Developer Blog

Planning Module is another additional module for activeCollab developed by guys from AppsMagnet company. Most of the users who have tried Reports Module are using Planning as well, because it’s a good mix to use them both in activeCollab. 

This module brings a different perspective into the project organization - you can schedule and arrange everything you wish to be done inside the project, from one place. A bird-eye view will enable you to create, edit, replace and remove all project items and put them exactly where you want. 

After the installation (that is quite simple, just follow the instructions given in the package you get after the purchase), Planning Module will be available as an additional tab in all of your Projects.

Three preview types that are offered will emphasize different aspects of your project:

1. Outline

Outline view gives a clear perspective of the project structure. You can see all your Milestones with included Tickets and Tasks here, as well as Checklists and Pages you have created. Tree like form will make it easier for you to see and organize all items in a way you wish. Colored labels of each item makes simple to track and spot them visually. 

You can even create, edit, reorder and delete project items directly from the Outline form. After clicking the Save button everything will be saved and all new and changed items will be posted in activeCollab. 

2. Cards  

Cards are bringing the project items under the spotlight. They remind of a big post-it notes where you can write everything down and make all necessary adjustments (such as set a visibility level, category, priority, define assignees, manage subscribers, choose the start and due date, make a time estimate...).

Another handy thing you can set up here is the Ticket Status. Planning Module brings new Status labels for Tickets in activeCollab - New, Reopened, Acknowledged, Assigned, Resolved and Close. 

3. Timeline   

Here you can see the Gantt Chart of your project. All Milestones, Tickets, Checklists and Tasks are displayed with their start and due dates. 

You can even have more than one project included in this preview, and have all related projects available on one sheet of paper. 

Planning Module has a clear goal - to help you organize and arrange your projects. It’s not always easy to know where are you headed with some ideas, and Planning Module may make things easier for you. 

Reports Module is one of the most successful activeCollab related products developed outside A51. Creators of the reports Module are Nirav Mehta and his crew from the AppsMagnet company. 

As the name it self refers to, this module’s basic purpose is to generate different kinds of reports based on the data you already have in your activeCollab. 

After buying (for the price of $69) and installing (it’s simple, just follow the instructions from readme.txt), Reports Module will be available on the system level. Only people you allow to will be able to access and create reports that you let them to create. 

Reports module can create reports based on three criteria:

1. Project 

Project reports, for all projects, or some particular project, are displayed graphically as charts that shows:

• burn downs - open items in your projects over time. The higher the trend is the more work you’ve left to do. 
• hours - allows you to track relation between estimated hours and actual time that’s been logged. Estimated hours will be visible only if you’re using the Planning Module (developed by AppsMagnet, as well) because activeCollab doesn’t support this feature. 
• work summary - displays opened and completed items based on the category they belong to. 

Besides charts, you can see some general data related to your projects, such as the preview of opened and completed items, amount of hours spent, percentage of the closed items, upcoming Milestone and Velocity. Velocity is, according to Nirav, rate of completion of your projects. 

An interesting addition are Most Active & Open and Longest open list of items. It can point you to some of the forgotten Tickets, or unfinished Checklists. 

2. People 

This criteria allows you to see individual reports for every person with an account in your activeCollab. 

Displayed as report cards, this reports will enable you to see what that person is responsible for, how active she was, where exactly is she assigned and how much working hours has she logged. 

This tool should help you manage people you’re working with and give you a close insight in productivity rate of your team. 

3. Companies 

In this section you can see full report for you Company related items in activeCollab. Here you can see how many projects you have opened, how many user you have, how many items you have opened and closed on the system level. Also, you can see some basic data for each of your projects here. 

If you wish to list this information for one of the Client companies you can easily do that by choosing the Company you wish. 

Reports module can be a very useful and handy tool, especially if you're working with clients and great number of people. Everything is accessible easily, available at one place, and simple to set up. 

Having clients on board can sometimes be complicated: what to disclose and what to keep for yourself, how to make sure that sensitive information doesn't leak, etc. Roles and Permissions in activeCollab allows you to set client accounts, while making sure that they can see only things you want them to be able to see and can do only things you want them to be able to do. 

Here are a couple of suggestions how to configure roles and permissions quickly. We pointed out some of the important permissions, because they can expose sensitive information to Clients if you misunderstand their meaning and misconfigure them:

• Check the Roles and Permissions article of activeCollab Administrator’s Guide. It can help you learn about predefined Roles and what part of the system each Permission controls. 
• Client Company Manager role is created for a contact person in client companies. Person with this role is able to change company details, add people to their own company and have access to invoices issued to that company. On the other hand, Client Company Member role is meant for all the other members of the client company and their permissions are restricted only to the system access and projects that you add them to. 

• Don’t give project_management, admin_access or people_management system permissions to your clients or members of other companies. These permissions will enable them to see and access pretty much everything in your activeCollab (all projects, people and data) where they will be able to add, update, and remove some information from your system.  
• Don’t set client as a Project Leader, unless you wish to give them all permissions in that particular project. 
• When adding people to projects, you can set access level to each section of the project (Checklists, Pages, Discussions, Milestones, Files, Tickets). There are four levels available for each section: no access; has access; has access and can create; has access and can create and can manage. This covers almost all situations that you might need.

• If you wish to give clients access to some sections of your project (Discussions, for example) and you don’t wish them to see all items placed here, you can mark the items you wish to remain hidden as Private. In this case only people with can_see_private_objects permission (that we recommend only to your staff) will be able to see and access these items. This is great when you want to have an internal discussion with your team, but don't want clients to be able to see it.
• We suggest you don’t give access to Time Reports to the client (use_time_reports and manage_time_reports system permission). Time reports query the time data from all of your projects, and that’s why they are designed to be used internally.

By following these simple advices, you can bring clients on board without worrying that your sensitive data will ever be exposed to them. As suggested in #1, you may find more details in Roles and Permissions section of activeCollab documentation.

Another interesting module has been released by the members of our community. Andreas Schempp has just released Beanstalk Integration module, which adds some features to the Source module to integrate with Beanstalk.

Currently it allows to deploy to an ftp server using the beanstalk feature. This extension adds a new icon to the source repository list.

When you click that icon, you will see the smaller popup, where you can make all adjustments required.

Has anyone give it a spin yet? What are your first impressions on Beanstalk Integration Module? 

Folks from Realnets released their Billings module for activeCollab. What makes this module special is that it is designed for companies who extensively use QuickBooks in their business, and want their project collaboration tool to be integrated with it:

This is their first release, based on their own needs as a company so they are also looking for feedback from the other activeCollab users.