Individual task management can be hard enough to tackle, but trying to get tasks done within teams can be a nightmare. With the recent interest in getting tasks done, a lot of collaborative task management software and web services have come to market. One of the more popular options is Basecamp. The AppStorm team of writers started using Basecamp several months ago, and it has been a nice way to bring everyone into one area for collaboration and team discussion. It works great when a person needs some ideas to include in an article or if an editor needs to communicate with everyone. The other alternative is through email, which can be a disaster to organize. Thankfully, Basecamp makes it easy to keep everything in one place.
Since Basecamp is based on the web, the main access is through their website. While it is accessible on your iPhone, it is not ideal. Recently, the team at Basecamp released an iOS app to access all of your projects and discussions. Customers have been requesting an app for a long time, but can the app live up to the same features as using the website? Let’s dive in and see.
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Progress
Use of the app will require a Basecamp subscription which is not free, but they do offer a free trial. After logging into your account, a list of projects is presented along with a progress tab at the top of the listing. If you have multiple projects you can view the latest updates for all projects within one screen. This is a huge feature to quickly get updates on the projects for editors and managers. The list updates as you scroll down the view and shows the respective project name as it changes with the updates.
The progress view is a great way to see the latest updates from all of your projects.
As you continue to scroll down the view, updates will keep refreshing until you reach your desired one. While this may be useful, it is not efficient to scroll through a continuous list which has numerous updates. Trying to look at something that was discussed three days ago could take a while to arrive at your intended post. Instead of having an infinite scrolling list, I would rather see a list which is scrollable by a certain day. If I wished to view yesterday’s updates, then I would suggest performing a left to right horizontal swipe which would move me back a day. Performing multiple swipes would continue to move me in the past which would allow me to reach desired day. Navigating through the days, in that method, seems more efficient than the current method of viewing all updates.
When in a project, different view options are available to efficiently see what matters most.
If you need to perform more work within a specific project, clicking on the project name will show more actions. Initially, clicking into the project will show the latest project updates which includes tasks completed, discussion items and more. On the right of the menu bar is an option to change your view and manage your settings. My most used views within the projects have been discussions, To-dos and upcoming dates.
Discussions
Within the discussion view anything with a description or comments is shown in a vertical listing. Comments on these discussion items are indicated with a comment bubble and will show how many comments have been made. Within the discussion view or when viewing comments there is an option to add your voice to the discussion.
Since there is not an option for push notifications in the settings, I must rely on email notifications which are customizable when creating a new post.
When creating a new discussion or adding a comment to a discussion, the poster has the option to select or change which recipients will receive email updates. I like turning email notifications off unless something is important. This would be easier to manage if the app supported push notifications for new posts or posts that I should be notified about. While I prefer to not have my email overloaded with comments about a new discussion item, there is no way to reliably see everything unless you live in Basecamp everyday.
To-dos
While discussions are great, Basecamp is about helping teams get tasks done and by supporting to-dos it does just that. The AppStorm team uses different categories for our to-dos such as reviews and roundups. These help keep everything straight. In the to-do screen a list of items are shown by category. To add a new to-do, press the add button under each category. Adding a to-do will bring in a sliding screen from the right with the option to add a to-do description, assign the to-do and add a due date.
If you change your mind when adding a discussion or a to-do, swiping right will clear out the text before submitting and will take you back to the update listing.
To-do items can be viewed by groups or organized by dates in the upcoming dates view.
The upcoming dates view is a great high level look at what is due soon and should be completed soon. The scrolling list increases a day at a time until there are no more scheduled items.
The Glaring Omission
During testing, I was very satisfied with the app’s performance, but came upon a major problem. As you might have noticed, a search box is available above the projects on the initial start screen. Personally, I have not used search a lot in my use of the app, but I wanted to make sure it worked correctly before finishing my testing. Search is not completely broken, but it is close. Inputing more than one search term into the search box will crash the app. At first, I thought search was completely broken, but it turns out single word search request work just fine. Hopefully, this problem is fixed soon.
Conclusion
The Basecamp app is very new to the market and overall is a good release for a version 1.0, but it does leave me wanting for more. I would like to see reliable search no matter how many search terms are input into the search box. I would also like push notifications with badges to indicate I have been included on a discussion or there is a comment on one of my posts. This would allow me to turn off all email notifications and use the app as my main point of access to Basecamp.
Fixing search and adding push notifications will make Basecamp a nearly complete app for me. Basecamp has been a huge benefit to the AppStorm team in keeping up on projects and writing ideas. The addition of the mobile app will make it easier to post ideas at the moment of inspiration. While it is not perfect yet, it is a huge step in the right direction and I am looking forward to seeing improvements along the way.