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ChiliProject is an open source project management application that helps tracking many aspects of a process.

It is built with Ruby on Rails on top of the popular Redmine (was shared at WRD) by the long-standing community members/contributors of it and follows a different roadmap.

The application has features for project and milestone planning (roadmap), ticket-based issue tracking, document management (including version control -Subversion or Git- for software projects) and time tracking to calculate costs.

ChiliProject notifies team members about the activities via e-mail and further notifications exist by simply subscribing to a project's activity feed.

In order to document the details/knowledge, there is a built-in wiki. Also, a forum exists for discussions with users other than the team members.

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Info: This is a review of a paid application.

AceProject, a powerful project management application which was previously shared at WRD, recently got better with a huge update. In case you missed our previous introduction, here is a good chance to know about this handy product.

First of all, it has a brand new look which makes working on projects and taking actions very easy. With the tabbed interface, dealing with multiple projects at the same time is possible (which is great for multitasking and comparing details).

The application handles all the steps of project management:

The core

Projects can be created and assigned to any number of users. And, same for the tasks.

Tasks can be grouped and different task types can be created to better cover the phases of a project and categorize them.

Each task can be marked with statuses ("Waiting", "In Progress" and "Completed") and priorities to see which things need to be done.

Document management

Users can upload documents, assign them to projects and other users can view these files in accordance with their access rights.

Such a repository saves time finding project-related documents, seeing their versions and viewing who accessed them.

Time tracking

For a company charging with hours or willing to see "how much time spent on each task/project", AceProject offers a built-in time-tracking module where users can define the hours worked for each task.

The process is either manually or automatically with the help of the IN/OUT time clock module.

Once time reports are ready, they need to be approved by the manager of the project (he/she can easily remove or edit the items).

Expense tracking

This is where users submit expenses for approval in a project or a task.

The feature is good for anyone who travel or purchase equipment and incur expenses that effect the total cost of a project or a task.

HR/Resource management

The application can control any number of users including employees, subcontractors, clients, telecommuters, etc under the same interface.

So, people involved in the project doesn't have to be the ones in your company/team but any others that you work from time-to-time or only for that project..

Statistics and reports

AceProject can report every detail in a project from different views like per project, task, user, client, time period, etc.

Simply, it eases finding out "what is going on at any time".

Mobile access

There is an intuitive mobile web interface that works in all major mobile browsers/devices and functions as a light version of AceProject.

So, wherever a project member is, they can still involve to the process.

Collaboration

An internal mailbox lets the users know about any notifications they received. And, it can be used to contact other team members.

Also, a built-in discussion forum enables share thoughts, ideas, issues, knowledge and lots more.

To sum up, this project planning software has all the features for controlling multiple projects, providing access to everyone involved and reporting the activities. All with a user-friendly interface.

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GitLab is an open source application, built with Ruby on Rails, for self-hosting your project in a Git repository and accessing them via a web interface.

It has a GitHub-like functionality and allows you to browse source-code, issues and comments.

Team access to the repository can be managed, it is very easy to browse commits and there is a file history.

Members of the team can communicate with each other with a simple chat interface (wall).

And, a "snippets" menu help users to create a collection of re-usable code for finding them easier when needed.

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Whether you are a freelancer or a small/big team, using tools to keep biz-related data under control is usually a good idea for everyone.

SohoOS is an all-in-one application that comes with lots of features for managing a business online.

It is free-to-use and consists of tools like project, document, customers and contact management, communication, invoicing, and more.

Once registered, a friendly dashboard that displays the latest activities, quick links, notes and activities welcomes you (this page can easily become the start page for many users).

Contacts

The first thing would be adding your contacts: contacts, vendors, clients and leads as many other components of the app work integrated with them. They can be imported from the contacts in your e-mail service or from a .CSV file.

For the leads, besides adding them manually, they can be collected with a "contact form widget (named LeadsWidget)" that can be embedded into any web page.

Projects

Any number of projects can be created, tasks and milestones with deadlines can be defined and each of them can be assigned to users.

