Wow Stephen, I’m really liking it!

Based on what I see so far, I will definitely be willing to pay a license fee once its fully functioning.  What a great advantage it will be to have a project management system plugged right into EE!

Are there any particular areas where you were looking for feedback?  I know how it is when you ask for feedback and people start commenting on things you already know need work…  I’m very excited!

I wanna see. =/

Wowsers! Congratulations Stephen, it is worth waiting for.

Hmmm, any chance of me being granted a divine peek into your project?

Feature Request

Thanks a lot Stephen for this first impressive demo.

Would it be possible to post task/messages/threads directly from one’s email, as well as receive threads from the management console directly into our mailbox/smartphone?

This sounds like a lot to ask, but we’ve found having to everytime to go login into a web based PM console hugely time consuming (i asked the same request to ActiveColab and CopperProject)

Just like it is somewhat time consuming to receive “EE forum Notifications” without the actually thread content. Why having to be disturbed twice, going to check a mail message AND having to click and go to read the whole message into the forum?

If only i could check a thread content FROM my email, and hit the reply button to post a reply without having to log into the forum.

Same applies to Project Management.

Lisa and Sintra,

Sorry for the delayed response… been asleep

You now have a PM.  I really don’t know why I don’t just post the demo URL here…  As a matter of fact, I’m going to.

Okay folks, I’m ready to show a rough version of what I’ve been up to…

Back when I mentioned my Expression Engine way of managing my clients, I strictly used templates per EE installation.  This made it pretty straight forward.  Four or five templates with four or five weblogs and standard EE functionality—done.  This worked for me because each project I was doing lived at my development server and had a unique domain (ex:  project.domain.com).

As I began working on these templates, I realized this just wouldn’t be sufficient for most people, so I started brainstorming three things:

- multiple clients
- multiple people per client
- multiple projects per client

Because of this much needed functionality, the project became exponentially more difficult.  I’ve made good progress although there remains to be some functionality to work out.

The beauty of this project and utilizing EE for communicating with your clients is that you will customize their experience.  These templates are naturally modular and will supply you with a lot of control.  Personally, as I mentioned in my original forum post, this is superior to using a canned application that forces you into a methodology.  Communicating with a client about web design and development is difficult and has to be balanced.  My experience tells me that we can’t expect our clients to spend a lot of time learning a new application.  ...nor should we, so that is why I believe simple is better, hence EE.

Since you’ve shown an interest in these templates via this thread (http://expressionengine.com/forums/viewthread/55158/), I am inviting you to a demonstration.

Please keep the following in mind:

- Internet Explorer 6 and 7 have not received any attention so please use Firefox or Safari (the only two browsers I’ve tested so far)

- When you login, please select project:  0101 - Design and Development

==========================

http://cs.demo.flyingdeuce.com/

==========================

Until I have time to setup a forum dedicated to this project, I assume we can continue collaborating at this thread:

http://expressionengine.com/forums/viewthread/55158/

Thanks to all of you!

Stephen

I’m digging it so far. I can’t wait to get my hands on more of the actual functionality.

I have 2 things I’ve thought of so far.

1. A files section that’s not part of the review process, that allows customers to upload files too. I use functionality like this on Basecamp for the client to be able to send me assets that I need from them (logos and such), and this doesn’t really fit in the review process.

2. Basic time tracking. I’m thinking something very simple here, like a free-form field when marking an issue as completed that lets me enter the time for that issue. I could then create a rudimentary invoice page that uses that info, or just create a report page that includes times. Even better, in addition to this, another option in the same area to mark an issue as billed. That way I can more easily keep track with these invoices or reports.

Point number 2 seems pretty simple to me, but you’re the genius. I could be totally wrong.

This is really good Stephen.

It’s very much client-orientated at the moment I think and I wonder whether it might be made even more powerful if there was more available for you - the designer and any other crew that are working with you, i.e. who is responsible for what, what still needs doing (at a micro rather than macro level - perhaps some sort of to do list) etc.

Have you seen this:
http://www.markboulton.co.uk/journal/comments/sorting_my_workflow_out_part_two/

Some good ideas there about useful things to include from a paperwork point of view.

Stephen, I’ve only had time to do a quick look but what I’ve seen thus far is great! I’ll take some time shortly to do a thorough walk through of it and post some comments here.

Thanks for the demo. It looks great and i’m sure there will be some little tweaks before you release it into the wild. I suggest holding back with too many feature requests at this stage and let Mr. Slater release a first version. When we played a bit with it, he/we could use the management system itself to manage requests and development.

ps. laurent you could take a look at http://expressionengine.com/docs/modules/moblog/email_contents.html

GDmac - 03 October 2007 03:43 AM

Thanks for the demo…

ps. laurent you could take a look at http://expressionengine.com/docs/modules/moblog/email_contents.html

Thanks for this !

Anything new happening here?  I can’t wait to see how you accomplished this!

Thanks everyone for the comments!

This project is still in development and a top priority.

I too look forward to seeing your implementation Stephen. It will be a must have addition (whether it’s paid or open source) to great EE with no doubt.

This looks great! I encourage Stephen to keep at it whether developing a free or paid for product.

Yes…I’ve finally had the chance to see the project system and it’s a great start - very good to look at and very simple to navigate too. I can’t wait to try it and put it through it’s paces.

Sounds really interesting.

I can feel the pain of developing outwith, paid for, commercial work.

Hope to see this sometime soon.