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I am tired of having to manage projects manually. We use subversion for version control, but ultimately, I want an app that can:
Send out notifications to clients on the progress of their projects
Allow clients to log in and see screenshots of projects
Keep track of money paid, as well as invoice due dates and how much is outstanding
Allow clients to post any queries regarding the project in an area
Manage several projects
I currently use
SubVersion
WHMCS --> would be great if it could integrate into this
Any suggestions would be great? Or might I have to write an app like this myself?
Redmine
Redmine is a flexible project
management web application. Written
using Ruby on Rails framework, it is
cross-platform and cross-database.
Redmine is open source and released
under the terms of the GNU General
Public License v2 (GPL). Features
Below are some of the main features of
Redmine.
Multiple projects support
Flexible role based access control
Flexible issue tracking system
Gantt chart and calendar
News, documents & files management
Feeds & email notifications
Per project wiki
Per project forums
Time tracking
Custom fields for issues, time-entries, projects and users
SCM integration (SVN, CVS, Git, Mercurial, Bazaar and Darcs)
Issue creation via email
Multiple LDAP authentication support
User self-registration support
Multilanguage support
Multiple databases support
Go Redmine site
You should definately check out Gemini. This has loads of awesome features and can do all of the above (plus a whole lot more). Also, we'll be bringing out some great new functionality on the finance side in the next few weeks.
Dave
I've been looking at Redmine: http://www.redmine.org/
As of now, I've only been looking at it for my 2 person company, and as it integrages subversion and other version control system directly into projects, I think it's an OK choise.
But as mentioned, I haven't used it in production like environemts yet, but it look well tested.
There is also a Turnkey version of it, which is ready to be used as a live CD or in a Virtual Machine: http://www.turnkeylinux.org/redmine
/Kristoffer
If you are looking for something that is hosted I would consider assembla.com. It has just about every feature you could want, and has worked really well for me in the past.
http://www.assembla.com/
We use PivotalTracker
Doesn't have all the features you mention, but it is useful for client interaction and project management.
You could write the app yourself, but you'd likely be better off just going with a SaaS! Believe it.
Your software needs are a bit ahead of what traditional project management apps offer, and it is likely you'll find many systems to be insufficient.
Warning: Just because most PM apps will be insufficient doesn't mean you should settle with multiple different apps. This will lead to double entry, inefficiency, and a list of other problems that come with apps that don't integrate properly. You're better off with something that combines everything you need into one system.
You could try WORKetc, they have a 14 day free trial and combine all the core essentials for web devs. CRM, Project management, collaboration tools, billing, support tools, email marketing, and even client logins (invite clients/contractors to check on projects you're working on related to them + they can collaborate).
WORKetc combines key tools so that it can be used to manage an entire small business. Combined alerts, reminders, calendars, to-dos, document sharing, and a bunch of other features. Worth looking into, other than that I'd recommend looking at the Google Apps Marketplace. Cheers!
It all depends on the size and scope of your projects.
I would say that JIRA is the best system available at the moment and if you only require a small number of users (<=10) then it is only $10 a month.
It's definitely the most complete system out there but obviously there is the hurdle of cost and getting it set up (there is a lot of initial set up to get workflows and things working how you like them).
Related
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I'm developing website for freight(cargo) forwarding/logistics company.
It will be CMS based (Joomla or Wordpress). What I need is component/plugin (can be commercial)
that has this functionality: (doesnt have to work exactly this way)
It can be simple e-commerce/virtuemart extension, whatever that is close.
Client logs in
Adds his tracking number(cargo/order number whatever)
He will see his his cargo status and current place.
Cargo status can be managed manually in CMS backend via admin.
Doesn't have to work exactly this way, but basic idea is this.
It does not matter joomla or wordpress these are the things you have to do.
Before You Start, Solidify Your Business Goals:
Do you fully understand the business outcome and goals that you’re trying to accomplish? Do you understand how you're going to measure the success of your implementation? Example: sales & marketing metrics.
