Hey folks. We absolutely love Basecamp. It’s fast, elegant and powerful and one of the things I like best about it is the fact we can use it as a priority communications channel for all of our accounts.

However, I’ve recently come to recognize that it’s a double-edged sword, in that accounts will expect that you will always be there. Hence my feature request:

• Is there a way to post a “status message” if you’re (for instance) on vacation? What we’d like to see is something like a status setting in IM where it indicates if you’re “Online” and allows you to force extended away modes like “Out sick” or “On vacation”.

• That way, customers/clients who use the system won’t be posting messages and expecting a reply that never comes [and getting P.O.’d in the process].

Would anyone else find such a feature useful?

Cheers!

It sounds useful, Craig, but I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for 37s to implement a feature like this. You’ll need to find a simple workaround if you want this sooner rather than later… how about a simple mail rule/autoresponder that checks for mail from Basecamp (or a specific project) and sends a reply to your customer?

Or if you only have a few projects, you could use the project announcement feature.