Drupal - extend case tracker module [ Google Summer of Code Project ]

This is a small case study I decided to do to note the similarities between various project management/ticket tracking software out there to further generalize the scope of this project in hopes that I can come up with a clean design from the start on the way the module will interact with drupal as well as with the end user. I am going to compare and contrast these various tools as well as incorporate suggestions for the project and try to design something similar in functionality and usability for my project.

Basecamp (http://www.basecamphq.com)

Basecamp is a web-based service oriented architecture website designed for work project collaboration. It is currently ranked within the top 10,000 most popular sites on the internet, so I figured this would be a good basis of comparison considering many people probably used this service for project management/collaboration. Below is a list of sections/features the website contains for users/clients.


Dashboard

• displays chronologically all events, pages, files, etc.
• displays a list of your current projects

To-do:

• This is a basic task list and displays all current proejcts in a calendar view
• Milestones: Just an overview of milestones of all the current projects

Time:

• This shows the time spent by everyone during the week

Per project:

Overview:

• Run down per day what has taken place
• A list of people currently working on the project (includes departures, a.k.a. temporary project person)

Messages:

• A run down per day of each thing that has take place
• Each message has a category
• allows creation of new message
• allows commenting & file uploads per message

To-do:

• displays all to-do list across project (supports mutliple to do list)
• add to do item
• To do items include( assignments per user, estimated time frame for completion, date per to do item, notes, title)

milestone:

• list any milestones per project, as well as a calendar view
• create a milestone
• creation form includes (title, due date, assignment of milestone, e-mail reminder)

writeboard:

• shows latest version on the left
• previous versions in a list on the right
• editing and saving creates a new revision
• export to text or html
• send via e-mail Time:
• shows chronological order of time spent per item
• includes date, person, hours, and description
• allows exporting to CSV format
• calculates total time spent

Files:

• a list of all the files used in this project
• can be sorted by date or by alphabetical order
• edit, new version, or deletion of files can be performed on this page
• can drill down per file category

People:

• This list all the people working on that project as well as contact info, etc.

Search:

• search across a project

Planner (Linux based project manager)

Planner is an open source software product for doing project management.  It is free to download and offers many of the features required in a standard project management environment.  This product offers a lot more visually than what basecamp has to offer as a web service. Planner at its roots is very basic but basically does what it needs to do for project management. Although it only functions as a stand alone product and offers no ability  to do project collaboration or team environment type situations. Below is a run down of it's interface/features.


Gannt Chart:

• Visual representation of the project on a timeline
• Allows tasks to be updated with mouse (project task dates)
• Allows insertion/removal of tasks with the ability to undo/redo
• Allows the (un)indentation of tasks (create/remove sub-tasks of tasks)
• Zoom In/Out to various portions of the project
• Move task up/down in ranking order

Tasks:

• Basically a table that shows much of the same information the gannt chart shows
• Also has an assign task to section
• Cost section
• Work estimation section (time in days for completion of task)
• Allows the assigning/removal of resources on a particular task

Resources:

• Basically a table view of resources availible within an organization
• Name of person/resource
• Type of resource
• Cost associated with resource (abstract: can be a dollar value, etc)
• e-mail address
• Group resource belows to
• The ability to add/edit groups
• The ability to insert/add/remove resources

Resource Usage:

• Very similar to the gannt chart showing how much resources (in percentages) are used within the organization.

Sidejob Track (http://www.sidejobtrack.com)

Sidejob track is a project and invoicing web-based service oriented architecture website. It is meant to be a stand alone project tracker for various projects for a single individual to use and not used for team project collaboration. It offers various useful features for creating projects, doing time tracking, and invoicing clients based on individual projects.


Dashboard (The projects tab)

• Shows what projects are in-process (with the ability to change to completed, on hold, or all projects)
• In process projects list begining time, time remaining until completion, project summary and cost total for project.
• It shows outstanding invoices as well in a separate list as well as dollar amount per project and overall.
• The ability to setup business settings (name, location, etc. for use in invoicing clients)
• The ability to create a new project.ail

Invoices Tab

• List outstanding invoices
• Each invoice has an unique invoice number
• Shows total cost billed on invoice and date billed
• Gives the ability to export the invoices in XML format
• You can view received invoices as well as all invoices

Clients Tab

• List current clients as well as the ability to add/remove more
• Each client has full contact information, billing address, etc.
• For each client you can view their profile, projects worked on per client, as well as invoices per client
• The clients section also provides sub-section which is services, which is the ability to add/remove/edit services, each service gets a title, description and cost per unit (user defined, such as per hour, etc).
• There is also a materials sub-section which is basically the same as the services section but is fixed pricing instead of cost per unit.

Reports Tab

• This is financial reports that can be ran per year.

Schedule

• This is a calendar view of current projects (can be viewed per  week, month, year)

Microsoft Project 2007

This is a standalone program and I am only going to touch on a small set of the features included within this project because anything that would be included extra or bonus features are way outside the scope of this summer of code project.  MS Project is very in depth and gives the advantage that it has a lot of features but also has the draw back that it has to be installed, is not remotely accessible from anywhere, and does not run on multiple operating system platforms. It also comes with a hefty price tag per individual user making an open source solution that does project tracking that is web based a viable and cost effective alternative.



Dashboard

• A task list (table form) which includes task name, duration, start, finish, predecessors, resource names
• A gannt chart which is a visual display of what is in the task list on the left. Task can have their dates changed/adjusted from the gannt chart.
• From this initial dashboard you can basically do anything such as add/remove/edit task, search, sort, etc

There are many, many things microsoft project can do and I am not going to go into all the details, but basically it offers the ability to do project estimation with reports, task usaged, etc. Any features that may be important for this project are already discussed upon in the linux planner piece of software mentioned above. One thing that MS project doesn't do is have a page where it list all the concurrent projects, it basically displays each project separately. This tool also seems to be designed for a standalone user and seems to not have the ability for project collaboration, as more of a way to plan projects as opposed to plan and track projects.

Case Tracker Module

Last and not least is the current case tracker module for drupal.  This is a very useful module indeed but I believe can be extended to add some of the features as mentioned in the previous project management pieces of software I discussed beforehand.  Many have also complained about the User Design of case tracker module so I plan to take that into consideration and well as follow some of the designs mentioned previously and come up with a hybrid that tries to suite the needs of many of the drupal users out there that would like to do project management/tracking.  I will go through the basic design and interaction with the current case tracker module then there will be a summary section discussing my plans for the version I plan to design as well as future plans with the project after summer of code has ended. Case Tracker also has the ability to send out e-mail to users.


Dashboard

• There is somewhat of a dashboard for the case tracker module. The dashboard basically consist of a table with a list of all current projects, there is also link to view just your individual projects.
• You can sort by project ID, Title, or operation
• The menu consist of a Case Tracker item added to primary navigation with a menu link of cases and projects displaying all the projects/cases corresponding to the current user.
• In the create content section of the navigation menu there is the ability to create a case (task) and a project.
• If you create a project it is issued a unique case #, it has the ability to add a case, or view all cases. It also list when the case was opened and last modified. And a project description. Each project also has comments.

Creating a case

• A case has an assign to, a status, priority, and a type.
• A case also has a title and a description.

Case tracker also has the following access control scheme:

• access case tracker
• administer case tracker
• assign case to a user
• set case status
• show cases user tab

Summary

This is a basic run down of various project management type systems out there.  I plan to write a design document based off of this case study which will include user suggests for case tracker. It will also include a flow chart of how the system will function from a user standpoint.