Quick Qualification:
Does the extension work for your Joomla version? Is the extension in the expected category? How popular is the extension brand name? What is the extension type (Component, Module, Plugin)? Do you a long and short list of your possible extension choices? Does the extension meet your hosting requirements? Is the extension GPL? Is the extension encoded? Are some or all files encoded? What is the extension rating score on the official Joomla resource directory? What is the number of ratings? What's the extension popularity and number of downloads?
Critical Features to Meet Business Objectives:
Feature A) < Enter your specific feature requirement here > Feature B) < Enter your specific feature requirement here > Feature C) < Enter your specific feature requirement here > Feature D) < Enter your specific feature requirement here > Feature E) < Enter your specific feature requirement here >
Other Secondary Features:
Do you understand the total list of features you need (captcha type, ability to embed in articles, database storage, confirmations, styling options, …) Does it unnecessarily complicates the site installation (example: job extension and you have only 3-4 jobs)?
Security Concerns / Scam-Like Internet Practices:
Do you understand security issues and problems related to installing this extensions? Can developers/company be trusted? What's the company online reputation? Are their extensions listed in the Joomla extensions directory? How long has the extension existed? Does the extension contain or require backlinks? Are their hidden links? Ads inserted in the control panel or front end? Does the extension contain call home functions? They're only welcomed if the extension can work normally without a developer server connection, it is possible to install it without call home and it only calls home for the version check. Does the public version of the extension contain security risks? Is it listed in the vulnerable extension list?
Legal/Licensing
Does it limit use per domain/installation? Does it limit distribution of extension? Does it require a nondisclosure agreement? Does it limit usage of non GPL media files to a domain/installation? Is the extension not listed at JED? Does it limit support per domain/installation? Does it require payment to remove owner visible or hidden links?
User Experience
Does it offer professional user experience for the site visitors? What is the website administrator user experience?
SEO
Does the extension follow the best industry SEO practices? Does the extension support search engine friendly URLs?
Community
Does the extension have a solid and favorable community view?
Demo
Is there a demo or light version?
Author / Company
What's the extension website? Who is the developer or development team? What's the extension roadmap? Is the official extension easy to download? Are there FAQs, written tutorials and training available?
Test Installation
Do you have a test installation ready to evaluate an extension before trying it on your test installation?
Initial Set Up
Do you understand how to set up test installation, have time, resources, knowledge, experience, etc? Do you have to manually copy extension files for it to install?
Maintenance
Will the extension be easy to maintain? Is the extension easy to update? When was the last version released? Are security patches being promptly published? What is the stage of the extension development? Does the extension modify Joomla core files? Do you must have file/folder permissions set to 777 to install & run? After the extension is uninstalled, does the site or admin return errors? Does the extension team offer good technical support?
Cost
Is the extension free/commercial? Does the plugin require one time payment or membership subscription?
Read more on How to choose a Joomla! Extensions
If you end up using Joomla, look into extension called Fabrik - http://www.fabrikar.com , that will give you an ability to maintain a list of custom defined entries (database table) and give the end-user ability to search through it (filter by individual fields). You can restrict which records (shipments) are visible to each user based on their username, etc.
I've created a few Web sites for freight forwarders, including cargo tracking sites and one thing I can say for sure - if they already use a TMS (Transportation Management System) where they already have tracking / status information they won't like the idea of double-entering it in another system. Fabrik is easily configurable to connect to external databases if this data is available elsewhere and tracking it there in real time.
Watch their tutorials, it is really powerful. Good luck.
You could do that with any of the well rated forms components for Joomla, which you can find at http://extensions.joomla.org
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I am in the process of architecting an application. It will be a large, enterprise class web application. Thousands of users could upload files, search large number of blog entries with chat functionality and such. It will also have mobile interface. It should be highly testable, scalable and flexible.
I have narrowed it down to three environments: pure play ASP.NET, pure play DotNetNuke (DNN) and a combination of ASP.NET and DNN. To keep this very brief, here are some 'for' and 'against' on each of the options:
ASP.NET:
for: highly scalable, supports patterns like MVC, testable, consistent architecture.
against: long development time.
