By drupalninja99 on

I have been frustrated by the options out there for project management. I am thinking of using drupal to emulate some of the features you see out there in basecamp and similar products.

Our basic needs is setting up clients, projects, and communicating back and forth on projects.

With CCK and Views I can already to a lot. I would set up a project content type, client content type, allow for node reference between the two. I might set up an extra layer that would be a task or issue that references projects. Say you have a project and it's ongoing and you might open up a task that is an upgrade feature. So that would attach to a project which is attached to a client.

Drupal of course has files/images built in. You can customize the fields for each content type. The tracker helps you keep track of communication. Forums can be used for communication. Built-in contact forms can be used.

For access control I would probably start off simple and just only have closed access to employees. Later on though I might add a layer of access where you could give the client access to their tasks that you mark as public..that can wait though.

I would use the event module to add start/end dates to tasks. I'm not a huge fan of the drupal built-in calendar but it would probably work for that.

Is there anything out there like this? If not I was thinking of putting together some basic modules needed for project tracking and configure a nice little "out-of-the-box" drupal project management profile installer and make it available for download, similar to what ubercart does or other drupal off-shoots.

What does the community out there think?

⋅ Categories: Drupal 4.5.x or older, Drupal 4.6.x, Drupal 4.7.x, Drupal 5.x, Drupal 6.x

Comments

venkat-rk’s picture

venkat-rk commented

I am currently using Basecamp for managing projects, so I am interested in this, although I am not sure what kind of resources I can commit - I just found a skilled php developer who has started learning drupal.

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Previously user venkat-rk.

drupalninja99’s picture

drupalninja99 commented

but I think it can be solid. I'm trying to persuade my biz partner to cooperate with me on it. If I'm able to come up with something I would try to set up and installation profile for download. It's not like Basecamp has a ton of features. I used it for several months and I've used different tools for basic project tracking, mantis for instance which is meant to be a ticket tracker but at my work we use it for everything (and its annoying), I also use mojo helpdesk as not only a helpdesk but a poor man's project tracker and it's not bad tho it only lets you have 2 users.

I think drupal has enough features to be a really solid, free, extendable project management tool.

drupalninja99’s picture

drupalninja99 commented

Via CCK field or maybe custom CCK field?

realityloop’s picture

realityloop commented

http://www.doitwithdrupal.com/sessions/basecamp-built-drupal

dcarr’s picture

dcarr commented

I'm currently using a drupal based project management site for a t-shirt design company. Each role has an assignment to complete and based on the user input depends on which view it shows up on. Each view is special to different departments such as sales, separations, design, etc. All dept. can see the views, but there are some views I set as editable in views. Each role has the ability to edit certain cck fields in the Roles section. There are cck fields with selectboxes, date, and text fields where users can input their data. Once they have edited the field on the view list, it will end up on another view for the next step to handle.