AgileAgenda

Basecamp Edition: Import from MS Project

2010-01-03T13:55:00.005-05:00

The standard edition of the software has had an "Import from Microsoft Project" option for quite some time now. Today, the Basecamp edition gets that feature.

To use it, do the following:

Create a project in Basecamp like you normally would.
Create a project in Microsoft Project like you normally would.
In MS Project, select Save As
In the file type options, select XML
Save the MS Project file as an xml file
Launch AgileAgenda Basecamp Edition
Log in and open your Basecamp project (More Info)
Select the File->Import from MS Project menu option.
You will be presented with a file selection dialog, choose the file you created in step #4
You will then be presented with a dialog that lets you match up resources in your MS Project file with people in your Basecamp account.
Next, you will be presented with some options on how you want to import milestones.
AgileAgenda will then import your project. If you like how it imported, you can click the save button to upload that to your Basecamp project.

Some notes on the import:

Here's what Step #9 from above looks like. This is a dialog that lets you map MS Project resources to the people and companies in your Basecamp account.

Here's what Step #10 from above looks like.

Some caveats:

The feature set for MS Project, AgileAgenda, and Basecamp are very different. Various assumptions have to be made to massage the data from one format to another. Unfortunately, depending on how you use MS Project, that conversion should be done differently. So what works for one person will be a confusing nightmare to another. Because of this there will never be a "perfect" import from one system to another. We took our best guess to what would satisfy the bulk of our user's needs.

The biggest difference we saw was how milestones should get mapped between the systems. Since Basecamp only has a single hierarchy of milestones, and MS Project has a very flexible hierarchy, there's a lot of room for interpretation. We tried to pick out the three most common mappings that would make sense, and that's where step #10 from above comes from. If you'd like to see a different mapping, let us know, we may be able to accomodate you.

Deadlines and Authentication Tokens

2009-12-13T19:19:00.001-05:00

A new version of AgileAgenda Basecamp Edition was posted today with two big changes.

The first is we're using a new authentication mechanism that will become mandatory in the near future for all third party applications that integrate with Basecamp. Instead of using your username and password to log in, you'll use a special authentication code.

You can find that authentication code inside your Basecamp account under the "My Info" link.

The second big change is we now show you the deadline dates for both milestones and tasks in the AgileAgenda task editor. They'll turn red when the estimated completion date is after the deadline to let you know when deadlines won't be met. Editing them in AgileAgenda will update them in Basecamp. There's also a new menu option to copy the estimated completion dates to this deadline field.

New Basecamp Edition posted

2009-09-13T17:32:00.005-04:00

--- January 2010 Update
HEY! Coming from the 37 Signals Blog today? They posted a link to this post (which, is informational for-sure) but our actual latest release post is here:
http://www.agileagenda.com/blog/
It's probably just as interesting.
--- END January 2010 Update

We posted a new version of the Basecamp Edition today. It adds a few new big features, and fixes a handful of bugs. You can get it by updating within your current version, or downloading here.

Open multiple projects at once.

Manage resource availability across multiple projects.

New opening/welcome dialog, now remembers credentials instead of connections.

Application navigation UI improved

Task editor speed improvements

Resource availability interface significantly changed.

Now, you can assign tasks to Basecamp companies as well as individuals.

"Report Basecamp Error" menu option now reports more useful information.

New highlighted column and tooltip on schedule view to tell exact dates easier.

New "Getting Started" hints when opening a new project.

Deleting a milestone will now correctly delete it from Basecamp.

Fixed bug with schedule calculations

Besides these larger changes, a ton of small changes have gone in.

