My Basecamp® Wish List
A while back I blogged about our recent transition to Basecamp for handing our project management needs. After having used the software for a little while now I have to say that I am still pretty impressed with what all that it allows us to do. Our biggest hope was that it would allow for us to easily collaborate on projects with our team members who might not be in the same office. For example, we have projects open right now that have tasks assigned to various members of our team. Our team members are scattered out into three locations (Batesville, Jonesboro, or Conway).
Basecamp allows us to break our projects down into Task Lists that can be assigned to anyone within our team. When someone completes a task, they just check it off the list and the rest of the team can be alerted that that particular task has been completed. Basecamp also allows for Milestones, this helps a lot when it comes to scheduling projects, of course we never like to give definite start dates or launch dates because there are so many variables, but it does give us goals to shoot for, and for me that helps keep me motivated and on top of things.
Having used Microsoft Outlook for as long as I can remember to manage my clients projects, there are some things that I have gotten used to. For example, I assign a task for each client project I have going on, inside that task I have attached the clients content files, images, and all other notes related to the site. It’s nice to be able to glance at my taskbar and know that I’m not forgetting anything. I have also used the Outlook Calendar to track my start and projected testing / launch dates for my projects. The beauty of Outlook for me is that I am able to synchronize all of this information with my phone.
While I have been inputting my projects into Basecamp for management purposes, I still have blank tasks inside my Outlook for all of my open projects. I know that sounds silly and redundant, but that’s just how my mind works. This brings me to my wish list of features that I would like to see available for Basecamp. I would be happy with either a client side solution (that is an add-on for Outlook) or a SAAS (software as a service) solution that is available as a plug-in for Basecamp. Here’s what I would like to see…
Synchronize Basecamp Projects w/ Outlook’s Tasklist
I am not interested in having 40 tasks open for 2 projects, I would like to see each project as a tasklist. Inside the Outlook Task, there could be tabs for Notes, Files, To Do Lists, Whiteboard, and Time. I know that a solution this would require a good bit of programming, but in the beginning I would just be satisfied to see the To Do Lists brought into Outlook Tasks and synchronized.
Synchronize Milestones w/ Outlook Calendar
I like Outlook’s calendar reminders, I know a lot of people are polar opposite, but honestly if it wasn’t for those reminders I would be lost. The milestones could be entered into Basecamp and then upon synchronization it would go in and change the start date and end date inside the task itself and then go out and set me up two calendar entries for the start date and the end date. If something happens and I see that I am going to have to move the project launch date back a week, I could either change the date inside of Basecamp or just edit the task itself inside of Outlook and voila!
These are the only two things that I would like to see added into Basecamp, or at least made available for purchase as an add-on. I still use Outlook exclusively for managing my 2000+ contacts, but as soon as I get caught up on some projects I plan to checkout Highrise, which is a sister application to Basecamp. Highrise brings a lot of functionality that my current Outlook solution is lacking such as Lead Tracking, Follow Ups, and SMS reminders. Highrise also will allow you to track conversations, manage email, and centralize contact data in an exportable format, I am already doing this with Outlook.
—————
I posted a note on Basecamp Support Forum today, the last conversation about an Outlook Synchronization Tool was last year and apparently a project called Grabsync was launched but it’s not being actively developed at this time. Hopefully someone will pick up the ball and run with it on this, I am sure that I am not the only one that would like to see this functionality.
Project Management w/ Basecamp for Web Developers : Cotton Rohrscheib
