TeamworkPM’s Engine Room

For ages and ages I have been meaning to fix up the Everything -> All Active Tasks page. To my surprise, it seems that this page is VERY important to people, it's pretty much the only page Fiona (our graphic designer) uses. I prefer to look at the Dashboard activity and work on my late and upcoming tasks. I might use this page more now ;-)

First, I started by fixing a bug we had. Tasks that were associated with Task Lists which in turn were associated with Milestones showed on the Everything page as no due date!

Second, I wanted to make this page more like a check list of what needs to be done. I always have an A4 Pad next to me when I'm working so as I was sitting back contemplating how I can make it friendly looking, I thought "How about an A4 pad type listing"

Here's what it looked like before I started:

You can see how boring this page is. There was no real distinction between the Projects and the Task lists.

After a few cups of coffee and a quick drive in town to help out a friend, this is what I came up with.

This was getting close and I tweaked the colours a 1000 times. I even contemplated scanning in my A4 pad ;-)

The problem I had with the above is:

1. It was a 3 column layout that cramped the data on small screens
2. It was hard to associate the tasks with the task lists
3. The project and task list name kinda merge together and it's not as user friendly as I wanted.
4. Long project names + Long Task List Names = Messy Screen

It's 23.53pm now and this is where I'm at. I'm getting happy with the layout now.

I like this because:

1. The project stands out even though there is less emphasis on it.
2. The task list is now an integral part of the task display and the indentation clearly makes it apparent that the tasks are part of that list.

That's it for now. All going well, you'll see the updates in the next live version of the software.

Dan.

Yesterday, I found a great bit of software called Inspyder InSite that will scan an entire website for spelling mistakes. And it was only $59! I've been looking for something like this for a long time and I can highly recommend it.

I'm here in the office on Good Friday when everybody else in the country is out enjoying the rare sunshine (we are based in Ireland after all). My mission is to gut the existing File Upload functionality in the messages section and replace it with the new new File Selector that I added to the tasks a few months back.

Why bother? Well at the moment there is a subtle bug in some browsers: when you switch from the file tab to any other tab, the Flash widget gets hidden, and then for some bizarre reason it reinitialises itself which means all the files you selected are gone... So you pick a load of files you want to upload and then go back to the "notify" tab and the files are lost. People end up posting messages without the files attached. Not ideal really.

It's been on the list for a while and I'm not leaving this office until it's sorted. Besides the new File Selector also allows a user to choose from the list of previously upload files and also change the files easily. 

Just working from home, in the kitchen, on a Sunday night. Now if only I could pull
the fridge a bit closer :-)

This is a few months ago but we're all excited about Apple's newest offering so on the announcement day we ordered Domino's and piled into the boardroom.

There's work to be done!!