PloneTaskerNG

A Plone-based task management system.

Project Description

PloneTaskerNG is intended to be what Outlook tasks, and many other tasking applications, could not be. The main view of the system is not unlike that of PloneCollectorNG. There is a menu at left and a collection of items. The items are tasks grouped by status. The view is different depending on your role in the Tasker. Roles are ProjectManager, Resource, Admin. The ProjectManager can create tasks and assign them to staff. Resources can work on and complete tasks. A ProjectManager cannot finalize a completed task without the assigned Resource agreeing and marking the task as complete. The lifecycle of a task is governed by a custom workflow that allows each role in the Tasker to do different things to a task. The idea is a seperation of powers. There are some things that you don't want a Resource to be able to do with respect to a task, and likewise for a project manager.

Custom portlets allow for a quickview of tasks that are pending action from you. Email alerts are sent to users tied to the life of a task. The idea is to maximize the use of a software of consulting staff. In order to meet certain stiff demands on time and such over a broad spectrum of clients, it becomes necessary to play a sort of zone defense against each project. This can only be done with a single, authoritative view of your staff resources. It is also imperative to have your tasking application warn you of upcoming deadlines/milestones.

PTNG takes this into account by running scheduled checks on tasks awaiting action. A configlet will allow managers to choose their staff out of members of a specific GRUF group. These users will show up in the assignees list when a manager creates a task. There is also a mechanism by which a manager can assign a task to the staff of another manager, but not without the permission of the other manager. Finally, there will be a robust reporting feature added to PTNG that allows for viewing metrics of human capital usage for all projects. There is also a place in each task to list what technologies have been used so that metrics can be done to show what systems/solutions are employed most often, or least often, in your projects. This talying of technologies is done by the Resource role for each task so that managers can go back later and apply the information for future estimates or requests for proposals to clients.

Technology

As stated above, PTNG is based on PloneCollectorNG but is not simply a rewrite of PCNG. The structure and scope of PCNG was kept in mind when using PoseidonUML and ArchGenXML (AGX) to design and initially implement PTNG. Once ArchGenXML generated a satisfactory Product base and workflow, portions of PloneCollectorNG were copied into PTNG in the interest of not reinventing the wheel.

Current Release

No stable release available yet.

If you are interested in getting the source code of this project, you can get it from the Code repository .