aC forum: The Essential AC Features Request list

Post #4 by mik

mik — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 19:03:13 UTC

- Faster and easier to enter tasks and then sort & move them around - use to collect and organize not have to be organized already to use it. Specifically, enter multiple tasks at once to an existing list not only when creating a new one, and move tasks from one list to another. I'd planned on upgrading to 1.x but stayed with 0.71 because of how tasks work in each.
- CSS hooks so can at least hide what clients shouldn't see since the system doesn't do that yet. There was an indication this would happen - quickly not eventually - but afaik it hasn't made it into a released version yet. I haven't followed closely recently and my test account expired so I could be wrong.
- The module developer section up and running; established, not necessarily stocked up with options yet but made as easy as possible for others to go ahead and develop their add-ons.

Those are my must-haves before I'd go for 1.x.
For the corporate version I'd add...

- The calendar doesn't seem very useful to my purposes but what I care about is being able to export & subscribe targeted calendar info to other calendars.
- I wouldn't switch to Pages without the ability to track who made which changes when, and the main view didn't show what was there, only one level and no indication of which of those had sub-pages.

Wishlist

A place where we can see which features/goals are planned. Doesn't have to say when or how but just what you are committed to development-wise. And if things change, post a blog about what, why, and what the new plan is.
The links to Blogs from the home page don't match, the one of the gray background still points to old-posts. I am mentioning that here because to me it relates - I'd contacted aC before about it, I was given to understand it would change; it hasn't. (Ilija Nov 5 07: "Thank you for reporting the problem with Blogs link. It will be fixed ASAP.") This matters to me because I need to know if you say something will happen, how much probability is there it will happen?

Exporting, archiving, importing, transferring entire projects and specific portions, including to use as templates. I view this as a requirement but put it under wishlist because I don't have specific expectations of how it should work and because if it was definitely going to happen within a year or so then I wouldn't need it up and running before buying.

I haven't had enough use to judge how well search works but if it's poor then improvement on that would be essential to me as well.

There are a lot of things I like about aC, this post may sound critical but it's because I respect the product and the developers that I want to take the time to provide feedback about what I would need.

Post #3 by Jamie Edwards

Jamie Edwards — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 13:51:26 UTC

For our work;

1. Printable check lists and project reports
2. Some kind of custom dashboard tool - that opens a window like Quick Add does, but you can decide what things to link to it (certain checklists, pages etc). It is accessible from anywhere.
3. A better calendar http://www.activecollab.com/forums/topic/2344/
4. Better search
5. Categories for pages
6. An actual use for TAGS

Post #2 by yaghani

yaghani — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 23:39:00 UTC

Thank you for listing the feature requests. For our work, I will need the following features in this order:

1. Project templates
2. Archiving
3. Scheduled Automatic Backup
4. Printable project report

Thanks. Other than these, great work with the software. One more gripe I have is how slow this thing loads. Don't know whether it can be sped up or if it is just a reflection of the speed of my hosting service.

Post #1 by laurentsj

laurentsj — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 22:21:30 UTC

Hello Ilija,

could you make a "sticky" post summarising our collective thought on the essential Features we have discussed?

Search
Although we can now search across projects, search returns tons of irrelevant queries but not what we're looking for. Yes i followed your instruction about mysql mods, and it did not solve the problem.
Search is NOT working properly.
We need at least an "exact phrase" search, and if possible: "all these words" "OR" "AND" as well as, maybe using the "tag" search as you've given us this field, although it is not used at the moment.

Multilingual Support
Clients-members-contractors must be able to choose their preferred language from their profile page
Your promised us this features month ago. That is WHY i choose to join AC in the first place.

Project Templates:
Being able to duplicate/move/copy project-milestones-checklists-wikis-pages accross AC.

the following features aren't life threatening, but they would make project management life a lot easier and you much much richer ;~)

Post using HTML or Markdown ? including in Title fields
I use either to write long lists, outlines, mostly containing links to references, docs, and files. It's a real pain right now, as our markup get torn apart. The resulting pages look messy and unprofessional.
We only one title line for each task. That's plenty IF we could link some of the words that the client or co-worker to refer to...

Printable Project Report-Summary
BOth for Freelancers, contractors, and Clients.
It would look a lot more professional to forward to clients and nice 450 pages binder of the last project you billed them 15k ! that would keep them quiet for a little while, refreshing their memory on how much shit we've been through to produce their "baby"

Invoicing ?
Especially if you can place a "time needed" field on tasks, tickets, discussions, etc... and get this information validated via thee "Time Billable Hours" section of AC, you'd be almost there on the invoicing feature.

Direct cc/reply via Mail client
Forwarding/cc/replying directly to AC from our mail client or Smartphone

Archiving:
A great feature would be "archive project to disk". When a project is closed the option could appear to archive it to disk where all messages, files, etc. were stripped of permissions and saved in a self-contained web one could put on disk.

Scheduled automated backup
Could we have a "simple stupid reliable" backup process, where the actual backup file CAN be rebuilt without mysql and cache files screwing the resurrection process!

Time Billable Hours Relating to Checklist-tasks-Tickets-Discussions-Pages-Files
Amazing how contractors can sudenly turn creative when billing time. Can't we have drop down fields as an option, so that they can match a slice of a job with their time.

Checklist-tasks-Tickets-Discussions-Pages-Files given a "Time required field"
So we can agree and quantify during the project planning phase each job.. then all we have to do is relate

Read Notification
I badly need to see if/when contractors/clients are actually reading some comment/task/milestone etc.
There is no way to verify if such contractor has read an important last comment, and this is an every day frustration for me, and i'm sure for many project managers.
You don't want to enforce another "please confirm the message has been read" ... maybe a field above the said comment, indicating who has logged on it, and when, like you had in the ac0.7.

Gant charts?
All of the above "tie the knot!"
For larger projects, Gantt chart would be a welcome feature IF delays in a particular job can automatically adjust all subsequent and relating ETAs

I'm sure there are tons of features worthy of "essential" that i have not felt a need for, so please just add them .. ONE ONE POST ?

And for those who have not bought ActiveCollab yet, IMHO, asside from the first three features that i really think are needed, AC is a fantastic web-based project management system - far superior to ... you know who, and also great value for money.
AC has a ton of features that i love, but this post isn't about flattering AC. It's about what we need to make it THE killer Project Management system.