Topic: Tips & Tricks / Exporting Time to Accounting Software

Hi Karl, I am working on an updated version of ChronoPipe that should fix some of the stalling issues some peope have reported. But yes, that API does need to be enabled on your Basecamp account.

Unfortunately at the moment I’m in my busiest time of the work-year so I haven’t had the time yet to put the finishing touches and testing on this release. Stay tuned tho…

Topic: Troubleshooting and Bug Reports / Who Can Enter Time?

For the entire basecamp account. I wish it were otherwise.

Topic: Troubleshooting and Bug Reports / Who Can Enter Time?

Only people in the main company can enter Time.

Topic: Feature Requests / Clock in / clock out for time tracking

See the Basecamp Exras page under both “Widgets” and “Time Tracking” for utilities to help you with this.

I use the excellent Project Recon for Windows all day long for this.

Topic: Basecamp API / Time Tracking not working?

Be sure that you are using the POST not GET method when you’re making add/update calls.

Topic: Feature Requests / Time tracking report > more flexible views

Dashboard, Time tab, Edit this report.

Topic: Basecamp API / Importing time tracking data?

I think you should go for it! I think you’d have to get really abusive with the API before you get your wrist slapped by anyone. I have done my fair share of loopy things with the API with no issues.

Topic: Troubleshooting and Bug Reports / Basecamp Breaking when Wrapped in Joomla!

This is a known issue with IE and many web applications that require login. IE doesn’t play nice with your web app in the IFRAME of another site.

Topic: Feature Requests / Messages, Older Messages..., indicate Private messages

It would be helpful if the the Older Messages section indicated which Messages are marked Private.

Often if I’m looking for something in an older Message, it is a login or other bit of of info that I’ve marked Private.

Topic: How are you using Basecamp? / Anyone Using BaseCamp as an Issue Tracking Tool

We do, and I wrote an add-on for Basecamp called BCTix to help streamline the process, but it turned out to be too narrowly focused/limited in fucntionality for even my needs so I am re-writing it from the ground up. Some people have found it useful though.

What we’re doing now is each client under support gets their own project, and each time a support request comes in that we need to track in Basecamp we setup a new todo like, like “070908 Requests from John” and then add To Do Items to the list for what needs to be done to complete the request. Then set a Milestone for when work on the request is due, and perhaps when it is scheduled to start. Time on the request is tracked to the Project on the Time tab, not through the To Do list but that is mostly because of some of the reporting tools we’ve built around it thru the API for our internal use. Messaging in Basecamp is generally not used in this scenario.

The new version of BCTix will tie the Messaging/Comments, To Do List, Start/Due Milestones, and Time Log for a single support request together in one screen for easy request management.

Topic: How are you using Basecamp? / Ongoing Projects

This is something we’ve encountered as we also maintain websites for years that have some specific technical elements so the requests often go beyond just “change this content”.

We do track each client under maintenance as a separate project. The main reason for this is because we make heavy use of the Time Tracking features in Basecamp and this is the easiest way to report/bill on that time. (Does it get invoiced? Does it go against a pre-paid support contract? Is it warranty work? Did we estimate correctly? etc.)

Also, it makes sense for the support project to have the correct people/companies associated with it.

If a support request becomes more complex than just “complete this single task”, ie. it has multiple Milestones, likely requiring drafts of changes and approval / sign off from the client, then it will often be spun off into yet another project. Some of this has to do with the fact that we have additional controls and reporting to the client built around how we use Basecamp.

Once I bit the bullet and upgraded from Plus (35 projects max) to Premium (100 projects max) it was like a huge weight had been lifted and I was able to get more power out of Basecamp because I was able to spawn new projects as needed. I hope to have to upgrade to Max (Unlimited projects) by this time next year, because that will mean that business is good!

Topic: Basecamp API / Cannot create/update milestones

I don’t use CURL, but looking at that code I don’t see where you’re setting the Content-type to application/XML per the Basecamp API documentation (Introduction section):

http://developer.37signals.com/basecamp/

Also, you can probably leave out the ”\r\n” codes.

Topic: Basecamp API / basecamp

I’m going to have to respectfully disagree with you there—I’ve found the API to be very well documented and have successfully used every function in it with the exception of uploading a file (only because I’m not sure how to do that on my end).

Keep in mind that this forum is a “community” forum for Basecamp users and 37Signals has posted many times that it is not a place to get official help, although sometimes they do chime in. When I’ve had a suggestion, question, or found an inconsistency in the API, I’ve emailed 37Signals’ support and they’ve been very helpful (thanks Jamis!).

But, I would never go as far as to expect them to debug my code in my programming language of choice for me.

Topic: Feature Requests / Add 'Estimated Effort' or 'Start Date' to Milestones

Estimated effort (what we call “budget”) has been becoming more and more important to us as well, so I’ve been working on addressing it using the API and “[budget=#]” meta tags:

http://blog.projectdetail.com/2007/08/work-on-the-nex.html

I have a similar Gantt-style report proof of concept created wth the API that links “start” and “end” Milestones together to show a span, but it will be a while before it sees the light of day.

