General question about project organization and filtering project views
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We are considering the corporate + unbranded version of activecollab very seriously for a project, but we're a little concerned about how organization will hold up once we have hundreds of projects in the system.
The problem is we don't need a CRM, but we also need a way to handle quotes and information requests by turning them into projects for collaboration amongst the teams doing the quoting. It looks like with the API we can automate turning the web form directly into a project as well as creating a user automatically. This is great, as we need the new user to be able to login and post files for their project as needed, or see updates on the status of their project and be notified by email of activity.
But within a month, there may be 100 projects in the system, and this many might be added every month. What I envision is having three separate groups of projects - Business Partners, Quotes, and Information Requests. How difficult might it be to add some logic to auto-delete Information Requests after a certain period of time, like 30 days, unless its been upgraded to Quote or Business Partner?
Also, was looking at the online demo, doesn't seem like its easy to view projects by a filter for status etc? Or any option for that?
One last question! Is there any way we can have two discussion areas, so that we can set one to be allowed only for staff, and one for public for the company + staff?
The problem is we don't need a CRM, but we also need a way to handle quotes and information requests by turning them into projects for collaboration amongst the teams doing the quoting. It looks like with the API we can automate turning the web form directly into a project as well as creating a user automatically. This is great, as we need the new user to be able to login and post files for their project as needed, or see updates on the status of their project and be notified by email of activity.
But within a month, there may be 100 projects in the system, and this many might be added every month. What I envision is having three separate groups of projects - Business Partners, Quotes, and Information Requests. How difficult might it be to add some logic to auto-delete Information Requests after a certain period of time, like 30 days, unless its been upgraded to Quote or Business Partner?
Also, was looking at the online demo, doesn't seem like its easy to view projects by a filter for status etc? Or any option for that?
One last question! Is there any way we can have two discussion areas, so that we can set one to be allowed only for staff, and one for public for the company + staff?
Thanks for the quick response! Here's how we were hoping to run the system with our projects
1.) Potential Client fills a webform on website for either a quote or an information request. This builds a project in a particular group with an initial status of "unhandled", whether quote or information request. A quote request would create a user and company automatically using the email contact provided in the webform and associate it with the project. Hopefully this user can be notified of their new account on this creation, and how to login to their project.
2.) All unhandled requests are given a new status of "Initiated" by an administrator on a daily basis, and assigned to the right people to handle them. These people are now the project leads for these 'mini projects', and will add people as necessary to collaborate (engineer or sales person etc), which will involve posting files for specifications and quotes, and allowing comments from the customer to clarify project needs. The idea for private discussion would only be for discussion between engineers and leads that should be kept private from the customer.
3.) Informations requests that turn into quote requests are 'upgraded' into the quote request group. Quote requests that become full projects are 'upgraded' into the Business Partners group of projects.
4.) Information requests or quote requests that do not result in business should ideally be removed on a regular basis. There should be a way to view projects of "Unresolved" status for easy manual removal, or automatically delete them after a certain period of time that they have not been moved into a different group.
5.) Expected number of projects could be 50-100/month, but much fewer than that will be upgraded into the business group of projects. We might create an additional category for archived projects.
1.) Potential Client fills a webform on website for either a quote or an information request. This builds a project in a particular group with an initial status of "unhandled", whether quote or information request. A quote request would create a user and company automatically using the email contact provided in the webform and associate it with the project. Hopefully this user can be notified of their new account on this creation, and how to login to their project.
2.) All unhandled requests are given a new status of "Initiated" by an administrator on a daily basis, and assigned to the right people to handle them. These people are now the project leads for these 'mini projects', and will add people as necessary to collaborate (engineer or sales person etc), which will involve posting files for specifications and quotes, and allowing comments from the customer to clarify project needs. The idea for private discussion would only be for discussion between engineers and leads that should be kept private from the customer.
3.) Informations requests that turn into quote requests are 'upgraded' into the quote request group. Quote requests that become full projects are 'upgraded' into the Business Partners group of projects.
4.) Information requests or quote requests that do not result in business should ideally be removed on a regular basis. There should be a way to view projects of "Unresolved" status for easy manual removal, or automatically delete them after a certain period of time that they have not been moved into a different group.
5.) Expected number of projects could be 50-100/month, but much fewer than that will be upgraded into the business group of projects. We might create an additional category for archived projects.
We have our own dedicated server with some pretty beefy stats, so I think we'll be ok on performance :) I think at this point what we need to do is purchase it and set it up on a test site to try our tweaks and see how it fits in our workflow. Thanks for your help, and I'm sure I will bug you with another odd question or two along the way :)



