| RSS and to-do, in Feature Requests |
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Ruslan
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 Posted: Mon Mar 17, 2008 10:26 am Post subject: RSS and to-do |
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Ben,
we finally switched to Copper.
Some time ago we used Basecamp and found very useful simple plain to-dos and RSS.
Don't you think it would be useful to have to-dos under each task (no need even to show in the Timeline). I guess you would say there is subtask instead of this. Yet creating task still keeps time, while you may have many various and continuously changing small to-dos to complete the task. Putting everything in the Timeline will overload it.
The same is with RSS. All notifications and messages published via RSS found to be really useful.
Thanks
Ruslan |
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Ben
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| Posted: Mon Mar 17, 2008 10:51 am Post subject: |
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Hi Ruslan,
With To dos, that's what the description is for (well, that's the way we use it anyway). What is the benefit of adding a whole new interface component to do the same thing?
As for RSS, we'll keep it in mind, but for now it isn't that often requested. I doubt the majority of our users would use it the way you or I would. |
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Ruslan
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| Posted: Mon Mar 17, 2008 12:04 pm Post subject: |
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Thanks for immediate reply, Ben.
1. TO DO
The way my team works (and I believe others as well) is very simple. You have task or objective and you try to split it on parts (say, subtasks). I don't need to tell my team members what should they do to complete this task (take pen - sign letter - envelop it - put in post box or something like this). Also, I don't want my working place / schedule to be overloaded with myriad of others' small sub-sub tasks.
To do in my mind is some small very basic unit of action, which may not have specific deadlines, constraints, etc.
For instance, when you introduced subtasks in the forum, you used something like "Preparing tea or coffee" task as an example.
In my view everything which you put as subtask (boiling water, pooring into glass, etc.) are perfect description of to-do. I don't want to schedule boiling water and put all chain of dependancies behind and ahead. What I need is to prepare tea to certain point of time. All basic things may be changed, rearranged, completely redone, etc. People, I believe are task oriented, and introducing small "light" to dos, would help them not to overload Ghantt chart with things which even may not be of interest of other participants.
So, Task (or Subtask) is basically objective - "to complete something", "to finalise another thing" with specific deadline, participants (or groups of participants) and logical chain.
To-do is very basic action unit, with no specific deadline, targeted on specific user (and created by user himself for his own purposes) - like "call someone", "email something".
I believe this will make whole timing schedule cleaned up from many minor (but important) things.
2. RSS
I found that many of existing Copper fanats switched from Basecamp. They, I believe, got adapted to this. Also, I guess, others also adapted to that as well.
When you have many emails incoming per day, additional email notification may bother. With email notification only you have all chances to miss important message from your colleague or new file uploaded / changed, etc.
Wouldn't it be nice to have on the Springboard something like RSS feed or at least tracking recent changes? When I open my Springboard I feel I am not updated. To get more update, I need to go back to emails, find out, whether I miss something or (alternatively) I must go through literally all tasks and files struggling to find out, if there is something new for me.
May be other forum participants could share with their opinion?
My message became too long finally. Sorry for keeping your time.
Best,
Ruslan |
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Ben
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| Posted: Tue Mar 18, 2008 3:14 am Post subject: |
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Thanks for the detailed post Ruslan, unfortunately with respect your assumptions are a little wayward as far as who the Copper customer base consists of. The basecamp defectors are most welcome, but they don't consist of a majority by any stretch.
Regarding your feature descriptions.
1. To do. What you've described is effectively the same thing as a list inside a task? This is effectively what the description field is for, just add a list of things in there?
2. RSS. In our past two surveys the RSS functionality has barely registered amongst the requests, it just isn't used the way you might expect. Email notification is still the preferred option for task prompts.
That said, we're always looking to refine the product to suit the requirements of the majority, so if other users want to chime in here and put the case for RSS/To do list inclusion, we're all ears.
We'll also devote a question or two to it in the next customer survey. Thanks again for the feedback. |
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Ruslan
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| Posted: Tue Mar 18, 2008 7:56 am Post subject: |
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Andrew
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| Posted: Sat Oct 25, 2008 10:28 am Post subject: RSS |
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I'm with Ruslan. I <3 RSS and think a feed from the springboard for tasks, project updates, et cetera would be awesome. I'm not saying replace email... just that RSS has advantages for certain purposes and I'd love to be able to choose which I wanted to use and select each where it's most appropriate.
There are a couple of problems with email notifications. First of all, unlike RSS, one can't truly control what comes in. If you get tons of email, notifications can easily get lost among the chaos. With RSS, you don't have to worry that you handed out your address to someone you thought would provide useful information on an ongoing basis and proceeds to put you on email lists and spam the hell out of you. It's a simple matter of unsubscribing. Also, there's no need to concoct elaborate filtering schemes or search/sort. If I want to see everything related to a feed, I simply click the feed. Clean. Easy. Done.
Another (somewhat related) problem is that tuning out email notifications is common. Most of us have been using email for years now and have become desensitized to its allure. If I'm managing a project that has a bunch of tasks coming due, I dread the moment Copper fires off 25 expiration warnings. There's no way I'm going to open each message. I'll select them all - right click - mark all read - login to Copper. If they were to show up in my RSS reader, I could easily scroll through and scan without having to open each one individually and without having to log in to Copper.
And you only have 7.3 zillion feature requests. So I really don't see what the holdup would be.  I jest, but an RSS/XML template has to be easier to implement than at least 6.7 zillion of the other requests. |
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