Users can also attach documents for the project and a progress chart helps viewing if things are performing all ok.

Invoicing & Sales Tools

SohoOS has the features for creating invoices (with a custom look), charging your clients and tracking the process.

Once an invoice is generated, optionally, the payment can be collected by the platform as well via PayPal or credit card (and no merchant account is needed).

Also, you can define the products/services of the business and create/send quotes, sales and purchase orders accordingly.

Documents

For a multi-user environment, managing documents can be hard as they should be reachable by everyone or only some users but should be kept in the same place for an easier access, back up, etc.

The documents module accomplishes all these with ease. Add as much documents as you want to the system, assign them to users or groups and even decide whether they should be available internally or externally.

Communication

This is a premium feature of SohoOS but pretty impressive.

Using the platform, you can make calls, send SMSs, emails and even faxes for a good price by just purchasing credits.

Also, a built-in email client keeps you focused by displaying any incoming e-mails from a given account.

Other Features

Besides these core features, SohoOS offers more like offering ways for improving the visibility of a business by letting them create a landing-page and collect leads or with the "Freelance Area" where businesses can post and get projects.

All sound good? Then you can give this complete and free business management tool a try.

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Every designer-developer can have hard times on concentrating to the projects they are working on. Sometimes, it is the project which is not exciting anymore or, sometimes, it is the beautiful weather outside.

I have (recently) met a popular method named "The Pomodoro Technique" that helps me work much more effectively since then. Let;'s hear about it from Wikipedia:

The Pomodoro Technique is a time management method that uses a timer to break down periods of work into 25-minute intervals called 'pomodori' separated by breaks. Closely related to concepts such as timeboxing and iterative and incremental development used in software design, it is based on the idea that frequent breaks can improve mental agility.

To sum up, it helps focusing on a task for a given time, taking breaks and performing this process regularly.

If you need a better concentration to complete that client website or the-next-killer-web-app you are working on, I suggest giving the technique a try.

Here are 5 free Pomodoro technique apps for an easy start:

Focus Booster (Windows, Mac, Linux, Web)

Focus Booster is an app with 2 versions: desktop (Adobe AIR) and web-based.

It has an elegant interface and comes with few settings like changing the session/break length or enable/disable sounds.

Pomodairo (Windows, Mac, Linux)

An Adobe AIR application that combines to-do-lists with the Pomodoro Technique.

Tasks can be defined, re-ordered with drag 'n' drops and any of them can be selected to start working on.

It keeps the logs for future analysis and there is a Twitter integration (which is experimental for now).

Pomodori (Mac)

The application is fixed to counting 25 minutes on a single session and has a very nice logging feature that displays hourly + daily pomodoris completed with their explanations (entered by the user).

Tomatoist (Web)

Tomatoist is a free web-based application that is very easy to work with by simply clicking to the few actions provided.

It can be reached from a custom URL, the application displays the past actions and also exists as an application on the Chrome Web Store.

Keep Focused (Windows)

A portable application that doesn't require any installation and keeps the logs of tasks being worked on.

If you want to read more about the Pomodoro Technique, there is a free e-book and cheat sheet on the subject.

P.S. This article is also written with the technique using few Pomodoris : ).

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Joomla, the popular open source CMS, has many components that extend its functionality.

Projectfork is a free component that transforms Joomla into a full-featured project management application.

An unlimited number of projects can be defined with each having unlimited tasks and milestones.

There is an ACL-based permission system where each user is automatically notified about the updates related to them via e-mails.

Also, upcoming tasks can be viewed inside a calendar (the dashboard presents them as well).

Files can be attached to projects and there are per-project discussion boards where every member of the team can share their opinions.

And, a built-in time-tracking system can report you how much time is spent on each task/milestone/project.

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Info: This is a review of a paid application.

As a part of a project, knowing your tasks and completing them on time, collaborating with the team members, reaching the necessary documents and analyzing the time/effort spent on a project, using a project management application is definitely a "must". No matter you are a freelancer or a huge team.

