Goplan

I have been using Goplan from WeBreakStuff, a competitor to 37signals Basecamp, for the past several weeks, and I think that the beta has a lot going for it. It's fairly early, and there are a lot of features missing, but what I see I like. The features are better integrated that those of Basecamp -- such as to-dos showing up on the calendar if dated -- and some of the features that are coming will make it even more interesting a competitor.

Creating a new project is simple, as is adding new members. When creating a new project, the user is provided a checklist of the various capabilities desired. In this example, I selected the whole shooting match:

The public weblog allows a project team to have an externally accessible blog associated with the project. However, I can't figure out what the URL is for the blog, and there is no 'help' functionality accessible yet.

Turns out that the Blog is very similar to the Note capability, although notes are strictly accessible to project members:

I dislike the fact that the view of 'all project notes' does not support viewing comments on the notes without double-clicking the a single note: should be an expand all option.

I really like the hierarchical tasks that Goplan supports. And when they are time-stamped they show up on the Goplan project calendar. All that is lacking is the ability to assign to individuals. It's annoying that they must be categorized, though: can't there be a default 'uncategorized'?

Goplan Tickets are obviously oriented toward customer support, and provide a fairly rich means of doing the sort of ticket tracking that is common in development projects. The priority and severity values are fixed at the moment, but organizations are likely to want define their own in the future. Looks workable though. Tickets are not dated, and don't show up on the calendar like Tasks can.

The Goplan Calendar shows Events and dated Tasks. The Calendar supports iCal subscription. I couldn't figure out how to edit an existing event, but it may be operator error. Tasks on the Calendar are double clickable. There is currently only a monthly view and an event list view, but expect that weekly and daily views are in the works.

Goplan Chat is more or less equivalent to Campfire: you can create as many rooms within a project as you'd like.

The Dashboard view provides a summary of all recent activity, as well as an activity RSS feed. I like the fact that the RSS feed is not a secure one, like Basecamp, becuase it is very hard to find RSS tools that work with secure feeds.

Bottom Line

Even with its limitations, I like Goplan today, and as more sphisticated features are rolled out -- especially assignment of tasks and related capabilities, like email requests for updated status as is implemented in Smartsheet -- I think Goplan will be a strong contender in the social project management space. The lack of a Writeboard sort of online document editor is less of an issue, I think, since I would rather keep those documents in a service dedicated to them -- like Google Docs -- and simple link to them. (This suggests various headaches with multiple login -- a subject for another post.)

Fred Oliviera also says that he is working on some sort of simple approach to Gannt charts -- or the equivalent -- for visualizing project task dependencies. Just that feature alone might be enough to entice people to adopt the product.

I don't know anything about pricing, but I will track down Fred and ask him what his plans are.

tags: fred+oliviera, webreakstuff, goplan, basecamp, campfire,smartsheet, /blip

Comments

[Alex Hutton]

At one point Fred had posted on his site that he intended to release it as open source. This would jibe with a common wish by the 37sig backlash...

Have you tried to add someone to your GoPlan? I sent invites to two consultants and only one received it.

[David Martin]

Excellent review, as with Basecamp my major complaint is lack of cross project features. If I have multiple projects going on I must go into each project to view what tasks I have to work on for the day. Additionally, it doesn't seem like emails are generated when tasks are complete. How exactly is the person who assigned the task supposed to know when it's finished? Again, this is problematic when a project manager is managing 10-15 projects.

[Helen Clarkson]

Have you seen Copper Project?... It's faster and more powerfull.. i think

http://www.copperproject.com/

[Tim Howell]

ActionThis works in a similar way, with a focus on execution - getting things done. In addition to being web-based, it also features a client for Microsoft Outlook. For more information, look at www.actionthis.com.