DotNetNuke:
for: short development time, large number of existing functional modules and skins.
against: architecture is sealed, can't support MVC, unit testing is difficult, inconsistent modules/skins, potential upgrade issues, user experience is inconsistent due to disparate modules from different vendors, poor documentation.
So, the questions are: what do you think? Has anyone switched from DNN to ASP.NET (and, vice versa)? Have you objectively evaluated these two and what did you choose?
Highly appreciate your help. Thanks.
henry.
DNN is ASP.NET, just with a lot of the work done for you.
Also, please remember that just because raw ASP.NET has the potential to be more scalable, doesn't mean that you are actually going to built it to be more scalable. Or that you will built it well in the first place.
It comes down to a trade off between control and resouces/talent. If you have many very talented developers (like, top-10% talent), a lot of time, clearly defined requirements for your site, and consumers who will be patient while you build out the infrastruture, by all means go with raw ASP.NET.
However, if you need to build it quickly and need to be flexible, or you have limited development resources, you might have to sacrifice some of that control and unit testing and potential performance (again, the "potential" part is key here).
Based on what you are looking for, I'd recommend you go with a platform like DNN, or a million other ones line SiteFinity or Umbraco or Orchard or something like that (some of them like Umbraco give you MVC too). It gives you a lot of the infrastructure and plumbing common among a lot of sites, probably done better than you are going to do it, so that you can focus your resources on the truly unique aspects of your application.
Just stay away from SharePoint. It's evil.
I've built raw ASP.NET sites for really customized applications, which was good because I didn't need a lot of plumbing and wanted really unique funcitonality through the site. But then I've built social networking sites with DNN, which worked well because it had packaged components for blogs and forums and chat and all that stuff, plus allowed for easy skinning. I designed another application for a customer that they wanted to have a lot of custom functionality, but they also wanted to updated a lot of content and internatalized it, so we used a Umbraco for that. And right now I have a ASP.NET app that works great, but I want to add in some social features, so I'm going plug in a Umbraco or DNN site that integrates with it to host the more common social components.
I would definitely recommend DNN based on your very limited list of needed features. You can always build a custom module to meet your exact needs or modify an existing open source module as needed. You can use the MVP approach in your module development to improve the testability.
Have you considered the Umbraco CMS? It is built on .Net (v5 is MVC3). It is open source and a very robust and well supported application. It has been used for the asp.net site for example.
It has a very short development time, many modules, extremely flexible and I find it very easy to extend. For example, I rolled my own workflow, event driven publishing and have created multiple custom administration sections for managing bespoke functionality external to Umbraco.
You can use XSLT, Usercontrols or Razor to create template modules.
It has a fantastic community too.
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I've just started a new software consultancy business and I'm currently putting together designs for my website. We will be at a stage very soon to start converting these into a template for a CMS.
I have used http://n2cms.com before, but my designer has built many sites using WordPress, we recently built a site which worked very well and I was very impressed by the WordPress admin.
So I might be a bit risque and build my site in WordPress, host on Azure, even though my consultancy specialises in Azure & Silverlight :)
What's your thoughts? Can you suggest any other great .NET CMS's that would sway me away from WordPress?
Any suggestions much appreciated.
Cheers,
Ash.
P.S. Anything that uses Table Storage would be cool, and would be much cheaper!
I agree with Gabe that true Azure support from a CMS means leveraging the cloud's native queue, table and blob storage. I'll also add that a good Azure CMS should work out of the box when deployed on numerous machines sitting behind a load balancer (basically a must if you care about Azure's SLA).
I myself did a research similar to yours a couple of months ago and ended up using N2CMS in an ASP.NET MVC application. AFAIK, there is still no CMS to comply with the above definition of good Azure support, so I would recommend going with N2 if you use ASP.NET MVC. The learning curve is a bit steep, but you mentioned you've used it before so this shouldn't be an issue. However, the great architectural flexibility N2 allows and the fact it's open source were the decisive points in my case.
Regarding Wordpress, there's no arguing about the qualities of this CMS. Anyone who's used it (including myself) should be able to confirm that. However, deploying Wordpress on Azure still feels somewhat "hacky" to me. It will no doubt work, but I personally try to use native solutions and that's the reason I went with a .NET CMS on Azure and I always use Wordpress on Linux servers. I believe that's the right approach if you plan to maintain your application in the long run.
In the end, the choice you have to make is a trade-off between many factors like your in-house know-how, your preferred technologies, etc. If you need rather quick results and have Wordpress guys at the moment - go for Wordpress. If not - I recommend ASP.NET MVC with N2.
Well, at least that's my 2 cents :) Hope this helps.
Ash,
There is new free open source CMS called Composite C1. Just couple of weeks ago company released source code to CodePlex (before it's was 100% commercial). C1 provide you full control on layout (XHTML, XSLT) - your designer will love it... also it's build on .NET 4 and using C#, LINQ.. allows create quickly functionality..very flexible...and user friendly.. for example you can edit several pages at same time.. it's uses XML as data storage, so no need for database, but there is commercial module which allows easy move to SQL. Company having workshop today regarding Azure (check Community tab at the website) and looks like will take required actions in this directions (no time frame available).
DISCLAIMER: I work in Composite’s QA group, so this is not an unbiased suggestion ;p but I've moved my personal website to Composite C1 (from Umbraco) and quite happy!
The Orchard Project seems to have much potential if you want to be risque and still stick on the .NET application programming platform stack.
From the website:
"Orchard is a free, open source, community-focused project aimed at delivering applications and reusable components on the ASP.NET platform. It will create shared components for building ASP.NET applications and extensions, and specific applications that leverage these components to meet the needs of end-users, scripters, and developers.
In the near term, the Orchard project is focused on delivering a .NET-based CMS application that will allow users to rapidly create content-driven Websites, and an extensibility framework that will allow developers and customizers to provide additional functionality through modules and themes.
Truly supporting Azure means tackling the cloud storage challenge. As you mention, this means using native Azure storage (table, queue, blob) to persist data. To my knowledge, there isn't any CMS that has truly addressed Azure storage.
It's easy for a CMS to claim Azure support by using SQL Azure. This isn't true Azure support though. SQL Azure databases get capped at 50GB...which means they aren't infinitely scalable. Any solution that is using SQL Azure isn't infinitely scalable.
--
All this being said, I work for Telerik and we have an ASP.NET based CMS called Sitefinity. Version 4.0 of Sitefinity is coming soon and it runs using Azure & SQL Azure. If your database will never exceed 50GB, then this might work for you.
We've discussed creating support for native Azure storage in future versions of Sitefinity. However, I can't give an ETA.
--
Ultimately, I agree with others though; if you're happy with Wordpress, then use it.
Sitecore has a special edition that was design for Azure.
Sitecore Azure Edition
VIM4, Composite C1 is not support the IE10 for Windows8 CP. :(
This is meant to be a comment to Mark Good's answer, but since i don't have enough rep - having to post as an answer.
Sitecore does not have an edition called Azure, it is rather just Sitecore with the Azure module installed. We have talked to Sitecore before about this, and their sales engineers confirmed that was correct. It's semantics, but could be important in certain cases. Cheers!
I know this question has been tossed around by many developers and designers. I just got finished with my companies intranet site using joomla 1.5 with a custom bulit template and modifying almost everything in joomla. It got me thinking if I should be using an enterprise CMS instead of an free open source CMS. I almost went with wordpress, but the company wanted joomla for there site. It was a great for me to jump into another CMS and learn, but is there a better CMS out there that meant for intranet or does it really matter at all?
Try OpenAtrium, its free.
http://www.openatrium.com
If you're planning an intranet project using a CMS, then you'll need to clarify a couple of requirements before choosing the right one. I have a blog post with some simple choices for choosing a cms for an intranet, more specifically on collaboration and community features. But other more basic requirements are:
Is there a technology stack that the organization prefers/uses? Does it need to be on-premise or cloud based? This will filter down the candidates
Is the Intranet for just posting read-only notices and information, or are community features (groups, lists, news feeds, etc)
Does the Intranet require SSO so that organization members can seamlessly interact with content based on their identity?
