Basecamp supports the following fields with their Todo Items:
- Title
- Due Date
- Assigned To
This makes it usable for a task list, but in order to visualize a richer project schedule in a Gantt chart we need additional fields like start date, percent complete and task predecessors. Finally, because we want to make Basecamp even more capable as a communication hub for project data, we have added status, priority, hours, cost, flagged and modified on. Similarly, our MS Outlook integration benefits from using enhanced data in order to make use of more Outlook fields for sorting and to determine when an update conflict needs your attention.
As a result, TeamDirection extends Basecamp Todo Items with the following fields:
- Start Date
- Percent Complete
- Status
- Priority
- Predecessors
- Hours
- Cost
- Flagged
- Modified On
With this additional information TeamDirection can provide rich visualizations for Basecamp like the IntelliGantt Web Part for Basecamp and integrations with desktop applications like Outlook (TOBI).
How does it work?
Here is a Basecamp project that has TeamDirection's enhanced data stored with todo items:
As you can see it's not apparent where the extra data attached to each todo item is. However, it is there and will be visible when you click 'edit':
Notice the snippet of XML data named IntelliGantt? Because it's within the angle brackets this extra bit of data is not visible in the general view of todo items, but is visible when you expand the content of a todo item by clicking 'edit'.