Senior Server Side Engineer at http://www.gliffy.com

Overview

Gliffy, a San Francisco based provider of web based business drawing software, is seeking a Senior Server Side Developer to focus on our J2EE architecture. The developer will be responsible for adding new features, scaling up, and
maintaining our server side architecture.

About Gliffy

Gliffy, founded in 2005, is a profitable software company with a focus on building a sustainible business model around our net-native drawing tool. Prior to founding Gliffy, Chris Kohlhardt and Clint Dickson were involved in the
technical side of building high-profile web applications such as Orbitz.com, Toyota.com, and the ColorSmart application by Behr.

• We use tools and philosphies to work smarter and more efficiently
• We work hard, but try to have fun while we do it
• We’re constantly pushing the bounds of what web applications are capable of, keeping the job challenging and interesting
• We’re excited about what we’re working on, and we hope you will be too!

Qualifications

The candidate MUST be local to the San Francisco area, and should expect to come to our San Francisco office during normal business hours. The candidate MUST have the following experience:

• Minimum 5 years Software Development experience
• Developing database driven Java/J2EE web applications deployed to Tomcat
• Working with SQL
• Test driven development
• Deploying Java applications to Linux/Unix servers
• Writing and maintaining ant build scripts
• Supporting end users who are having problems with the software
• Using wikis or other web based collaborative software

The ideal candidate MUST be willing to learn about, or already have experience with the following:

• MySQL and Hibernate
• PHP,Ruby,Perl and other languages
• REST API’s
• Continuous integration servers such as Bamboo or Cruise Control
• OAuth
• Agile development philosophies
• Managing small teams of remote or local developers
• Implementing COMET support

More about the position

The candidate will be responsible for managing all aspects of the server side infrastructure of Gliffy. For the most part, this means you’ll be working on adding features to our REST API that is powered by our J2EE application
server. The candidate must be a self starter and able to thrive in a startup environment where requirements are not always clearly laid out in advance. You should be pretty good at simplifying problems, and pushing back on features
if they seem excessive…. we’re ok with simplifying features if it means we can get the new version of the product completed sooner! As an early employee in the company, you’ll be expected to take on many roles. You’ll often be
called upon to work on new or existing features, or manage other employees / contractors to do the same.

You’ll be:

• Writing lots of server side Java code
• Managing the continuous integration builds of our products
• Architecting new features with the rest of the team
• Managing other developers

You should definitely be a team player. You should always be always asking yourself “How can we do better?”, and communicate your findings to the rest of the team in a constructive way.

Submitting your Resume

Qualified candidates should email their resume in PDF format to jobs (at) gliffy (dot) com

We are proud to announce a significant update to Gliffy Online. This update includes the new BPMN (Business Process Modeling Notation) symbol library and account folder management. Other features include website login, an easier sign up and payment process, and no more 5 diagram limit for free accounts! We also did a major revamp of our server-side code that will give better performance, reliability, and scalability in the long run.

BPMN Symbol Library
Gliffy now allows you to create detailed Business Process Modeling Notation diagrams. These diagrams are helpful in getting stakeholders a clear picture of your business processes. This symbol library includes events, activities, artifacts, gateways and swimlanes, as well as the specific connectors. The multi-lane swimlane symbols have adjustable lanes and the pool headers auto-resize with text input. Most of the new BPMN symbols allow their line and fill color to be user-defined.






Folders for document organization

Due to popular demand by our users, the Document Manager now allows you to organize your Gliffy diagrams into folders. The folders will show in a familiar tree structure on the left hand side. Clicking a folder will list the diagrams in that folder to the right. Want to move a diagram to another folder? Just click and drag it to that folder. Note: If you were using our previous tagging system to organize documents, these tags will be converted to folders under the top level folder called “Account Documents”. Also, any documents that were collaborated with you will be located under “Shared Documents”. Refer to the issues below for more information on the inclusion of folders and the conversion from tags:

• http://jira.gliffy.com/browse/GLIFFY-551
• http://jira.gliffy.com/browse/GLIFFY-551

Folder Permissions

With the addition of folders for organizing diagrams, Gliffy Online also gives administrators of Premium accounts the ability to add and remove user access/permissions to specific folders in the account. This feature can be found in the Account Manager, accessible to admins from the Document Manager.

No more 5 diagram limit!