Basecamp Edition Beta Version available

2009-07-29T18:50:00.003-04:00

The Basecamp Edition of AgileAgenda now has a beta that you can download and try. It's available at our Beta download page:

http://www.agileagenda.com/beta/

This Beta includes:

New Features
- Open multiple projects at the same time.
- Assign resources across projects using the new resource time editor
- Print the GANTT charts in color
- Updated on-screen GANTT chart.
- New roll-over on GANTT chart to determine the exact dates of the bars.
- Uses new streamlined message format for saving configuration data, should make saving faster.
Bug Fixes
- Consumes significantly less CPU resources when idle.
- Previously, If you had a project with no valid tasks, printing would fail. Which would also cause Basecamp uploads to fail. This is fixed.
- Fixed problem with partial days and scheduling calculations.
- Deleting milestones previously didn't get rid of them in Basecamp. This now works.
- Now correctly ignores archived projects.

We're really interested in what you think about the new resource time editor when you have multiple projects open.

As a reminder, this is Beta software. It may be buggy, use at your own risk.

Mutli project resource editor

2009-07-19T11:43:00.004-04:00

Our next major release is taking a slightly different approach to editing resource availability. Shown above is how it looks in our latest internal builds here at AgileAgenda headquarters.

The two biggest changes:

Now, projects are listed across the top in columns so you can easily manage what project a person is supposed to be working on.
You now only specify a "start" date for each line. This is due to the complexity in managing start / end dates across different projects. So now, if someone is taking a vacation you'll need to create one line to start the vacation, and another line to end it.

I'm very curious as to see what people will think of that second point. This was the best model of managing these things that we could come up with so far, but are open to suggestions.

Next major version screenshot

2009-07-12T07:30:00.005-04:00

You will find a screenshot of the next major release of AgileAgenda Basecamp Edition below. There's a few exciting new features, but I'll let the picture speak for itself.

Upload changes

2009-06-28T18:57:00.003-04:00

It looks like 37 Signals has modified the way they handle file uploads. Unfortunately, this has made it so the AgileAgenda Basecamp Edition can not upload your schedule. We're currently working on this and hope to have a solution soon.

Update 6/29 - Everything is working again.

Want to get involved?

2009-06-26T05:30:00.000-04:00

Do you like the product? Want to be more involved? Here's a few ways.

Sign up to be a beta tester or to get our newsletter:
http://lists.agileagenda.com/?p=subscribe&id=1

Follow us on Twitter:
http://twitter.com/AgileAgenda

Make a suggestion, or vote on other suggestions at UserVoice:
http://agileagenda.uservoice.com/

Write a review for us at the Adobe AIR Marketplace:
http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/marketplace/in...

Subscribe to this blog
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Basecamp Edition - Ignoring archived projects

2009-06-21T11:06:00.002-04:00

We've gotten a few emails about this. Our next release will correctly ignore archived projects from your Basecamp list. Sorry for the inconvenience!

Current progress, and we're now twittering

2009-06-14T13:38:00.005-04:00

We recently started up a Twitter account, follow us if you'd like to keep up on our latest developments or let us know about your day to day thoughts on AgileAgenda.

We've completed all the behind-the-scenes work required to open up multiple projects at the same time. Below you can see a screenshot showing an internal private build of our Basecamp Edition of the software. We haven't done any design-work so it's a bit ugly, but the important part is that it's working!

From here we need to clean up the parts of the UI that are single-project focused. We also want to design an entirely new resource management interface to make it easy to schedule people across projects. Hopefully we'll have a public beta people can try out in the beginning of August. Make sure to sign up for the beta mailing list if you're interested.

One last note, a reminder that we have a User Voice page to make product suggestions.

New Basecamp Edition posted

2009-06-10T15:52:00.002-04:00

We just posted a new Basecamp Edition version of AgileAgenda. The only change is it now more efficiently saves projects so larger projects can be created. Previously a project with a couple hundred tasks and a complex depenency tree would cause a failure when saving. With this enhancement we should be able to have more tasks than a reasonable project would ever require.

Minor update to the Basecamp Edition

2009-05-18T19:46:00.002-04:00

Today we released a minor update to our Basecamp edition of the software. We fixed a bug preventing saved projects to load for some users. This was due an unexplained inconsistency in a small number of Basecamp accounts.

