Re: Planner Server/Client hack.

[Kurt Maute <kurt maute us>]

On Wed, 2008-03-26 at 19:10 +0100, Maurice van der Pot wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 24, 2008 at 09:31:08PM +0100, Ferry Boender wrote:
> > PS: I only just saw that the next release of Planner will have database
> > back-end support. I'm not sure of the goals of such as back-end and whether
> > it will provide collaborative planning (in which case my work will
> > have been in vain). But since I already wrote this, I thought I'd
> > share it anyway.
> 
> Database support is not a new feature. It was just broken in previous
> versions, so I brought it back into a working state. 
> 
> To be honest I'm not sure how much it overlaps with your work. 
> It doesn't seem to have any locking. It does notice if the plan has been
> changed by another planner instance and asks you if you want to
> overwrite those changes.
> 
> I'm sure there is a lot of room for improvement in support for
> collaborative planning. So if you're interested... ;-)

I've also started work on a RoR (Ruby on Rails) based tool.  I've posted
my feeble beginnings on RubyForge:
http://rubyforge.org/projects/webplanner/

Right now I'm just working on getting the basic tables set up and
providing the ability to import a .planner file.  So far I can import
the project, task, resource, and allocation data (all with proper table
linkages).  I have yet to do the properties, calendars, and phases.

There's not much to look at yet, as there's only scaffold based views of
project and task data.  When I get the import stuff completed, I'll work
on some nicer views (probably replicating the planner export to html as
a starting point).

Longer term, I want the ability for project team members to update %
complete of their tasks and add notes.  Then the tricky part will be to
teach it to merge changes with the updated planner file as the PM checks
in a new copy.

My vision for the web based tool is that it should be used at a PMO
level for management visibility and reporting, and for project team
members to update status to a central location.  Development and
maintenance of project plans should always reside solely with the PM,
and be done in Planner.

So yeah, if anyone is interested in poking around with it, by all means!

-- 
Kurt Maute <kurt maute us>