Any content put between these tags will be duplicate for each change. This needs to be placed between a pair of "history" tags.
Conditional?: YES
Attributes: None

{change}

Description: The actual change. This needs to be placed between a pair of "changes" tags.
Conditional?: NO
Attributes: None

Adding a ticket

To add a ticket click the Add Ticket toolbar icon or press Cmd-N. This will bring up an "Add Ticket" window. All you need to do to add a ticket is enter a title, select a project and click the Create toolbar icon. Of course you will most likely want to enter some tags, set the milestone and assigned user and enter a description for the ticket before you create it.

Editing a ticket

To update a ticket, select it and click the Edit Ticket toolbar icon or double click on a ticket. This window functions the same way as the "Add Ticket" window but with a few important difference. Firstly, you cannot change the project for a ticket (if you want the same ticket details but want to move it to another project you will need to copy the ticket). You will also notice you can now set the status of the ticket via a drop down. Lastly, entering text into the description field will make a comment, not update the body of the ticket.

Deleting a ticket

To delete a ticket, select it and click the Delete Ticket toolbar icon. A confirmation sheet will pop up. Click Delete to delete the ticket. Please note that this operation cannot be undone.

Copying a ticket

Lighthouse Keeper allows you to copy a ticket, either within a project or across to another project. To copy a ticket, select it and click the Copy Ticket toolbar icon. This will open a window that works in the same way as the "Add Ticket" window, except you will find that all the fields have been autofilled with the ticket details. Click Copy to copy the ticket. Alternatively you can edit fields before copying the ticket. Note that the ticket's status and history are not copied

Searching tickets

Tickets can be searched using the search field in the top right corner of the main window. Searching will bring up a filter bar that lets you narrow the scope of your search from All tickets to either the current project or the current milestone/ticket bin. The search field works in the same way as the search field in Lighthouse and will accept all the same syntax. To find out more about the search syntax read the Lighthouse help page.

The Milestone Info Bar

When you select a milestone in the source list, the Milestone Info Bar will pop up. This shows you the due date of the milestone as well as a progress bar for the milestone. This progress bar will be green if you have plenty of time remaining or the milestone is complete, yellow if the milestone is not finished and is due in the next 3 days and red if the due date has passed and you have still not completed the milestone. Clicking on the "Due on" date will change the text to show how many days the milestone is due in. Clicking on the i button at the right of the bar will show you the goals that have been set for the current milestone.

Adding a Milestone

To add a milestone, click on the + button at the bottom of the source list and choose Add Milestone. This will pop up a sheet with fields for the milestone title, its goals, its due date and the project you want to put it in. Fill out these fields and click Create to make a new milestone

Edit a Milestone

To edit a milestone, select the milestone and choose Edit Milestone from the action menu at the bottom of the source list. This will pop up a sheet like the add milestone sheet. Change the values you wish to modify and then click Update to update the milestone.

Delete a Milestone

To delete a milestone, select it and choose Delete Milestone from the action menu at the bottom of the source list. A confirmation sheet will pop up. Click Delete to delete the milestone. Please note that this operation cannot be undone.

Adding a Ticket Bin

To add a ticket bin, click on the + button at the bottom of the source list and choose Add Ticket Bin. This will pop up a sheet with fields for the ticket bin title, the search query and project you want to put it in. Fill out these fields and click Create to make a new ticket bin

Edit a Ticket Bin

To edit a ticket bin, select the ticket bin and choose Edit Ticket Bin from the action menu at the bottom of the source list. This will pop up a sheet like the add ticket bin sheet. Change the values you wish to modify and then click Update to update the ticket bin.

Delete a Ticket Bin

To delete a ticket bin, select it and choose Delete Ticket Bin from the action menu at the bottom of the source list. A confirmation sheet will pop up. Click Delete to delete the ticket bin. Please note that this operation cannot be undone.

Search Queries

Lighthouse Keeper uses the same search syntax as Lighthouse for performing searches, both in the search field and in ticket bins. To find out more about searching visit the Lighthouse help page.

Adding a Project

To add a project, click on the + button at the bottom of the source list and choose Add Project. This will pop up a sheet with fields for the project name, description, type and open and closed states. There are 4 different project types:

• Private Project - These projects can only be viewed and added to by their members.
• Public Project - These projects can be viewed by anyone and have tickets added to them, but only members can edit milestones and ticket bins.
• Archived Project - These projects can only be viewed by their members and cannot be added to unless unarchived.
• Open Source Project - These projects are similar to public projects, except they are intended for open source projects so you can set the licence the code is available under.

New states can be added to a project by clicking one of the + buttons next to an existing state. A new state will be put created below the state you clicked on. Next enter a name for the state and choose a colour. Once you have filled out these fields click Create to create the project.

Edit a Project

To edit a project, select the project and choose Edit Project from the action menu at the bottom of the source list. This will pop up a sheet like the add project sheet, except with two new values: default user and default milestone. Setting these will mean all new tickets have the assigned user and milestone fields filled with these values. Change the values you wish to modify and then click Update to update the project.

Delete a Project

To delete a project, select it and choose Delete Project from the action menu at the bottom of the source list. A confirmation sheet will pop up. Click Delete to delete the project. Please note that this operation cannot be undone. All tickets, milestones and ticket bins stored within the project will also be deleted.

General Preferences

General preferences allows you to set the update interval for checking for new tickets and the global hotkey for bringing up the "Add Ticket" window. There is also a checkbox for you to enable/disable checking for updates at launch

Accounts

The accounts section lets you set the username and password you use to log into Lighthouse. You can also add accounts that you have access to with these login credentials.