Taskhopper is a Joomla! component created by API Network (Ann Arbor, Michigan)
and IBCNET (Targu Mures, Romania).
If you don't know what Joomla is, head over to Joomla.org and do some reading. You can't use Taskhopper without Joomla, so if you don't have that running, that would be your first task :)
1. The menu
If you don't care about keeping track of time spent, then you can
ignore #3. (We included this to support invoicing)
If you are only using Taskhopper by yourself, then #4
can be ignored. Some people actually use Taskhopper to manage
their own list of to-dos, however that really wouldn't be the
best use of this as the good part of task management is being
able to delegate and share. If you have 5 people all working
on tasks at the same time, you'll see five names along with
their location/department and what time is is where they live.
Task Jumper(2) is just a quick way to get to a task
by entering the task ID number.
The menu (1)... that's really the only one you need.
e.g.,
If you don't assign a task to someone, it will default to the manager
of that project.
By default, everything is not very urgent... just like in real life
The Five Mandatory Fields
1. Summary - This is the title of the task. Should be something maybe
three words or less. "Server is down" "Graphic needed: ProjectX"
"Call customer: Fred" would be good examples of what a summary might
look like.
In a consulting role, projects are normally Client-Project. e.g,. If you're
helping Acme Widgets build Product X, then Acme-X might be a project. The good
side of this is that you can track cost/effort by client project, the downside
is that you'll need to add things together should you ever want to paint
the big picture for a single client.
The important point here is that projects should be about the ONE PERSON
that is responsible for that activity because all tasks can generate
email notications which should let someone know something needs doing.
What good is requesting something if nobody knows about it? Of course
you can assign tasks to others, which is normal in even small groups.
Taskhopper projects are visible only to users that have been given specific
access by the admin. e.g., If you are the admin of a Taskhopper site
for your office, you could also offer your employees/users a way to track
their own lists, things only they would see. (This is both a feature and
a downside because if you have lots of users, then you'll have lots of
maintenance as projects come and go.)
Also, users see all item types, so try to keep these generic to whatever
business/operation TH is supporting.
5. Details This is where you can get verbose, but try to resist that.
If you have a long bunch of stuff that needs doing, put that into a separate
doc and attach it. Details should be a few sentences, something that can
be read in a few seconds. Another reason to keep it short is that formatting
is lost if you copy/paste.
One quick note about the urgency field... anything entered with urgency=low
does not generate a notification. (We did this because most of the time
the task is not something people need to know about immediately)
Also, of course you can change the content of this message. All of these
are template based so you can add/remove whatever you want to customize the
message for your business. Here's what templates look like.
When are notifications sent? Good question. They are generated each time
something changes. e.g., New, update, closed, reopened... and each notification
type has it's own template. And yes, you can make the subject line less
verbose. It's shown here with all possible fields included.
That's about all there is to adding a new task. We could say lots more, but
this was only intended to give you a taste of what it's like working with TH.
Before we begin... this is only a tour, not an instruction manual. It's to give you
a flavor of what Taskhopper is, so there are lots of screenshots that never made it
to this page.
All task managing starts with a login...
The Joomla login page... we all know how that works
After login, you will see the Taskhopper menu
The four components of Taskhopper are:
2. Task jumper
3. Open timelogs
4. Taskers online
Adding A New Task
Let's assume that you are already a registered user and someone (the admin)
has given you permission to Taskhopper projects. To create a new task,
you would click the add new link.
It's Not Pretty
Taskhopper is not an attractive product. We realize that and we plan
to fix that in version 2. However, ugly as it may be, it works. The
new task screen has a maximum of 13 fields. Some of them are optional,
others will default. A minimum of five fields must have something entered.
The five mandatory fields are indicated in yellow. All the others
can be left in their default state.
2. Projects - A Taskhopper project is anything that you want to assign
to a manager, or whatever you call the person accountable for something.
e.g., If you were building a house, your projects could
be Concrete, Carpentry, Electrical, Plumbing, Roofing... and each would
go to the person in charge of that skilled trade. If you are a
non-profit org, they might be things your group is sponsoring for the
community. e.g., Apple Festival, Golf Outing, Bake Sale, Fund Raising...
The image to the left was taken from an online store.
3. Item Type - This is to group things together so you can see how
time is being spent. Important point here is that item types are not
sensitive to the project. What this means is that TH isn't much good
if you're trying to run a bakery and software design shop. (well, maybe
you could ... because a bakery might have bugs)
4. Action Needed The first version of TH didn't have this because we
assumed, heck... if I entered the task, someone should just go ahead and do it.
But that's not the case. Sometimes you just want to record something or
ask someone to schedule it. "Do it now" is often not the default. If you
are only recording FYI for something, the Info Only option will remove the
date fields as FYI tasks have no due date.
Email Notifications
After you save a task, an email notication is generated and sent to the default
manager of that project. Notifications can contain lots of information so for
this reason, be careful if you're using TH to store sensitive info like IDs
or passwords. Here's what one might look like:
Attachments
It's common that a task will need some supporting documentation. In our world,
much of the time we include a JPG to show how something is either wrong, or how
it should look when it's fixed. Should this be necessary, you can include one
file with the new task.
It will accept any type of file and if you need to attach more, just do that
after you have submitted the initial task.
After you have entered at least five fields of information, to save the task
you would click the same Joomla-looking icon that should be mostly habit for
most. (the big red X is not really necessary as the BACK button would do
the same thing)
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