Thank you to all the great people in California who welcomed me to their companies this week. It was a real pleasure.  From San Diego to Sacramento I visited Vertabase users across this vast and exciting state. 

We appreciate your business and I look forward to seeing everyone again.

Question: What are alternatives for issue tracking or to track issues on projects?

Answer: Vertabase project management software is a great alternative to commonly used collaboration tools or as an alternative to MS Project and other online project management tools.

The keys to good issue tracking are accountability, communication, and visibility.  Vertabase offers several advantages in these areas for web-based tracking.

• Time and date stamp of every post;
• Records the name of the person who made the poster;
• Automatic email notification of posts and replies and;
• Creates a searchable  knowledgebase of issues or posts.

The knowledgebase is searchable by project, issue status, post date and other criteria. This facilitates visibility and is great for increasing accountability. 

You can easily see the status of all issue posts across projects as well as track down who should be doing what.

Another factor that makes issue tracking practical for organizations with different people working on different projects for multiple clients is the ability very specifically define who can see an issue, who can start and issue and who is able to change the status of an issue. This can help prevent people from “closing” something that hasn’t truly been resolved yet.

You can see a screenshot of the online issue tracking system or sign-up for a free trial of the project software.

Vertabase project management software is now being taught in an MBA course on project management at Lake Forest Graduate School of Management in Illinois.

The software is used in the course: “Successful Projects: Define, Plan and Manager Your Work.”

Vertabase is discussed when the course goes over setting up Microsoft Project and using Vertabase as a compliment and comparison to MS Project.

It is further covered when the future MBA’s learn about controlling and managing multiple projects -using Vertabase. Since it is rare that an organization, and therefore a manager, will only have one project going on at a time.

Thank you to the course instructor for selecting Vertabase as the online project management software for this class.

A project schedule in tools like MS Project or Vertabase is different than in project collaboration tools like Basecamp.

The main idea behind a schedule in project management software like Vertabase is to create a detailed workflow for a project.  The schedule is the roadmap of the project and its successful completion.  It creates visibility and gives people the tools to do their work.

For example, documents and discussions that people need to work on on the project can all be connected directly to project schedules or even to specific tasks.

Also, project budgets and time estimates can all be connected to the project schedule (though access to this information can be easily controlled).  In fact, actual time can be posted directly to tasks on a schedule.

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My recent presentation on software development and the importance of useability is available online. 

Thank you to Charlie Arehart and the Online ColdFusion User Group for hosting and recording the event.

Thank you, as well, to everyone who participated in the question and answer period.

Microsoft recently gave a peek at its roadmap for MS Project project management software at the Microsoft Office Project conference.

After reading about the proposed direction for MS Project does anybody have any reviews or thoughts?

I will be speaking this Thursday, October 26 at 6 pm ET at the online ColdFusion User Group run by Charlie Arehart. The topic is on building software that people will use.

http://coldfusion.meetup.com/17/boards/view/viewthread?thread=3722239

You can join in from anywhere - so feel free to stop on by.

A big thank you to the Cleveland Adobe User Group for hosting me last week. We had a good session on designing software and on using project management software.

Thank you to Mike Cooper for arranging the meeting and to Lodestone Digital for hosting it.

Congratulations to Brian Meloche on becoming an Adobe Community Expert (an ACE)! Brian has been active in the ColdFusion Community for years. Most recently he hosted some of the best sessions at MAX on ColdFusion. Congratulations on a well-deserved achievement.

Vertabase 4 project management software was launched last week.

So far, the reception from clients and the press has been very good!

With Vertabase 4, we’ve focused on the eco-system of applications users work with to create and share information. It continues on in our approach of making it easy for people to track, manage and collaborate on projects regardless of their technical background.

Feature highlights include:

• Rapid project set-up
• Import from MS Excel and Google Spreadsheets (along with MS Project and Vertabase templates)
• Export to MS Outlook and Google Calendar
• Generate PDF reports and integration with Adobe Acrobat.

If you have any comments or questions on the new release, let us know.

I’ll be speaking to software developers at the Detroit Area ColdFusion Users’ Group (DETCFUG) meeting on Wednesday, August 8 at 6 pm ET. Come on by.

To attend or for more information visit http://www.detcfug.org/cfug/meetingSingle.cfm?meetingID=23.

The topic will be effective project management, particularly for development projects and IT implementations. I’ll also be giving a walk-through of Vertabase Pro, an enterprise project management application written in Adobe’s ColdFusion.