For my fourth demo I am introducing QProject, which contains enhancements to the tasks and notifications in Lotus Quickr, introduces a concept of overall and cross-project status, and implements an enhanced AJAX Gantt chart for viewing tasks and their relationships to other tasks. Relationships? Yes, with QProject you can declare task predecessors and dependencies! One to one, one to many, however you like. The major features include the ability to set these dependencies, visualize them through the Gantt chart, receive consolidated overdue task notifications, and (my favorite) automatically push out dates when a predecessor is completed late. Not that this ever happens, but...

If you're wondering about other project-related features, keep in mind that we still have QIssues, QContacts, QIdeas...you get the idea. Developers will be able to take multiple design elements and assemble applications with a little work - well a heck of a lot less work than creating it from scratch! Once all our demos are done, we'll be teaching you how to do this. If you're really interested in integrating the capabilities of the templates, come see us at Collaboration University coming in just three weeks (gulp!) where we have a workshop dedicated to creating your own Lotus Quickr application, and sessions that will tear apart the templates and piece them back together.

So let's go now to the 16.5-minute QProject demo.

Don't forget - ask questions here, and check back soon for more demos. I'm on a fast track to get them all out before Lotus Quickr ships!



Technorati: Collaboration University Lotus Quickr Open Source

1. chris06/20/2007 10:01:04 AM

Very elegant solution - would the project scheduling information be either available from or transmittable to any of the "major" project planning applications? If not, will qProject be enhanced in the future for reporting, budget control, requirements, etc?

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2. Frank Muse06/20/2007 10:46:13 AM

Very nice... Are the templates available for beta3? Also, what is the trasfer process between the domino and J2EE versions of Quickr?

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3. Phil Salm06/24/2007 12:22:44 PM

Nice additions in the Enhanced Task area! It would be a nice option to track changes in task end dates from the original plan so when you look back on a project historically, you can see where the delays came in. Perhaps a black line on the task bar where the original completion date was scheduled, and continue the bar with red after that point to the new completion date.

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4. Larry C06/27/2007 01:10:55 PM

Nifty demo, but I would have liked to see more Ajax interaction. e.g, I would like to be able to click on gantt and drag things to change the dates, dependencies, etc, rather than having to go into a form to edit a particular task.

For example, at about 11:30 into the demo, a task's delivery date is moved out, but to do this you have to click into a form, then click edit, then change it, then click create, then go back to the enhanced tasks view. This should have been a simple drag operation.

For an example of a UI that does this, see Google calendar. In Google calendar, you can move an event simply by dragging it. Why can't you do the same thing in Qproject when modifying a task?

It seems like the only 'ajaxy' thing about this tool is that the whole screen doesn't refresh when you switch between day/week/month views.

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5. Rob Novak06/27/2007 04:04:17 PM
Homepage: http://www.LotusRockStar.com

@1 - not yet
@2 - not in Beta 3, shipping after gold (which was today)
@3 - thanks excellent suggestion
@4 - all I need is Google's budget and I can do anything Seriously, good user experience points, but the QP/Quickr object model has documents behind the tasks, and changes to them are triggered by events on the documents. About ajaxyness, there's more than meets the eye in a flash demo.

Thanks all!

Rob

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6. Larry C06/28/2007 08:30:35 AM

Hi Rob,
Can you clarify - were these templates sponsored by IBM, or are they a pure SNAPPS effort?

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7. Rob Novak06/28/2007 10:12:21 AM
Homepage: http://www.LotusRockStar.com

Development - SNAPPS. Some funding was provided to support accelerated development.

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8. Artem Ivlev07/31/2007 06:51:35 AM

Hi Rob!

Can u help me to understand? How to make more task statuses? Or may be make it like Websphere version? I wanna to show it like statusbar....

WBR Artem.

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9. Sean Mcc01/30/2008 10:35:18 AM

Just started using this, however is it possible to define non-working days. I.e. I have a task linked to a predecessor, the predecessor moved a day and pushed the task into a weekend - is there any way to avoid this at the moment?

Thanks for a cool package -

Sean

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