When you sign up for Gliffy, you now get a free 30-day trial of our Premium product. This allows you to create unlimited public and private diagrams during the trial period. When the trial period is over, you can still create unlimited public diagrams.

Website and Secure Login

We’ve also added the ability to login to the Gliffy Online application from anywhere on our website. What this allows you to do is use your browser or operating system features to remember the email and password for login. This way, you can now access the document manager with 1-click from the website.

Premium accounts can now login securely. Logging in securely means all data between Gliffy and our servers is encrypted using SSL. This feature is only available to Premium accounts. Please note, running Gliffy in secure mode can cause a decrease in performance, as passing data over a network using the https protocol is slower.

Other Improvements and Bug Fixes

• Legacy Network Shapes have lost connection points - http://jira.gliffy.com/browse/GLIFFY-872
• Symbol does not change with resizing: Network / Home Network / Server - http://jira.gliffy.com/browse/GLIFFY-871
• Network Cloud shape is blurry when large, especially in expored images and svg - http://jira.gliffy.com/browse/GLIFFY-773
• Flowchart multidocument image element has inconsistant colouring - http://jira.gliffy.com/browse/GLIFFY-659
• Selection UI control for checkboxes and radio buttons should be a checkbox, not a drop down box. - http://jira.gliffy.com/browse/GLIFFY-629
• Color picker for all UI symbols doesn’t function - http://jira.gliffy.com/browse/GLIFFY-626
• Color Picker UI symbol doesn’t change color - http://jira.gliffy.com/browse/GLIFFY-625
• Video player UI symbol should have a large ‘play’ button in the center (just like youtube does) - http://jira.gliffy.com/browse/GLIFFY-624
• Vertical justification of text for ‘Image’ UI shape should be at the top of the shape (but not above it) - http://jira.gliffy.com/browse/GLIFFY-623
• Color should be removed from UI symbols that have color - http://jira.gliffy.com/browse/GLIFFY-621
• List Box UI symbol should have a scrollbar in it - http://jira.gliffy.com/browse/GLIFFY-620
• An account containing exactly 10 users can’t purchase a 10 user account - http://jira.gliffy.com/browse/GLIFFY-584
• Text Names for symbols in Symbol Palette left justifies when multiline - http://jira.gliffy.com/browse/GLIFFY-573
• The label for the “login” button is moving towards left, when it is clicked more than once. - http://jira.gliffy.com/browse/GLIFFY-15

For those of you using Twitter, we’re now hooked up and available here. Follow us for updates and tidbits in between blog posts!

Lately, I’ve been working on implementing a new symbol library, our BPMN symbols. We’ve been using a graphic designer in Brazil, and Gliffy has played a big part in making the communication process to get the symbol assets developed a snap (which is kind of unfortunate because I’d really love to have a reason to go to Brazil on business).

To start the symbol design process, we give our designer a list of symbols we want done, some inspirational mock-ups or examples and ideas on style, and he then gives us a single image of his design. Once we approve the design, I let him know how we want them delivered (various .swf and .svg files). For our more complicated symbols, I need to give him a guide on how certain assets are cut. For instance certain parts of a symbol may “stretch”, while other parts may not. So I’ll need the asset cut into those parts. This is where Gliffy has sped up the process. I’ll create a guide of how these symbol assets should be cut and organized in Gliffy and share the diagram with the designer. Below are some snippets from these diagrams.

As with the Horizontal Scrollbar above from our user interface library, after our designer gave us a design image of the complete symbol, I was able to bring that into Gliffy using the image import feature. I then laid out how the symbol is cut into multiple assets. The nice thing is that I don’t need to bring the symbol image into photoshop or anything to cut it up. I just use Gliffy’s “visual magic” by overlaying a white rectangle to cover up any areas I don’t want shown. (so asset #2 is the same as asset #1 with a white rectangle over the right). This makes producing the design so much faster. And the added bonus is, its easy to make revisions or revert in Gliffy, and our designer always has the latest revision.

With rising gas prices and Earth Day a few weeks ago, a recent CNN Money article, caught our eye. We created a Gliffy flow chart to really bring the point home.

Join the movement Green Slow Moving Vehicle Movement or read how driving slower affects the the San Francisco Bay Area commute.

This is your chance to meet the people behind Gliffy. We will be on hand April 23-25 at the Web 2.0 Conference in San Francisco. Take a moment to introduce yourself to us; we will be sharing booth space 535 with Atlassian Software Systems.

