Looking for a customisabe onine project management app, with database like functionality

February 11, 2012 5:41 AM

Project Managament online app with custom fields, with database-type customisability, custom data fields.

I'm looking to transfer my homebuilt project management system to a hosted SaaS solution.

I need to allocate lots of small tasks between a team of about 20 people. Basecamp or something similar would be an option, but really it's not quite customisable or similar enough to a database for my purposes. Each task have data associated and it would be handy to be able to sum, average and filter results by this data .


Perhaps there is an app that allows you to create your own version of basecamp with custom fields and filters and rules. I know the answer is probably PHP or something, but I'd like to manage it myself with little programming knowledge.

I used smartsheet for a while but it didn't scale very well.

I currently use a custom app that I built a joomla application builder (fabric) which is great, but just not robust enough, and requires too much php knowledge to do more complex things I need.

Perhaps there is an online app builder which is cheap and powerful?

posted by choppyes to Computers & Internet (9 answers total)

SharePoint might work for this. In SharePoint you can easily create data collection forms and then view, filter, and summarize the information. Here’s an example of extending the built-in task list in SharePoint with your own custom fields without any programming. SharePoint lists also easily connect to Access and Excel where you can do additional analysis. The book Seamless Teamwork: Using Microsoft SharePoint Technologies to Collaborate, Innovate, and Drive Business in New Ways walks you through managing a small project using SharePoint. SharePoint 2010 Foundation hosting is pretty cheap too. You might be able to get a small site for about $10 per month.
posted by Jasper Friendly Bear at 6:55 AM on February 11, 2012

Check out http://www.tomsplanner.com/
posted by pwally at 8:33 AM on February 11, 2012

37 Signals' Basecamp is meant to be good. Vendors we have swear by it.
posted by mattoxic at 12:08 PM on February 11, 2012

We're currently transitioning away from Basecamp to Podio. Basecamp turns into a sprawling, unweildy mess with anything that's a "big" project. We do game dev and that means a lot of files, messages, To-Do's etc. What happens is that everything gets spread across the many, many tabs of BaseCamp and it's hard to get a "snapshot" of project progress.

The lack of tagging in BaseCamp is also an issue- There's no way to efficiently search for all files tagged "laser" or "unity".

Keep in mind this is also a company culture issue- If people aren't using your PM Software to sync their tasks and actions, it quickly turns into a graveyard of outdated To-Do lists.
posted by GilloD at 12:25 PM on February 11, 2012

HMS Software's TimeControl is pretty flexible in terms of what you're looking for.
posted by empatterson at 12:26 PM on February 11, 2012

Try Redmine.
posted by xtine at 8:29 PM on February 11, 2012

We use Mingle and it works great. Very good for customizing tasks and creating a workflow to keep things organized, not so great if you rely on complex reporting features.

They offer hosting but it's cheaper to install yourself - if you don't have a server available just use a cloud (Amazon Web Services does the job cheaply)
posted by sarahnicolesays at 9:04 PM on February 11, 2012

You may want to review EPM Live. It is a SaaS based project & work management solution built on SharePoint. You can easily administer the lists to define meta-data, fields, etc for your work items, such as Tasks, Issues, Risks, etc. You can try it out for free if you sign up for a trial at www.epmlive.com. There are online guides and videos to get you up and running quickly.
posted by mmanimtim at 11:29 AM on February 13, 2012

This is one of the most common uses for Intuit QuickBase. As a non-programmer, you can build a custom app that exactly matches your needs.

(Full disclosure- I work for this group. I won't self link, but a quick google should find it for you.)
posted by Philbo at 1:42 PM on February 13, 2012