I would say, that if you took a list of everyone’s wish list of core features, Kanboard would no longer be simple…
I do like Kanboard because of the simplicity, and if there is ever anything I wish it did, I figure out how to do it, and do it. Whether I do it well or not, is a matter of opinion…I’m not an IT person, nor a programmer, I have a Bachelor degree in Graphic Communications…and by day I design, create and manage beauty and cosmetic products for Retail and Private Label brands.
Kanboard helps me manage those things, and there were many features I felt it needed to make it useful for my organization. How on earth would something be useful for us, if Kanboard wouldn’t even send an email of a task about to expire? Like, seriously, what is this crap? How will we know it’s about to expire?! So I started doing some research…and looking at Kanboard for what it really was, an awesome project management software, that’s open, for me to customize towards what I needed it to do. With a bit of poking around, and looking at the code, and google searching PHP, I managed to create a few Automatic Actions, that addressed that need.
Allowing me to do some basic things, like, automatically send an email to the Assignee when a task is assigned to them, or send an email to the task creator when something happens in a task, and most importantly, notify users when a task is about to be due.
But there was more! I needed More! All these Sales people that want to be a part of this tool, who are very clueless sometimes wanted to participate. But heavens forbid, I wanted to make sure, all they can do is add a comment, and not screw anything up while they were in there.
You should have seen how many times I tried to figure that one out…hundreds of lines of code, and no idea how to put it into a plugin format, only to discover later after much researching and studying code, that all I needed was like a couple lines of code to actually do it! The endless nights, I’ll never get back!
And, how many times did I have to listen to some joker, say, “This is great, but how the hell do you print one of these out! This is useless if we can’t print out these tasks…”
I’m pretty sure I tried to do this 3 or 4 times, and just flat out, gave up…until, one day, after working on something else, I realized I could apply it to this need, and viola, I figured it out! I ate a cookie that day, I’m sure. But, it didn’t last long! We work in teams, and we need to have many eyes on these tasks! “How do you assign this to multiple users, and make sure everyone gets these alerts and notifications?” I could have simply said, “Yeah, sorry guys, it’s not a core feature of Kanboard.” But, not me…Not gonna happen. Instead…
15 releases to get that plugin where it is today! And if you look through them all, you’ll see how it works, you figure out a little…then a little more…then a little more…and viola, you’ve learned something.
But of course, it doesn’t end there…Custom fields, Graphical Fun, Do this, Do that…it never ends. They pile up, and if you think about it, how simple will Kanboard be if they keep adding them to Kanboard? And how useful will Kanboard be to you, if no one does build them for you? So, if you are going to choose Kanboard, you have a couple options.
1.) Keep adding to an ever growing wish list of core features from all Kanboards users, and hope one day someone builds them for you.
or
2.) Figure out how to do what you want, and be a slave to no one!
“WE’RE NOT GONNA PROTEST!”
And once you’ve succeeded, share your creations with everyone else, so we all prosper.
And it’s great to know, that anything I’ve done, has helped someone else.