[meta] Design UI mockup for Case Tracker Timeline grid interface

Mockup looks good. As far as my GSoC proposal, that's not what I was thinking. I'm hoping we can come up with an approach that would allow for a module that would accommodate both cases (assuming that making it more abstract doesn't make it too much harder to use).

Few questions:
* How is that mockup that different than the typical task listing? It doesn't really seem like something all that different to me. What do you feel the main benefit is?
* What would the dragging do? I see yours changes the priority. What if the user didn't want the sort order to be by priority? What if they wanted to sort by date? Would dragging do anything?
* Do the dropdowns at the top of the columns act as filters?

Here is what I was thinking in terms of the timeline.

Key features
* Adding a new task would be as simple as clicking in a blank space in one of the cells (kind of like google calendar)
* Viewing a task would be a popup (similar to google calendar) (see image 2)
* Editing a task would allow you to see a handful of fiends (see image 2)

Rows: "realms" of a project. Category, etc.
Columns: Time. Could be by week, day or month.
Cells: List of task titles

UPDATE:
Dragging would move the realm/week of the project.

Question: Would tabledrag.js actually work for this?

Are you also implementing gantt charts?

The incarnation that I am imagining isn't actually in gantt format. I'm aiming to create something that is intuitive to non-developers. Although gantt certainly can be used by non-programmers, I get the sense that is where it is used most often.

There is some old code around for creating a gantt chart for OG: http://drupal.org/node/226598

EvanDonovan: Yeah, basically. What do you think about that? I can see how it fits my use case, but I'd much rather create something that roughly fits mine but is usable by a wide audience. Do you think that halfway point makes it usable by more people or makes it unattractive to both ends of the spectrum?

Speaking as a nonprofit that uses Drupal for Project Management (actually we use OpenAtrium and it is great) we have been looking at creating this exact view, with easy editing. The key drivers are:
Rapid data entry of cases (because we are truly living in Casetracker--everything we need to do, or get done, is recorded there)
Rapid viewing/sorting of case information in aggregate
Displaying projects and cases in a summary tabular view
Editing individual attributes of a case in grid view
Essentially, just what you've been talking about!

See the attached for a mockup of a multiple-case entry form--I know it's not quite what you're talking about here, but something that might be useful. I'd be happy to provide any other feedback or assistance required--and Evan, look out for an email from Kevin C about working with you as part of your Google Summer of Code project!

@EvanDonovan, Sorry for forgetting to keep track of this this thread! Yeah, the proposal was accepted (YAY!) and yes, I am still planning to do development on this module in a manner somewhat similar to the screenshot I proposed.

If you want to make a separate module, that might make sense. That said, I think there will be a lot of overlap in the way we approach our goals. Is there any planning we could do now so we don't duplicate each other's work?

@Bucketworks: Thanks for all the support those far in this thread and elsewhere. I like your mockup. I think it might be something I tack onto my exiting project goals.

Also, I've centralized all resources related to the project here: Grassroots project management tools.

Also, I have all of my user stories here: Project Tracker - Activism Labs

I think this thread is a good place to continue related discussions.

This is similar to what the dashboard function provided in the 5.x version. We've been using it quite awhile for managing cases (i.e., projects, tasks, tickets) In our example, the departments we service are our "projects" and we categorize all of the work we do for them within those projects. I've included a sample of the summary we created using the dashboard functionality from the previous version. At this point, that functionality is not present any longer in 6.x however, do you think this timeline grid interface might be a good way to develop our summary report in the new environment? The lack of this kind of dashboard in Open Atrium seems to be a limitation, too.

@grim.miles I don't think that kind of dashboard would be the primary functionality of casetracker_timeline, but it might be something we build in to one of the tools being created over at http://activismlabs.org ... I definitely see the benefit there.

@EvanDonovan - I just found the feature you are looking for in Google Spreadsheets. If you click on "new version" in the top right, you can now drag and drop single rows. I know you'd probably rather have it in Drupal, but I wanted to let you know it exists. Yay!

I would love to implement this kind of functionality with my Gantt chart View. It might make sense to work together on some sort of underlying API or backend to allow for that, although I haven't researched what's already out there (tabledrag.js, etc...)

I definitely do want to work create some form of timeline module eventually. I'm not sure when that will happen though. And I'm also less confident that it will be based on casetracker.

I am happy to pass this project namespace onto someone else if they're interested in taking it on.

@Evan, I'm thinking mostly in terms of a backend to allow editing of nodes via a faster and more intuitive interface than by the traditional "View - Edit - Save" manner. I think if Drupal has any weakness in the "Web 2.0" arena, this is it - it can't offer or compete with the whiz-bang (and very useful) interfaces that people have come to expect from sites like Google Calendar/Gmail, Remember the Milk, Facebook etc... For instance, my Gantt chart plug-in is a great way to visualize data, but what if instead of just visualizing it, you could actually drag and drop tasks (cases) to adjust due dates and parent projects, while intelligently handling dependencies, etc...? This is something that I could program in myself, but it would be a heck of a lot easier if there were some sort of backend (think an extended version of tabledrag.js) to allow for this.

Sorry for my mini-rant... I guess I'm just saying that there seems to be an underlying problem here that I'd love to see addressed to help improve Drupal's usability and marketshare.

I'd love to, but I don't have the time at the moment, or in the foreseeable future- sorry.

http://drupal.org/project/multi_node_edit ?