We think this is a great opportunity to:

• explore the latest that Gliffy has to offer
• share with us what you’d like to see next with the program
• meet our talented team
• ask questions

If your team is considering Gliffy, stop by and test the program with us. We are confident you will be impressed.
As a thanks for saying hello, discount codes for purchase of new Gliffy Plugin for Confluence Licenses will be handed out at the booth (suggestion: other cool schwag available, get there early).

Chris Kohlhardt, the CEO & Founder, and Clint Dickson, VP of Engineering & Founder, will be available during the conference. This is a great time to get information about Gliffy from the founders. If you would like to make an appointment with us in advance, drop us a note. Mark your conference schedule for 2pm Wednesday the 23rd and 4pm Thursday the 24th for a mini-presentation in the booth by Chris.

We would be glad to see you at Web 2.0 Expo!

I’m getting hitched in May, and the planning activities are reaching a new high. Part of the challenge is being able to communicate to your vendors what the wedding site will look like, how things will be laid out, etc. For instance, our band would like to know where they need to set up during different parts of the wedding. Our photographer and videographer would like to know where certain things will be located, like the bride and grooms rooms. They also would like to get a sense for what the site will look like, indoors and out.

Well, Gliffy to the rescue! Using Gliffy as floor plan software, I was able to quickly draw and share the diagram below with my vendors to answer their questions. Click the thumbnail below to see the diagram.

New Flexibility: Gliffy now offers Organizational (multi-user) Accounts

Many businesses and academic groups have been looking for a way to use Gliffy Online on a group level. With the release of Organizational Accounts groups can set up, manage and purchase multi-user accounts based on the number of users. Organizational Accounts allow you to share all business diagrams, like Organizational Charts, without choosing the Share –> Collaborate option. Other highlights we are proud of include:

• Organizations can manage (add, delete, etc) multiple users in an account through the Account Administrator Role

• All diagrams are automatically shared amongst users in an Organizational Account

• All Uploaded Images are automatically shared amongst users in an Organizational Account
• Account Administrators can be added and removed by the Organization

Personal Account users will notice they now have the option to be part of an Organizational Account and their Personal Account. Users can easily switch between each account and set one to be their default account. In addition the following payment improvements have been made:

• Premium Accounts can be purchased directly, without going through the sign up process (benefits both Individual and Organizational users)
• Purchasing a Premium Account no longer goes through PayPal, and the process is streamlined

Ever wonder if you are the only one with this question?

You’re not. Here is the quick and easy way to move your Gliffy organizational chart, flow chart or other Gliffy document into Word.

With Gliffy Diagram Open:

File, Export as JPG

Hit Ok, Save to Desktop

Then, within your word document: Insert, Picture, From File

You will browse to the JPG file on your desktop, Select the JPG file, Click Insert and you are ready to go!

This may not be news to some, but we hope it is relief for others. Enjoy~

As Mike mentioned in the recent post about our new web site and logo, we’re now using JIRA for customer support which is helping us respond to customer queries more quickly.

Where JIRA really shines, however, is in the issue/bug tracking department. We’ve now moved all of our bug and feature request tracking into JIRA which is helping us keep better tabs on the many feature requests we receive on a regular basis.

At this point you may be thinking…. that’s nice… but why do I care?

Part of our goal as a company is to keep you as informed as possible about what we’re working on, and make it easier for you to tell us what is important to you. To this end, product issues are now publicly available for you to view, create, vote on, and watch.

Take a peek at the issues currently logged in our system:

http://jira.gliffy.com/browse/GLIFFY

If you log into JIRA, you’ll be able to perform several different operations with issues:

Vote on issues - If a feature or issue is is important to you, please vote on it. By voting on an issue, we’ll know that issue is important to you, and that will help us know to implement that feature first. Watch issues - Again, if an issue is important to you, you can ‘watch’ an issue in JIRA. When the status of an issue changes, you’ll be notified. Create issues - Is there something you’d really like to see in Gliffy? Create a feature request, and we’ll look into it. Browse - Are you interested in finding out if a feature is on our radar? You can browse or search for issues that are important to you. Comment - Do you have an idea or more information about a feature request or issue? Comment on an issue to provide us with your ideas.

Search for answers

Another new feature we’ve added to our support portal is the ability to search all of our content. By simply entering your search terms, you’ll be able to find related information on our web site from a variety of sources including JIRA, FAQ, forums, and of course this blog. Try it here: