Sorry to be negative, but have just spent 1 hour finding / downloading the numerous dependencies for CT Plus as it sounded great. Had it been marked Alpha, I would not have done so as it is for a test site with view to be moved into production.

Or I would have built a separate OA test site to put it on.

Don't get me wrong, the idea is great, but proper testing will not get done if users who think it is out of Alpha start trying to use it. I would like to support this project, as I think key elements for project management have been identified.

A couple of things I noticed (these may have already been mentioned):

- Task list shows task in project space (should have project and task, but has task twice)

- Gnatt chart layout is not clear enough to make it usable (compared to what people are used to with basecamp, etc)

- A couple of times I was led to a 404 error screen (sorry, I did not note exactly what I had done before)

- CT plus function to use regular Case tracker projects and cases depends on modules that are only available on developer server, and stated as outdated. (why not just remove this function?)

- Project content types created by CT Plus have the same names as original Case Tracker (this could clearly lead to issues)

Apologies that this list is not very detailed. I could only briefly have a look at CT Plus as I am doing this in my company's time, and once I saw it was far from production ready, I needed to remove it and go back to the original case tracker.

Comments

mikeaja’s picture

mikeaja commented
Title: Great idea - but it should be marked Alpha » OA CT Plus - Great ideam but various issues, so recommend marking as Alpha
mikeaja’s picture

mikeaja commented
Title: OA CT Plus - Great ideam but various issues, so recommend marking as Alpha » OA CT Plus - Great idea but various issues, so recommend marking as Alpha
danepowell’s picture

danepowell commented
Status: Active » Fixed

I don't know that it's possible to roll back the version number at this point, but I've added a disclaimer on the project page, hopefully that helps.

mikeaja’s picture

mikeaja commented

Sorry for my messy comments. Wasn't used to posting, and fell into the trap of letting an install frustrate me (I had never experienced so many dependencies before). No disrespect intended. Once I get more time I will give this another go. As I said, the idea sounds great, plus it seems Case Tracker 2 (I believe by the original CT developer) is on hold, and I also have a slightly better understanding of what Driven is and why it is used here.

danepowell’s picture

danepowell commented

Honestly this project is also on hold until I can find a way to fund it, which might happen with the start of next school year, or might not. Many problems are easy to fix with basic knowledge of Features, so by all means, if you want to see this module improve, dig into the documentation and figure out how to make it work, review patches, etc... There are simply getting to be way too many issues to handle on my own.

amstercad’s picture

amstercad
he, him
commented

Hi Folks, Let me try to help you all out as best I can, as soon I can, perhaps starting with this comment.

Dane has done a very good job coding various modules and making his code available for others to use. I've been using almost all of his code on my own critical project at work for a few months already, and so far so good, it holds up in-Production. So folks should know, that Dane's various modules including the Gantt JS and Case Tracker Plus DO work for us in a production environment.

That being said, a few comments seem best addressed in new or better documentation. I'm trying to help in this regard, as I have some of the experience to help here, and to let Dane focus on whatever he wants. I'm very grateful for the contribution he's already made.

Mikeaja, going by your comments, let me try to help you debug the environment for your own useage, as I see you're encountering similar issues as I have.

First, be certain to create groups first thing after installation. Something like the Sales dept. and the Billing dept.. Then you'll have URLs that look like www.example.com/sales/example-node. The 'sales' part of the URL is a result of Spaces, which could use a few distributed settings tweaks perhaps (to kill little buggy glitches). When/if you get 404'd, try manually manipulating the URL to include 'sales', OR if node/123 404s you try adding node/123/edit to access the page easiest/quickest.

It is (perhaps) the Spaces Filters that need further refinement in views such as ct_plus/tasks. Bug killers might look there?

I'll try and document things like the Gantt chart once I can, but folks should understand I'm under a lot of pressure to make my own OpenAtrium project succeed in the office, against heavy odds that don't pertain to OpenAtrium or Dane's code. That said, when I do clarify written docs, my stuff is reasonably well-tested. I'm wrapping up the implementation and testing now, and we've taken OpenAtrium a little further than Dane's contributions too. (But I've left Dane's code largely intact fyi).

One more thing is we found it is one thing to get everything working, and another to setup coherent views. Initially the available Gantt views (etc.) result in a small number of views holding a lot of content that didn't make much sense to begin with. When things got nice was after cloning the default views, and making more, smaller and focused views, that please our stakeholders.

Finally keep in-mind OpenAtrium and its forcing folks to develop using Features can throw-off even experienced Drupal developers. But good news, there's now a book for OpenAtrium: http://www.amazon.com/Drupal-Intranets-Atrium-Tracy-Smith/dp/1849511128/

Hope this info helps.

mikeaja’s picture

mikeaja commented

Thanks for that. I think what I will do is setup a dev OA and do this install again, taken into account your advice.

That way I don't need to worry about my company thinking it's 'broken' (I'm also doing this for my office, and they don't understand open-source, etc) so getting something up woking quickly that people can see (and maybe use) is quite important.

I think the url issue could well have been one of the problems I faced. I should have stayed on it longer and noted what I saw.

amstercad’s picture

amstercad
he, him
commented

Oh yes then I think you've now got the correct approach. First get yourself at least one disposable/re-imagable Dev platform, for your own training and experimentation purposes, away from your Production environment with actual users.

If it is your first, then just Keep It Simple. Do as I wrote above, make a Sales and Billing dept. (only) make a handful of user accounts (only) and then make tasks and a handful of assignments (only). Then see how things line up on the Gantt chart, in order to get that working for you.

One thing I am _still_ doing with my setup and users is this: Because I do not have time to mess with OpenAtrium's menu system, I created a page in the Notebook, called 'TEMP Menu' and I told everyone about it and why. Using just a Rich Text Editor, I can easily tweak the page and list other pages of note for my colleagues making this page a simple and effective short-term site menu. In doing so, I can focus on other development priorities, (like more focused CCK views)

Status: Fixed » Closed (fixed)

Automatically closed -- issue fixed for 2 weeks with no activity.