Topic: Feature Requests / To-do Comments / Milestones comments

Can I make a humble opinion, the comments thing is visually distracting when you are dragging your cursor across the screen and no comments have been added to the task, it takes the eye away from the actual text.

What about the following. Given that many of my lists are personal, I dont want comments on those, maybe a tick box when you are setting up a list to allow comments or not. This could also be at the project level.

OR

A grey comments icon is placed permanently at the end of every task that has no comments at all.

OR

When you hover over the ToDo List header, you see an icon to allow comments on the todo items in the list.

Topic: Feature Requests / To-do Comments / Milestones comments

And the new comments are actually in the xml backup file as well, excellent bit of completeness.

Garry Robinson
www.Thicktoast.com

Topic: Basecamp API / Project creation API

Creating a new person with the API would be great, currently as the Administrator, I have to create all accounts. I would rather the project managers created accounts in their own projects. If 37s changed allowed project only administrators, then this would be less important.

On a different note, a shared contacts database with Highrise would also be really handy, the detail able to be stored in Highrise per person is far greater.

Topic: How are you using Basecamp? / Looking for a BC integrated Invoice solution

We download our times and everything else into an Access database using the basecamp xml backup. We then generate invoices into excel templates (one for each project) and date stamp each time record. Works fine www.thicktoast.com but this is just for downloads (and has nothing to do with 37signals). We produce Access Todo reports and all related times are shown on these. Pretty complex but runs like a dream.

Topic: Feature Requests / Confidential Email Address

I recently set up a project where a large bunch of people logged in to look at pictures from a conference. Whilst the basecamp project is protected by usernames and passwords, once in, every person can grab every other persons email address. In Australia, we need to keep these things confidential by law if requested. So would it be possible to hide email address from ever appearing in Peoples tab or in message thread either by Project or with a tick box by person.

Topic: Feature Requests / Fix the New Project Switcher

Why does the project that you are currently in appear in the first list of 5 projects to switch to (that actually makes 4 to switch to)

Topic: Troubleshooting and Bug Reports / Search Function not returning any results

mE TOO

Topic: Feature Requests / Better file management

Given that Basecamp uses Amazon File management and if you look at amazon simple file management there are a number of GUI file managers for Amazon, maybe a GUI file manager could be made available to Basecamp. Now that Office Live from Microsoft has moved into beta, there is going to be more competition in this area. As tg22 says, it would be silly to have 2 systems so maybe 37S can surprise us again this year with something really useful (like email replies) :)

Topic: Feature Requests / TEMPLATES TEMPLATES TEMPLATES

I would like to see template message(s) that are sent to each new user or when a password is resent.

Topic: Feature Requests / Bulk File Upload and Increased size limits

One of our projects involved uploading pictures to share securely. One person uploaded 300 individual pictures. It was a great shame she couldn’t do a bulk upload, it took her a number of hours.

Garry

Topic: Tips & Tricks / Exporting Time to Accounting Software

We extract the times from the XML export into an Access table along with project, people and other tables. We then maintain a data stamp for when we invoice clients and anothr date stamp when we pay our subcontractors. This stops double billing.

Topic: Feature Requests / Print, Help & Switch

The print button is good (very modern looking). On the timesheets it displays the output under the print dialog, this is good as you can see what you are about to get before printing (good for environment). In the todo printing, the backgroud is blank so you cannot preview and might waste paper.

Topic: Feature Requests / Lastest Project Updates Footer in Comment email

Looks like the summary text is gone: I love the overview link, dont get rid of that. Well done on the emailing 37s, now I can see the value of different systems because the smaller userbase systems can do a lot of the testing of new features and UI.

Garry Robinson
http://thicktoast.blogspot.com

Topic: Feature Requests / Posting comments to a message by replying

Just had our first customer reply above the line and attach a file to the email. The file attachment goes nowhere.

Topic: Feature Requests / Posting comments to a message by replying

Not second guessing what is good and bad, wouldnt it be useful to deploy say 100 companies as beta testers for new versions of basecamp. If 37s were to do this, the best way would be to drop fees for those 100 companies. When you dont pay people, they dont provide good feedback. Microsoft does this for its MVP program and the feedback and internal bulletin boards provide great feedback. I know as I am an Access MVP and experience life as a true feedback provider.

Garry Robinson

Topic: Feature Requests / Lastest Project Updates Footer in Comment email

As I said in another post, its probably a good idea but once a day or once a week would be sufficient. Most of the time I would like people to be encouraged to go online and read the post in full and enter a meaningful reply, the summary doesnt help that.

Topic: Feature Requests / Posting comments to a message by replying

Email replies seem to be working but the project summary for every email is a nonsense (especially on a mobile). I suggest that the project summary only appears once a day for each person if at all. One thing I like about Basecamp is that my last years email file now amounts to 300megs where as a year ago it was 600 megs, bloating with a summary for 50 posts a day isnt going to help the size of the file and its going to distort the desktop search engine which I use all the time.

Topic: Troubleshooting and Bug Reports / Error in email

At the bottom of the new email format is a hyperlink

projects/181516/projects/log

this should be

projects/181512/project/log

Opinion: Not sure I like the project summaries going out in every msg but no doubt 37signals will consider this in the future.

Topic: Troubleshooting and Bug Reports / New Basecamp emails - correct behavior?

This is how the new email reply above line system has been setup. This went live on the weekend.

Topic: Troubleshooting and Bug Reports / Autoforwarding and New Reply Option (Bugs coming?)

With the imminent release of replys to messages, what will happen to people who receive an email that has gone through an auto forwarder. We use this technique to make our subcontractors look like they belong to our company by giving them an email address with our domain that then autoforwards to subcontractorXXX @ hotmail.com.. If they reply in the new system will it end up in the comments and under what name or will it bounce?

Topic: Troubleshooting and Bug Reports / Your data export request was submitted about 9 hours ago.

It turned up eventually 12 hours. Now backups turn up in a few minutes which is pretty fast really.

Topic: Feature Requests / Posting comments to a message by replying

I hope 37signals email reader is ready for the traffic ! Lets hope it goes well, it should increase the usage of the system by my clients.

Topic: Troubleshooting and Bug Reports / Your data export request was submitted about 9 hours ago.

The download/export in the accounts tab is saying “Your data export request was submitted about 9 hours ago.” This has only ever happened once before, usually I get an email in a few minutes.

Garry Robinson
editor of http://thicktoast.blogspot.com

Topic: Feature Requests / Private Tag in XML Backup is missing

Would it be possible to get the private tag in the xml export/backup (Accounts Tab) for both messages and todo-lists.

I would like to hide the private items in this Microsoft Access report that I am send out to my clients. I create the report using the xml backup. See a sample here
http://www.vb123.com/basecamp/butterToastRep2.jpg

Topic: How are you using Basecamp? / Why can't I see checked ToDos

It is shown in small grey font at the bottom of the list. Once the list is all checked of, it moves to the RHS under the completed lists.