Topic: Feature Requests / Add more formal structure around 'state change' of Messages

+1 for this.

I toyed with the idea of allowing BCTix users to store an Admin login that would allow their other users to change the “state” (message category) by proxy. Problem is, no one but me really would be willing to store an Admin login in there I don’t think :-)

BCTix is however undergoing a ground-up re-write to address a number of issues and add some cool features and I am considering changing it to use bracketed meta-tags to manage state, ie. “[1104:Open] Fix Printer”.

My company’s current category archetype is:

Change Order: Active
Change Order: Complete
Change Order: Pending
Issue: Active
Issue: Complete
Issue: Pending
Miscellaneous
Reference
Review: Complete
Review: Pending

...and it would be really nice if say the person who solved the issue but wasn’t an Admin or the message creator could change the category.

(to the few of you that actually use BCTix, yes, the inclusion of non-”ticket” related categories here indicates that the new version of BCTix is moving away from requiring a dedicated project for the “Helpdesk”)

Topic: Basecamp API / Create Project

You are not missing anything. It isn’t possible to make a new project with the API.

Topic: How are you using Basecamp? / Track billable and non billable work?

Two ways to accomplish this in Basecamp:

1. Add a To Do List with an Item that is called “Non-Billable” or whatever. Track your time to that Item.

or

2. Prefix your Time notes with something like “NB: ” so you can see identify it as being non-billable.

Topic: Tips & Tricks / Milestone calendar: A most intense challenge

Gotcha—I might not have completely understood your question the first time around, that you were basically trying this:

When you add or edit a Milestone, you can set “Who’s Responsible”. That is what that is filtering by. If you add “People”, they will appear as options there.

I’m not sure why you wouldn’t see your ”.conferences” Person in there, unless maybe they don’t have any Milestones assigned during that 3month span?

Topic: Tips & Tricks / Milestone calendar: A most intense challenge

You’ll need to use the API and your programming language of choice to accomplish that.

I made a very rudimentry calendar report at www.useascender.com that just has a custom date-range filter.

Maybe you could subscribe to the Milestones as an iCal feed and search/filter within your calendar program, but I don’t know for sure about that.

Topic: Basecamp API / How to access the API with Excel / VBA

I think working with VBA was easy, but I’ve been working with VB in one form or another for 11 years.

Accessing the Basecamp API with Excel couldn’t be easier.

That being said, this was the first time I worked with Excel and VBA together and I’ll admit that getting things into the right rows/columns/cells and referencing values in cells (that may have gotten there in a dynamic manner) beyond what I have in the example looks like it may get a bit tricky (for some of the things I have planned beyond this.)

Topic: Feature Requests / Project categories

I have seen an organization where they make “Companies” that are actually project phases, and as the project moves thru the phases, they assign it to the Company that represents that phase.

Of course, that has the drawback of not showing for that company on the Dashboard.

Topic: Troubleshooting and Bug Reports / Time entry auto populate function

This sounds like your browser’s auto-complete function taking a previous “1.5” entry and trying to auto-complete it into that field when you start entering “1”. We haven’t had any probelms entering time and we have a mix of browsers used in our company.

Topic: Basecamp API / How to access the API with Excel / VBA

I finally got around to cleaning up the spreadsheet I’d promised a while ago.

It is still rough, but it should be a good starting point for anyone looking to access the Basecamp API with Excel / VBA.

Info & download link here:

http://blog.projectdetail.com/2007/08/accessing-the-b.html

Enjoy!

Topic: Feature Requests / Project Status

Make a Private To Do List called “Status” or whatever. Order it at the top of your To Do Lists if you desire.

For each person on the project have them update their status on a To Do Item that is assigned to them, or use an Anyone item if you just need a general status (but then you could just as easily update a Message).

These To Do Items would never be checked off, just edited as needed.

If you’re feeling ambitious, create a report with the API to scan all your projects and give you a nice roll up of statuses across all projects.

Topic: How are you using Basecamp? / iframe - Support is no help

Your opinion regarding 37s’ support aside, I thought I’d shed a bit of light onto the issue from some things I’ve dealt with recently:

This works in Firefox with no problem, but IE is a different beast

...and therein lies the problem…

It is possible that the solution to this is a simple change to a JavaScript.

...but it isn’t…

Plus, when I attempt to login it just goes back to the login fields.

...IE does something really weird to application sessions when you IFRAME a login box that authenticates you into an application. I’ve been through this issue with two other web apps (most recently a 3rd party Job Search that a client wanted to embed via IFRAME in their site). I worked with the developer to strip all the Javascript out of the app and break it down to just a plain form and we got the same results. It is IE not playing nice with apps in an IFRAME.