AceProject is a professional project management application that can control simple to complex projects pretty easily.

It allows assigning multiple users to a project (each having their own access rights), creating tasks (and task groups for a better categorization), setting the details of the tasks and assigning them to users.

Tasks can have almost every detail you may need where you can decide which ones to use according to the complexity of them, like:

• status, percentage of completion, priority
• estimated completion time
• hours worked
• dependencies with other tasks
  
• and more..

In order to have a snapshot of the project, AceProject can instantly generate Gantt charts and a calendar-view using the data in these tasks.

Documents are an important part of a project and the application manages them very well. Unlimited number of documents can be added, attached to tasks and they can be marked as private or public.

A nice feature is "versioning" of the documents so you'll know who edited the document and reach the past versions. Also, it is possible to "lock" documents to protect them from being edited or deleted.

For a company who charges by hours, timesheet management is very important. AceProject can handle this automatically with the help of a "time clock" where users just push when starting and stopping a task. Rest is handled with the system. And, manual updates are always possible.

As a group of users will be collaborating on the same project, getting notified on actions important for your workflow is necessary. AceProject sends e-mail notifications on such events (a task being assigned, timesheet approved, etc.). Also, it lets you know when a task is "soon due" to help preventing any delays.

There is a built-in per-project-forum to discuss any details and an integrated mailbox to see the messages received from the system and project users.

AceProject comes with many other features including mobile-access for all major smartphones, ability to brand the application, API support for 3rd party product integration and much more.

The project management software has various plans that can meet the requirements of any team. And besides the paid plans, there is a free plan provided which can be enough for a small project team.

P.S. There is also an "Intranet Package" for anyone who wants to install the application to their own servers.

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mtrack is an open source application (built with PHP) for controlling a software/web app. project completely.

It has project management, source browser, wiki and issue tracking features which are inspired from the Trac Project.

The application has a flexible issue tracking system with configurable components, priorities, severities and milestones.

It has integration with Subversion, Mercurial and Git (SSH integration with push and pull permissions).

Users can get notified of updates to the code or issues via e-mails. And, a consolidated e-mail system helps minimizing the number of deliveries.

Also, with the API offered, mtrack can be extended/customized further.

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The Bug Genie is an open source issue/bug tracking application (built with PHP/MySQL) with project management capabilities.

It was previously shared at WRD in 9 Free And Open Source Bug Tracking Softwares article but improved so much since then and seems like this is a good chance to remind it.

The application now has a very slick, Ajaxed interface where any number of projects>milestones>issues can be created + assigned to users.

Besides the team members, end users can report issues as well which is a very good way of improving an application (access control features lets you define who can see what parts of the project).

A complete project hierarchy is supported including editions, releases and components.

There is an integrated wiki where you can use to create a detailed-documentation on an issue or a how-to for end users.

The Bug Genie supports and integrates with several different version control systems including Subversion, Git (Gitorious and github) and Mercurial.

The application will automatically create updated file lists, issue commit comments, links to diffs and previous revisions and more from your commits.

It is also very flexible with customizable workflows, ability to extend easily with modules, multilanguage support and more.

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Info: This is a review of a paid application (free during beta).

Source code management is a "must" for any developer team working on the same project to get updated on any changes made to the code and make sure every change is backed up.

Springloops, the popular source code management platform has released the V2 of their product which is more powerful with a new user interface, Git integration (besides Subversion) and ticketing support.

The files for a project can be imported from a repository or as a zipped file. Also, they can be set as private or public.

The platform is an all-in-one for managing development projects as it has the features of a project management application as well (with milestones and tickets that can be assigned to users).  And, it can integrate tightly with Basecamp.

Springloops has a very detailed knowledgebase that not only helps you get the basics of version control (if you're not experienced with it) but also covers answers to any possible questions regarding the service.

The V2 of the platform is currently in beta status and free-to-use with unlimited projects until it is out of beta. Simply, a good chance to give the service a try.

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