Recommendations for free project management/collaboration tools

#1 I've been spending several days now looking for something useable, and came up empty.
I'm using a patched version of the Incyte Project Manager (www.udpviper.com/project.php?project=ipm) at work, but it's essentially a beefed-up todo list.

I'm using a Wiki (tavi - tavi.sourceforge.net) for most things, and I'm thinking about extending it with some functions.

Of all the stuff I testet, phpgroupware came close, and I'm currently using mrproject (not a web based prog) for doing network and gantt stuff.

#2 update - it seems IPM has moved a little: www.udpviper.com/html/project.php?project=ipm

#3 It's always a case of nearly but not quite. There's always some little gotcha in there.

I think I'll play with moregroupware a bit and see if it grows on me.

Thanks

#4 The interface for phpgroupware seems an act of conscious barbarism. The Presentation Code is scattered all over the place, and hardly commented at all.

I worked up some changes to the interface for the File Manager, but ducked out when confronted with the swirling nested redundancies of the Calendar and Scheduling App.

It's a shame too, what with most of the functionality being so swish.

The Badlands Team settled on the following suite of applications for the purposes you decribe above:

Bugzilla
This allows for most of what you describe in terms of Task Assigning, Managing and Notes. It also has some neat higher level dependancy tracking tools that generate interesting and useful graphs.

CVS
You didn't mention source control, so this was probably a no-brainer decision for you.

Drupal
A slim php CMS that integrates in a limited but useful way with Bugzilla and also CVS. For instance our collaboration site has a page that tracks recent CVS commits and comments, as well as a list of the Bigs and Feature Requests that are currently in Bugzilla.

Admittedly I do use Microsoft office to schedule meetings, but also post announcements for these to the front page of our Collaboration Site.

We also use Hotline to swap files and satisfy our chat jones. 'nix clients exist for the Hotline or HXD protocol. All of these are available for free.

#5 I have settled on Mantis for bug tracking, as it allows anonymous bug reporting, which is good for visitors to use. Admittedly I'd prefer an integrated bug tool but you can't have everything.

I used to use Drupal for my personal site, but at the time it had some annoying bugs and functionality quirks, so I dropped it.

I don't need CVS access, as I'm the only developer, and that won't change for a long time, if ever.

Even after hours of playing with these tools I still can't make a decision! There's no clear cut winner.

#6 Check this out: www.phprojekt.com/ - pretty cool!

#7 www.twiki.org/

#8 I tried phprojekt many times but I find the interface unwieldy and I don't like the way it handles projects.

#9 I thought of that for writing game design docs, but I think I don't need it.

Thanks

#10 One thing I noticed about of these programs, is that many don't fully support the concept of task dependancies. For example I create task 1, and then task 2 which is due to start after task 1 is completed.

- phpCollab doesn't support this
- dotproject does support this
- Tutos supports sub tasks
- moregroupware doesn't support this
- I don't know if phpgroupware supports this as I couldn't get it to create a new project

Of course you didn't need to know all this! ;)

#11 Holy smokes! After some more searches on Freshmeat I found a bunch of other applications. Although most probably aren't suitable, there should be enough choice to suit other peoples' needs.

Search on Freshmeat for:

groupware
scheduling
project
task

#12 Mike, just some comments.

I just got phprojekt running on my system. The UI is not the most beautiful or the most straightforward, however, it is quite complete. At least for me (and my team members), it should more than fulfill our needs.

And it was so much simpler to set up than phpgroupware.

#13 I agree that it is easier to setup, but do you not find it annoying that phprojekt doesn't support tasks? It only supports To Do lists, although tasks are slated in for a future release.

Please post back here in a while to tell us how you get on with phprojekt. Good luck with the project!

I'm fairly close to settling on Tutos, although that decision hasn't been finalised yet.

#14 Yeah, I also don't like the fact that you can't view other member's to-do lists.

I guess you can simulate tasks with projects and sub-projects. You can assign various members, and a leader to each (sub-)project.

Just a thought...I'll post me as we play around with it. I also like the fact that you can upload files, annotate them, and attach them to specific projects.

#15 I'll take another look at it, and see how to do the sub projects.

Post your progress as you become familiar with phprojekt.

Thanks

#16 Have you seen the Outreach project? I just found it through Freshmeat (search for outreach). It looks pretty darn good, except I can't get the calendar plugin to work.

#17 One of the core features I need for our team is a forums. I don't want to have to use two different setups (or websites) to handle project management and team communication. I like phprojekt for that.

I'm tryin to see how customizable phprojekt is. So far, I played around with the chat room to add the person's first name next to a posted message. =)

A lot of the stuff is confusing at first. It took me a while to figure out how the todo lists work. It seems that you can post todos to other members (and to yourself), but that you can only view your own to-dos.

I also like the notes, which you can add to projects, but be able to quickly access them from the main screen.

i liek the file management system. it's threaded (i.e. directories), and you can attach a comment to each file.

rts is useless for me (i.e. I don't expect customer feedback at this point). The contacts are not useful at the moment, but may be useful later.

The timecard is interesting feature, and if we are actually starting a professional company, then it might come in handy. It's also nice that you can assign a salary/budget for each project. It could be useful for contracting out models and stuff.

I haven't played around yet with the calendar and setting up events and such. I'll post more about the when I do.

I don't like the 2MB limit for the files. Maybe that's something I can hack. It would be nice to put test binaries for the mappers and modellers. The file management is also a convenient replacement for ftp. We will still use cvs for the programmers.

The mail is interesting touch, although I'm confused if it sends out actual emails, or just mail messages that can only be accessed by users who are logged in. We'll see...I just sent out a test email. =)

ok, that's it for now.

#18 FYI: The upload file size limit is (at the most authoritative level) set on the server hosting the site in php.ini.

#19 I know what you mean; it isn't exactly the most intuitive program in the world. It took me about 2 hours to work out how to use the timecard features.

I agree that having management and communication tools in one package is ideal; this is something that I really want but I haven't found a tool that will do both of these to my expectations and requirements.

I'm currently leaning towards Tutos + phpBB.

#20 Thanks James...I just changed it to 12 MB. =)