Proposable, the web app that will make project managers giddy | Bloomington, IN

Tim Skaggs — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 03:38:08 +0000

Need a proposal completed and sent? I would suggest using Proposable. This app does it all (or most) and isn’t overrun by features. Proposable allows you to create proposals, save pages in a library, archive proposals, email your proposal and get great feedback about the proposal from the client. A ‘comment’ feature is added to the submitted proposal for the client to give near realtime feedback. A submitted comment is then attached to the proposal in chat design and then the author is notified via email about the comment. The WYSIWYG editor is excellent and looks very similar to fckeditor but simpler.

I tested the app by copying and pasting a test proposal from Microsoft Word into the WYSIWYG editor and it formatted perfectly. I had to upload the images into the image placeholders and that was about it. I couldn’t find a feature to add a header or footer, but I’m sure that is coming soon. The simplicity of using this web app is outstanding.

Oh, did I mention that there is an analytics feature to measure the times the proposal was viewed, the total time , first view date, last view date, and a pie chart showing the sections clicked or viewed. The analytics are crazy cool! I’ve been in the business with proposals and it’s a pain to wait for a client to notify me that they viewed the proposal. Deep down I know the client looked at it but they are just too busy to let me know. Now, I’ll know that a client viewed it and much more… I feel sneaky.

Proposable is an excellent application developed by Sproutbox and the brainchild of James Kappen.

Let me know what you think of Proposable!

**All logos are property of Proposable

Collabtive | Collaborate and Project Manage | Open Source

Tim Skaggs — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 14:27:01 +0000

I’m a huge supporter of Open Source programs. Especially, if these programs have a great community backing to help troubleshoot and keep enhancing the program. A few open source programs that you might have heard of are Wordpress, Joomla, and Linux. Wordpress and Joomla are CMS platforms that can be installed on just about any Linux based server. Linux is the operating system that can run a personal computer or a giant server farm. There is a lot a power to be harnessed with open source programs. One of my favorite is called Collabtive.

Collabtive is an open source project manager that can be placed on your server. This project manager allows you to create projects, timelines, schedules, add/remove teammates, and adds a progress bar. Teammates can message each other about the project they are assigned and also upload files to the database. Installing is easy with Linux and MySQL and starting is a matter of creating an Admin account.

Here is the complete list taken from the site (http://collabtive.o-dyn.de/about.php):

Core functionality

Unlimited projects, milestones, tasklists, and tasks
Unlimited members with user profiles
Role-based permission management
Messaging and instant messaging
File management
Timetracking

Reporting and notifications

Timetracker reports, activity logs and messages in PDF format
Export user profiles as vCard
RSS feeds for messages and tasks
Synchronization of calendars via iCal task export
Excel files from activity logs and timetracker reports
E-mail notifications

Other

Search, tags
Basecamp import
Fully themeable
Available in more than 25 languages
Full UTF8 support