What sort of budget is available for the Intranet? All CMS installs have a cost, even the ones without any subscription cost.
Is document and file management an important requirement?
Are customizations needed for any specific Intranet functionality or connectivity to other systems?
Wordpress will do a simple intranet well, but will start to become more work if you start getting complex requirements around authentications, groups and social functionality. If on the LAMP stack and looking for more complex requirements, look at Drupal or Joomla. On the Windows/.NET side there have been suggestions in this answer already - the choices span from full commercial answers such as Sharepoint to those available open source and commercially licensed like Dnn.
Nowadays everything is called a CMS - tools to maintain websites, advanced portals, wiki's, and so on. The requirements for a "CMS" are drastically different for intranets and public websites, however.
Intranets usually have a high level of interaction, lot's of user generated content, different content types, and so on. More users need to be able to login to the system (basically everyone, not just the content editors) with different levels of authorization and different roles in general. Collaboration in general is much more important than with an average "public" CMS based website.
Furthermore you will usually want different types of plugins. Google analytics and SEO are much less important, you'd be more interested in some active user plugin, recent publications, integration with other internal tools (i.e. project management) and possibly exposing other datasources (databases, telephone directories, filesystems with internal documents), and so on.
In my personal experience, Plone is a good choice. It provides most of the above out of the box or through existing extensions and it has excellent integration possibilities with external systems. Cyn.in also provides a somewhat completer plone based solution.
If Plone's too much for you, you could consider some wiki-like system, such as TWiki or MediaWiki
As others have said, it will depend on your requirements.
If you are looking for something more in the enterprise space, then elcomCMS might be a good fit - it's .NET based though (not sure if that rules it out in your case), but has an API and other dev considerations.
Pretty strong as both a web CMS and an intranet.
http://www.elcomcms.com/Product/elcomCMS-Overview/Intranets
I have user long time drupal, but now I switching to WordPress it's much easier, if you don't want to create a community or something like this.
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We are designing a survey application with the following features
The users will be able to select questions from a set of predefined questions.
Each question has a question type defined which dictates the type of answer (multiple choice, DB look up, free text etc)
The user can create a hierarchy of sections with multiple questions with in each section.
The responses of the survey will be stored to an SQL server database.
There is also a requirement to generate an output document from each survey response.
We are planning to implement this application using ASP.net.
I am looking for suggestions which will help us reduce the development effort. Is there any commercial/open source application which we can customize for our needs? is there any ready-made components which helps creation of dynamic ASP.net pages? I am only interested in application which i can host locally, as this has to be integrated to an existing application.
This may not be an exact fit, but worth looking at: Surveymonkey.
Unless feedback systems are your business's core competency, you'd be best off using a third-party system. Building a survey system is not as easy as it might seem, especially when it comes to reporting. Sure, you'll be able to bang out some simple reports without too much trouble, but every change wanted by a customer (or your boss) is time you'll be dumping into your survey and reporting engine when it could be spent on your actual business. Do yourself a favor and outsource that headache to a third party.
If your needs are simple, a freebie site like SurveyMonkey would be just fine. If you're looking for something more sophisticated, such as support for phone surveys, more advanced reporting, etc., you'd need to pay for a more advanced service, such as (cough) the one I work for.
http://www.codeplex.com/WebSurvey
looks like a good place to start
Try Zodiac.NET Survey Engine. It can be integrated direct in your ASP.NET website. No much work needed.
NSurvey used to exist for this, but I think they've gone solely commercial. If you can dig up the last open source release, it might be a good starting point.
Otherwise, don't build it. Subscribe to Wufoo
Another option would be to have users use InfoPath or Adobe Designer to create the survey forms that are distributed to survey takers (either by e-mail or web-site).
With InfoPath, you can have the responses call back to Web Services that you have written. Or, with both the packages, you can have the responses e-mailed back to a particular address and the XML that is sent can be parsed and processed.