In a surprising upturn of events, FogBugz 4.0 was released a week earlier than project by Joel, though it does line up with his first statement saying today. Now that the cat is out of the bag, I can finally talk about it, phew!

I’ve been beta testing 4.0 for quite some time, and I have to say, wow…what a product. It has been significantly improved over 3.0, and just viewing their “movie” will give you a sense of everything.

My favorite features of 4.0 include:

1. The ability to add release notes to a case once it has been resolved. This allows you to provide a more user friendly explanation that can later be used in websites, changelog documents, or readmes. (Note: I’ve created a small app that I can now finally wrap up and release that allows you to create your own XSL scripts to change the release notes XML to any format you wish…more on this later).

2. The ability to have “clients” or “departments” assigned to projects, so that users can have the roles of viewing, editing, or none at all. The only limitation here is that a project can’t have both a client or department assigned, only one or the other.

3. Full email integration. Yes, I said FULL. You can completely run your customer service stuff through FogBugz now. Its supremely better over 3.0, and not to mention the spam filtering & bayesian filter is great!

4. Discussion Groups. Oh yeah, screw forums…use Discussion Groups! Well, maybe not entirely, but still it allows your team members or you with customers to have conversations between staff and other people just like you can with FogBugz support discussions.

So yeah, thats my fab4 list to go with the 4.0 release. I have to say that FogCreek has out done themselves on this version. There are so many goodies and jewels that I found or was pointed to that it just makes a great product the best. Get on over and upgrade or try it out now!

BTW – Only the windows version of 4.0 is released, the Unix and Mac versions are now being beta tested.