aC forum: 2 things keeping me from buying AC

Post #8 by Viztech

Viztech — Tue, 22 May 2012 12:59:18 CDT

Dear Friends,

Thanks for sharing your ideas regarding a proofing module for activeCollab. We have been looking into this for last few weeks and were facing a need of such module.

Over past few days, we have worked and developed a module which has support of http://www.proofhq.com APIs.

We are ready to release BETA version of this module to selected users so please let us know if you are interested to help in BETA testing. Based on your valuable feedback, we will be able to prepare a stable version of the module soon.

The tasks that have been done in the current version are as following.

1. Enter owner company's ProofHQ credentials for re-use in the admin panel: Global ProofHQ credentials to enter from admin panel and to save on database - it is currently not used anywhere but we have kept it for some future reference and upgrades in plan.

2. User's ProofHQ profile manager: User's personal ProofHQ credential section to enter from user profile - User can edit/save these details for easy future reference.

3. Upload Proofs: Upload Proofs just like a normal file upload in activeCollab. All such uploaded files will be loaded to the ProofHQ account and will be embedded in the page for Proof display. People can directly edit the proofs within activeCollab and no other login is required because integrated login will be taken care from aC itself as per point 2.

4. Upload files just like a normal file upload in activecollab - it is connected with point 3 as every Proof uploaded is also saved as a normal file for a separate reference, if needed at some point.

5. Display list of proofs in a modular view

6. List of files - same as point 4

7. Embed existing proofs: At view have a line “Check at proohq” to have embed code. It would be useful when there are already some proofs which user want to add to activeCollab instead of uploading a file. Using this feature, you can add existing proofs to the activeCollab.

As the module is in the BETA phase, we would like to have a scrutinized review of it to make it much more effective and user friendly. Thanks for your support in advance.

We would be sharing a FREE version of stable module (along with one year of free upgrades) with all the BETA testers limited to first 10 people. Look forward to your cooperation!

NOTE:
1. Please write to us at support@viztech.co.in, if you are interested.
2. We are working on another module which should provide a limited proofing support for images in activeCollab but it is still in the development phase. Meanwhile, please support us for ProofHQ integration module.

Thank you!

Post #7 by Nathan S.

Nathan S. — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 10:28:43 CST

Ideapower, is it possible that you're looking for something similar to an implementation of GoogleGears in activecollab -- I think it might be complicated but I'm guessing that you'd be happy with a way to access the information temporarily while offline and then sync back up when you are online. I'm sure there are a lot of things that would make this difficult from multiple users, and different things but if there was a way to use something like Google Gears to pull an offline view of everything and then when you are back to an internet connection you'd be able to post/upload/etc that might be something worth considering.

Essentially a Read Only version of all content, available offline --- you could do a lot of this via RSS reader I'm guessing but not in such a great visual format as if Active Collab worked offline using something like Google Gears, with the interface you are familiar with etc.

Post #6 by ideapower

ideapower — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 12:59:12 CST

I suppose I"m looking for something that doesn't exist, but it seems like there would be one solution for "collaborative project management" somehow, that would work well from both aspects, without having to have several different, unrelated tools with redundant information.

I can appreciate ActiveCollab simply as a "Basecamp alternative" but it seems like it has the potential to be so much more than that by allowing integration with other products like FileMaker, or other desktop project management apps.

Post #5 by cyandesign

cyandesign — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 12:47:14 CST

I don't know about connecting them. There is a web aspect to FM, that we have not looked into, but I suspect that is just for publishing database info, not interacting with it. That is well over my head.

The amount of crossover for us is small, as we are using Filemaker to keep track of all of the jobs (100+ a month) and then using aC to collab on the big projects 1 to 2 a month.

Post #4 by ideapower

ideapower — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 12:31:09 CST

Thanks cyandesign. I've actually explored FileMaker as well, but like you said, you still need to use something else like ActiveCollab for collaboration aspects, and I imagine that you have some redundant data entry, since there is not relationship between your Filemaker info and ActiveCollab.

Is there anything that exists that could connect them? That is, if you had a FMP database set up as a project management tool, could you in some way export a project to ActiveCollab, or pull data from Filemaker thru ActiveCollab? Some kind of "FileMaker plugin for ActiveCollab" or "ActiveCollab export module for FileMaker," etc....?

Post #3 by cyandesign

cyandesign — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 10:25:06 CDT

Hey Ideapower,

If you need something you can access on your deskktop - I'd recommend something like Filemaker.

We us aC for large projects that we need to collaborate with a few outside folks, but found it was too limiting for all of our inhouse project management (Too many small projects). aC is great for collaborating, but the lack of sortable lists and speed was a big part of our decision to use FIlemaker for inhouse PM.

Filemaker is great as you can create the database & set if up anyway you need. I had no Database creation experience, but after a Saturday morning of watching tutorials at Lynda.com, we created our own system that is perfect for our needs.

I'd still rather us aC, so everything is in one place, but they have a lot of testing to do before they implement features & there is no guarantee that the features we requested meet the approval of the masses enough for them to add them. With Filemaker we can create changes whenever we want.

Post #2 by ideapower

ideapower — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 08:44:39 CDT

As another example, apparently Huddle now has an AIR application:
http://www.huddle.net/developers/huddle-desktop

Post #1 by ideapower

ideapower — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 23:28:03 CDT

I've been following along with ActiveCollab's progress for the past year, and I've yet to take the plunge, for the lack of two major things:

1. A desktop application / interface (I'm on Mac). I can't really depend on a project management system if I can't at least access my project information in the case that my internet connection is down or when I'm traveling and not somewhere that has internet access. Sure, it's great for collaborating/discussing a project, but unless there's some way of having all the project information in an offline form, then I can't really _manage_ it all in a dependable way. Instead, I depend on another desktop application for my main management, and use Basecamp as a stop-gap solution for collaboration.
A solution to this could be in the form of an Adobe AIR application to be cross-platform, or it could be a Mac-only application. A great example is PackRat that interfaces with Backpack. Or, maybe there's an existing project management application that would somehow interface with ActiveCollab. It seems like with the API that one of these things would be possible?

2. An "approval & revision workflow" system. A big part of what I would with ActiveCollab is dealing with clients regarding design proofs. The eventual goal with each project - and the only way for it to move forward - is for them to "approve" it. I need to be able to assure that such a process is as foolproof as possible, and it seems like it would be very easy to do, and could be either very simple, or provide advanced features for marking revisions. As mentioned in a few other threads, there are some different ideas for this, from building a very basic module that is part of ActiveCollab, to some coordination with existing services such as GetSignOff or ProofHQ.

With some solutions for those two things, and I'm sold.