Upcoming feature - rollovers in the GANTT chart

2009-05-02T12:02:00.002-04:00

In our next release we're adding a few features to the GANTT charts that will make it easier to understand exactly what's going on in them. One of these features is a rollover graphic as you move your mouse around that shows the exact date.

Sneak Peeks

2009-04-26T09:59:00.005-04:00

We're currently working on a major new release that should be out by the end of the summer. Some of the big improvements include:

Working on multiple projects at once (our #1 requested feature)
Balancing resources across multiple projects
Better GANTT chart view with more information
Faster UI responsiveness

We'll also be tackling a list of smaller enhancements and bug fixes while we work through this all.

Here's a few screenshots to wet your appetite.

Small Disclaimer: We can't guarantee time estimates for completion nor what features will make the released version. This post best represents our current plans and we will do our best to make it happen.

New version available

2009-02-28T07:21:00.000-05:00

Enter labor estimates in days or hours
Enter just a number, and it works just like previous versions with that representing a number of days. Or you can use a "d" or "h" suffix to represent days and hours.

iCal export - Choose the File->iCal Export option to make a file suitable for importing into any software that supports .ics format including Apple iCal, and Google Calendar.

Bug Fix: Under certain circumstances, a milestone would push later tasks out by one day, this is fixed.

Basecamp Edition demo video

2009-02-22T10:47:00.000-05:00

There's a new demo video showing off the Basecamp Edition at this link: http://agileagenda.com/basecamp/video.html

AgileAgenda Basecamp Edition

2009-02-21T07:55:00.000-05:00

In case you missed the announcement on our mailing list a little while ago, we've got a brand new piece of software called the AgileAgenda Basecamp Edition.

This version of the software lets you directly connect to a Basecamp account to create a project schedule based off of your todo items. The data is then saved directly back to your Basecamp project so there's no files to keep track of on your computer.

New version available

2009-02-18T05:45:00.000-05:00

Enhancement: Better error reporting on failed logins
Bug Fix: Milestones with no tasks will now correctly save to Basecamp.
Bug Fix: Partial day tasks were not calculating correctly.
Bug Fix: Partially available resources were not calculating correctly
Bug Fix: Now correctly retrieves update information from agileagenda.com

Core Focus

2009-01-26T09:40:00.001-05:00

Over the past few weeks we've been trying to nail down what the core focus of AgileAgenda should be.

We really want to focus on making the best possible desktop scheduling application. This includes both the Standard Edition and our upcoming Basecamp Edition.

Unfortunately, we've made the decision to put the AgileTracker on the back burner. We'll be suspending future development for the time being. We believe that development time is better spent making our core AgileAgenda and our AgileAgenda Basecamp Edition software the best it can be. There are a ton of time tracking solutions out there including things like Klock and the time tracking built into Basecamp.

By doing this we should be able to focus on what our users have been telling us are the most important things they care about.

You are free to continue using the AgileTracker, and we probably will pick up development of it again in the future.

New version available

2008-10-12T06:19:00.001-04:00

Note: If you use the AgileAgenda.com web services, this is a required upgrade.

Agile Agenda improvements

Faster task editor
Resource completion popup now works as intended.
Scrolling issues with task editor fixed.
Better AgileAgenda.com integration

AgileAgenda.com improvements

Invite people to work on projects and assign users to resources.
Easily map people to resources on a project
Use OpenID to log on
Subscribe to an RSS feed or browse an HTML page for your task list.
Manage the security settings of your project.
View timesheets from resources.
More secure, scaleable, and reliable

agileagenda.uservoice.com

2008-10-07T16:56:00.002-04:00

We've recently signed up for a uservoice.com account. Uservoice is a website that lets users (you!) of a product suggest, comment, and vote on ideas for the product. In the past few months we've received a lot of great suggestions and will be using this as a way of tracking those in the future. Please, visit, comment, and vote on ideas to help guide our future development.

http://agileagenda.uservoice.com/

beta.AgileAgenda.com

2008-09-28T22:09:00.002-04:00

Today, we opened up a new site, beta.agileagenda.com. That's where you can get your hands on the pre-release versions of AgileAgenda and the AgileTracker, and you can also try out the beta version of the AgileAgenda.com web services.

