Hopefully somebody out there can give me some insight our a solution that they are using. I am currently setting up 6-7 to do lists a week which consist of 20 items on each list. These lists are the same every week. I have created the templates to make that easier but I am finding I am spending lots of time after creating the to do list going back to every item and assigning the person who is responsible. Has anyone else run into this and what have you done to speed up the process or do I just need to get quicker with the mouse :)

This sounds like a scripting job. Do you know someone who can do tricks with the Basecamp API for you?

I will check with my web boys to see if it is something they can handle. Thanks

I’m new to Basecamp, but I thought I saw that this feature already existed. Isn’t this a to-do list template?

• Now that I’m looking for how to do that, I notice that I don’t have a Template tab to create one. The list to select a template still comes up though…I wonder what is up?

The to do list templates exist. I have the to-do templates created which cuts down on my weekly work organizing my staff but what I want to beable to do is assign that list to the staff member. Currently after I create the to-do list using the template I have to manually go into every item on the to-do list and assign the staff member. That is all I am looking to get rid of. Either I want to assign the template to staff member or I want to assign multiple to-dos from one list to a single person in one shot.

I see – I am now seeing where the templates are accessed – but it’s only on the dashboard. Makes sense as it’s a global function.

If I might suggest, an easy way to deal with this might be to have your team take responsibility for their tasks – since these are tasks that they do over and over. Send a message and have them all notified that there’s a new list and that they should assign themselves their tasks.

Thanks Mark, I have thought about that but the problem is the reason I need the to do lists is because the team currently have not been able to execute what they need to do in a timely fashion. Therefore enter Basecamp and now work can be tracked. But I may have to get them doing that. Maybe I could setup up a to do list to have them assign to do lists :)

This is exactly the kind of Basecamp limitation or constraint that has made us better project managers. I (too frequently) find myself wishing Basecamp had some particular feature only to realise that if we’d been working properly or more effectively in the first place then Basecamp’s feature set would be spot on, and I wouldn’t even be thinking about the feature.

• I recently had to enter months and months worth of timekeeping entries, and could have requested a bunch of features, e.g., make the date drop down lists default to the last-used day, not to today’s date. In practice, though, the pain attached to working adding entries retrospectively helps drive the behaviour you’d prefer to see, namely keeping track of your time each day.

• We’re currently dealing with a lot late milestones in our projects, so I’m tempted to support feature requests asking for planned v. actual milestones. In theory, it sounds like a good idea; in practice though, I’m not sure it helps us get the job done. (Alber Einstein: In theory, theory and practice are the same; in practice, theory and practice are different.) The better practice has been using the late milestone to spark communication with the client—the earlier the better—then just shift the milestone once we get agreement on the new date.

Sorry for the long story, but it sounds very similar to what’s happening here. Failing to take personal responsibility may be a big part of the problem—not getting things done in a timely fashion—and the Basecamp constraint—manually assigning or taking responsibility for a work item—might just help you solve that problem.

I’m firmly in the “Mike” camp.

The restrictions make us focus on actual doing, rather than planning to do.

Just my own perspective here. I’m new to BaseCamp, though I’ve been a hands-on Project Manager since 1996. Having experience in both management and engineer roles I don’t see why this particular issue shouldn’t be a feature – the fact is, as much as I need to consistently stay on top of best practices as a manager, people who are engineers / designers / copy editors as their sole or primary role, either employee or contractor, consistently fail to pay attention to what new tasks they have and are much better at doing the work assigned to them when it’s assigned by someone else and the “out of sight out of mind” mentality prevents them from pro-actively seeking new tasks to assign to themselves.

The fact that I too have about a dozen templates, some having six or eight individual tasks that I personally have to manually assign out to team members is just too time-consuming – especially because our company can have as many as 35 or 40 projects in active status at any given time.

It’s just not productive if I have to do that manually as a manager when a much more efficient solution would be to give me the ability on one screen to check x number of tasks within a given project’s To-Do lists and select one of my team members to automatically assign all those tasks to in one shot.

I posted this over in the “templates” area of Tips, but it’s an approach I’m goint to try and do to help solve the same problem/issue of re-assiging responsibilities over and over again. Maybe some programmer might be able to help.

I’m not a programmer, but I’m looking into the concept of cloning a project (or appropriate portions of) by setting up an empty new project in basecamp. Then, I’m going to try using the XML Export feature to suck down project information from a “Master” project, massage that locally (possibly by creating some macros in Word or other program) then use the basecamp API to post the new information back up to basecamp feeding the new empty project with template type info. I hope to grab all the assigned “To Do’s” along with their person responsible attributes set (from our company only) from the “Master” Project and use that to feed the new project. Same with standard messages and Milestones.

I agree with SEO Guy. That is better for the manager to assign to-dos than to have employees assign themselves. I can imagine my one steady employee assigning to-dos to themselves, but for those who come in once/twice a week, I can’t imagine it. And for those that work off site, its important that they can log in when they want, see what they need to do and do it. Otherwise they have to check in with me via phone or email which kinds of defeats Basecamp as helping us communicate as we work in different offices.

So I would definitely like to be able to assign multiple to-dos at once.

Doesn’t seem to be any advance re assigning multiple to-dos? This is the only thread that’s coming up on a search for ‘assign multiple to-dos’.

I use basecamp daily and assign the same people the same to-dos from templates relentlessly. This is the one thing that really lets basecamp down for me – it sucks up way too much time – and I’m very fast with the mouse!

It’s a joke to suggest that employees or freelancers assign their own to-dos. The very reason we have basecamp is because people just cannot manage that! There wouldn’t be a need for project managers if they were. While they are very good in their particular fields, not everyone believes in being a GTD’er and that doesn’t necessarily make them inefficient at their specialised fields.

I want and am happy to assign the to-dos but jeeez, it takes an age and really is not the best use of my time, a script to assign multiple to-dos would fix this very easily. Anyone?

Sounds like assigning people to tasks within a template would be a worthwhile option. Of course it would be editable on the actual list.

I was just talking to our team this week about requesting this feature. We’re currently using the To-Dos to track new products pushed to eCommerce website. The template feature works great for assignments of writing copy, process imaging, plug in category and cross-sells, etc. But typically these team members are the same and assigning them at the template level would make the process smoother.

Basecamp is my mistress…

At my educational publishing start-up, I tend to jump back and forth between my Basecamp account (usually for client interaction) and DeskAway (for my internal projects). While Basecamp is a beautiful interface and very useful for simple one-level execution, my DeskAway account allows me to assign tasks (you can also describe them, assign due dates to each task, and comments can be left on them, as well as on files). I can also get a very basic and simple report (one clean page) for what is due when, who’s responsible, and an Issues (bugs) feature (which should be separate from “tasks” as they are atypical needs (though still tied to a project) and require urgent attention. You can also save projects as templates for transfer to new projects. Now, don’t get me wrong, I need my Basecamp account for all the amazing and fluid operations it does for me that DeskAway can’t match.

So, basically, DeskAway is my wife, and Basecamp is my mistress. I want to end it with Basecamp, but I can’t seem to. Morally reprehensible.