Eating your own dog food
In the previous post I mentioned that we have been using a development version of activeCollab 1.0 for our own project management needs. We are really happy (while being 100% objective :) ) with it, although it’s not yet completely finished.
We think that the only way to develop a great product is to actually use it. Having said that, we started using activeCollab 1.0 as soon as we built features that are essential to our development process – task management and the platform for writing and sharing content. From that day we discovered and fixed a ton of small details that we missed during development.
Here is a little example – I already wrote that one of my favorite features in activeCollab 1.0 is ability to star (bookmark) objects and have them all listed on one page.
During the first few days I noticed a glitch with a specific feature. When I select a task, unstar it and mark it as completed - it’s a three step process - obviously. But, if you have JS disabled - it means 3 page reloads. That is too much for something that you do over and over again so I sat down and less than 30 minutes added a simple way to select as many objects as you want and edit them in one click, including unstar and complete. The process of unstaring an object and marking it as done now takes just a few clicks (to mark objects and select the action), as well as no page reloads if you have JavaScript turned on.
Small tweaks such as the one I mentioned really make a difference. The only way to notice a need for such a tweak is to actually use your own product and that’s why every development team should use their own product, not just build what software architects and management order them to build.
Comments:
Tagging is actually better than categories on my opinion, especially because you can assign many keywords.
Of course tagging alone is usless, you should think away of filtering tags, e.g. copy the behavior from del.icio.us.
Practical example.
I would use as tags the following: personal, opensource, work.
The nice thing on del.icio.us is that you can filter more tags (AND) as follows:
del.icio.us/username/work+opensource (+=AND)
that would be cool to not show e.g. personal+opensource so that you can actually see only what is related to work…
think about it ;)
[http://www.activecollab.com/forums/topic/1749/]
You make a good point. Developers cannot always use the software they develop as their users would. I am a developer in an insurance software provider company and it would be impossible for me to use the software as clients do unless I set up an office similar to theirs. This is frustrating though as developers becoe detached from the product and do not understand how everything works in it. I would say in this case the proper training would be needed to ensure developers are familiar with the software.
***********PHP CODE IN THE HEADER OF INDEX.PHP**************
set_time_limit(2000);
ini_set(“memory_limit”, “128M”);
*********************************************************
There should be an option in Configuration that enables user to increase these values as the system grows. I know to code in PHP, but 90% of AC users don’t.
Important feature: “Variable shortcuts”, which enables administrator to set shortcuts for quick addition. Why? ALT+S in Firefox2 is linked to HISTORY, so I can’t use the shortcut anymore.
Sorry… It’s just my daily “Is it summer ‘07 yet?” seizure.
first thanks for keeping the work going on!
Regarding the “usability issue” you mentioned: I think the “With selected …” method should only be an additional way to do things. Because for the ordinary user it’s not very intuitive. (clicking an element and then modifying it in another place makes the user think about the interface – never make the user think! ;) )
mg
I would like to see the study that says that average users are not familiar with interfaces that involve doing operations on multiple items. “Never assume anything” is as good as “Never make the user think” ;)
ok, sorry, I didn’t know that you have to go to the objects view to unstar the object. I thought it was just in an overview list: click on the star to change star state. Like marking emails as important/unimportant in Thunderbird.
Hm, I have no study available, it’s only about experience with watching untrained users :(
What I was talking about in this entry is the combination of actions that I use a lot and that I would most probably missed it if I haven’t actually used activeCollab – unstar and complete. Without automation it goes like – unstar, object page, complete, back to starred page. When you have to do that a lot it starts to get annoying so I added a nice little shortcut that lets you do all of that in two or three clicks without page refresh.
There are tons of small tweaks like this one that we added (and keep adding) to activeCollab while we are using it. That is why using your own product is a good thing.
(BTW – thanks for the great software)
R
You are not using activeCollab 1.0, but 0.7.1…
In activeCollab 0.7.1 tasks cannot be directly related to milestones, but task lists can. User can see members of companies they were involved with in some project. This is checked on company level and you cannot hide specific users from one another.
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Leech
2007-07-20 1:54
We needed to move back to Basecamp due we need some extra stuff and current version doesn’t allow plugins and that.