These are still experimental versions, so take care to make backups of your work.

You can read about the details for the version 1.5 here, but they include:

A completely redesigned AgileAgenda.com web services
A completely redesigned AgileTracker
Better integration between AgileAgenda.com, AgileAgenda and the AgileTracker
A faster task editor in AgileAgenda

But the big news is that V1.5 lays the ground work that will let us make big improvements in the future. Our number one feature request has been to link multiple projects together and share resources across them. With the improvements we made for V1.5, we'll be able to start implementing that feature in the near future. We hope to have it fully released in Q1 2009 with a beta preview long before that.

Using AgileAgenda on Linux

2008-09-28T21:59:00.002-04:00

While we haven't fully tested it yet, we have had some success running AgileAgenda on Linux.

Since Adobe AIR isn't yet officially released for Linux, you need to go through a few extra steps to get it working. First, download and install Adobe AIR from the Adobe Labs Linux AIR web site. (AIR is the technology AgileAgenda is built upon)

Next, go to the AgileAgenda problem installing page. This page gives you a direct link to the AgileAgenda.air file. Download that file, and use the AIR beta you installed above to open it. AgileAgenda should install and work for you.

We've tried it on an Ubuntu 7.10 machine and the installation was easy. After installing AIR, we were able to click on the .air link from FireFox, click the "open file" option, and the installation started automatically. After that the software worked as expected.

Please, let us know if you give it a try! We're long time Linux users and can't wait to officially support it.

Beta list open

2008-08-08T09:34:00.003-04:00

Over on our newsletter subscription page we have a new list you can subscribe to, the "Agile Agenda Beta Users". This is a list that will be notified when new beta versions of the software come out. You can subscribe to this if you want to test out pre-release versions of the software.

This fall we should be having our first beta-test since our original release. It'll include the greatly enhanced AgileAgenda.com web services. This will give you things like resource scheduling across projects, RSS feeds (see below), and integrated time tracking.

Are you an RSS Fiend?

2008-08-02T09:41:00.004-04:00

This summer we've been working on a completely redesigned AgileAgenda.com set of services that work with the AgileAgenda software. For some time, you've been able to share your schedule on the website and then let others view it. But when this new version comes out, targetted sometime in the September-October timeframe, you'll be able to do much more, such as:

Invite members as either an Editor, Resource or Viewer to work on the schedule
Have fully working 2-way sync between the AgileTracker and AgileAgenda
Time tracking of resources working on a project
OpenID support
RSS Feeds of tasks

Today, I'm going to tell you a little about that last item. A large number of people are moving from a model where they go and and retrieve information, to a model where information is pushed to them automatically. RSS feeds play a big role in that model and many people actively use RSS readers on a daily basis. For those people, it makes sense for them to get their task lists in an application they already use (their rss reader) instead of in a custom application (such as the AgileTracker). Therefore, when you save a schedule to the new AgileAgenda.com services there will be a variety of feeds generated for it. These include:

One for each resource
One containing all the milestones in a project
A per user feed that crosses multiple projects
A feed containing all the tasks in a project

By subscribing to these in your favorite RSS reader, you'll be able to always have an up to date list of your tasks. From the feed there will be links to allow you to view the full details, mark the task as complete, or to record time spent.

If you don't like RSS, each feed is also available as an HTML page that you can view in a browser.

Of course the feeds are in addition to the AgileTracker and by no means is meant to replace it.

P.S. These new web services will allow us to implement the #1 customer requested feature -- Being able to manage resources across multiple projects. That support is being planned and will be available in a future release.