I have been using basecamp for quite some time with my web development business; primarily for managing work flow with my programmers, designers and SEO gurus. I have been the biggest fan of basecamp though. My team finds it an ok system but there are often times when the ball is dropped because they miss responding to a message post.

For the first time yesterday, I logged on with one of my programmer’s accounts and noticed a few things that stood out to me as awkward.

NO CONSOLIDATED TO-DO LIST:
As the basecamp account owner, I can click a tab from the main dashboard view to see to-do’s assigned to me across all projects. None of my team have access to this view, which is a huge bummer. They have to click into each project on the right bar and then go to view to-do’s for that project only. This makes chasing down their tasks a lot more work than it would otherwise need to be. All this time I thought they had this consolidated global to-do list….

WHAT MESSAGES NEED ACTION?
The initial page my team sees when they login looks pretty confusion. It’s more like a news ticker of things that have happened instead of showing them more meaningful information like what requires their attention. I have no way of separating inactive messages from ones that need attention. This is the biggest problem actually.

My team loves the to-do’s because they are tangible tasks that they can see in an instant, complete the work and then check it off. However, sometimes the work needs to be in the message section because it requires some dialog. Messages posted today get the little yellow “today” icon which helps give emphasis to the newest stuff viewed on the same day it was entered, but as soon as that day passes, it then is on the same priority level as all the older messages, most of which are completed issues. No one wants to spend time scrolling through the messages trying to figure out which ones they need to respond to, despite how they may be categorized.

What would really solve this problem for me would be to have the ability to archive a message conversation so inactive messages are not found mixed in with the active ones.

I have figured out a work around though – and others with the same problem might find this helpful. First I create my message post, click save and then I copy the URL of the message post. Next, create a to-do for the issue and use hand-coded HTML to create a hyperlink within the text of the to-do that links directly to the message post, thus tying together the message thread and the to-do (the action item). This has been working out pretty well. It gives my team quick access to the full dialog on the issue the to-do links to. Once finished, the to-do is checked off. They all know to skip right to the to-do section, as I now draw emphasis directly to the issues so they don’t have to figure out which message relates to the task.

The only problem then is once that to-do is checked off, the inactive message topic is still in the mix with other things that are now more important. I have no way of checking that off and removing it from primary view.

Even though you can categorize your messages, you can’t control what shows up on the main messages page which is what causes the most confusion because it is a hodge podge of all posts from all categories. In my mind, that main messages page should only show messages that are deemed active and need attention. Showing everything on that main messages page really waters down its usefulness in my world.

Is there some other way to solve this issue with messages than how I’m managing it?