townx - activeCollab: one less missing open source application - Comments

Good thinking

elliot — Fri, 04 Aug 2006 07:47:27 -0500

Thanks for the comments. I agree, activeCollab shouldn't try to solve everyone's problems: it's great as it is. A plugin architecture would be a good addition, to allow for addition of supplementary features. Graphing is often a requirement for project management (particularly if public bodies are involved: they love a good Gantt chart :)), and it will be interesting to see if this is something that gets added before too long. It is a great piece of software and I see a good future for it: because it is simple and attractive, I think it's likely to grow a healthy community.

Simple and extensible

Ilija Studen — Thu, 03 Aug 2006 08:42:52 -0500

activeCollab is not here to solve all possible problems user have by default or follow conventions in project management software world. The idea is to keep things simple, usable and stay out of the way. Project management should not be about the software, but how do people use the software to solve real problems.

In the next few months we will try to make good and well documented plugin support for activeCollab so all the features you need and don't get with standard distribution you can add.

Not sure about that one

elliot — Wed, 02 Aug 2006 07:27:56 -0500

Simon, I've been put off by my colleagues experiences of this one. It is supposed to look good, but we had problems getting it to work how we wanted. Maybe it's time I had another look. It may address some of the functionality missing from activeCollab, like Gantt charts, for example.

Comparisons

Simon Morris — Wed, 02 Aug 2006 06:05:21 -0500

How do you think it compares against dotproject?

activeCollab: one less missing open source application

elliot — Tue, 01 Aug 2006 18:04:51 -0500

We occasionally get asked about project management software, and to date there have been few real contenders. We know about Planner (was MrProject) and a few others, but no really nice, good looking, easy to use tools. activeCollab looks set to fill that gap. Very similar to Basecamp, a synch to install (PHP and MySQL), and slick. Supports users with different privilege levels (so clients could have view-only access, while the project team can read/write); as many projects as you like; association of milestones with projects, and tasks with milestones; tasks are assignable to anyone involved in the project; documents can be attached to projects; and so on. Pretty good, and with a good chance of rapid improvements.

(By the way, miskanda mornek is the project name, in case you were wondering. I made it up.)