When you're managing larger teams of writers, developers, artist, or whatever really, a collaboration software can come in handy. The most popular and most talked about in the blogosphere is without a doubt Basecamp, which is a hosted solution that will set you back $$ monthly. If you want to save in on that, or if you just want to have full control of your inside stuff, then open source solution Collabtive is for you.
"Collabtive is collaborative software to get your projects done!"
Step 1: Download and Install
Collabtive is still in beta, the current version is 0.4.8, but so far I'm very impressed. It is easy to use, and the install was simple enough.
First of all, download Collabtive from the website, and upload it to your server. I installed this for my company, and I'll use that URL for the examples below. You'll need PHP5, by the way, but if you don't have that you really should be giving your host a hard time! Anyway, upload the files, and make the following writeable by the server:
- the /templates_c folder
- the /files folder
- the file /config/standard/config.php
Then create a MySQL database for your install, keep the database name, user name, and password nearby, and point your browser to where you uploaded the files, for me that was http://team.cylinderlabs.net. You want to open the install.php file, so that would be http://team.cylinderlabs.net/install.php
From here on it's easy. Just fill out the database details (you should probably keep "localhost", which is filled out on beforehand, unless your database is on its own server) and click the Continue button.
Now, fill out the details for the admin account. You don't want to loose these, so make sure you remember them. Here you can also import content from Basecamp, should you be a switcher, although this is a feature I haven't been able to try since I haven't used the service in a long time. Did you try it? Do share your experience in the comments!
Anyway, click Continue when you're done.
And you know what, you're done! Login, and you'll arrive at the Dashboard, looking more or less like the one above. Now, let's take this baby for a spin, shall we?
But wait! There's one more thing, not mentioned in any readme file. Change the writing permissions of /config/standard/config.php back to read only. You don't want people to dig out your database details, now do you? If you're really anal about security, you might want to fiddle with the other write settings as well.
Now we're done.
Step 2: Putting Collabtive to Good Use
The first thing I did was to go to Administration, using the four icons in the top right, and then choose System administration. Here you can change the name of your Collabtive install, the timezone, pick a template (just one included, I'm afraid), import from Basecamp yet again, and so on.
I then went to the user administration, again, using Administration in the top right and then User administration. Adding a user is simple and straight forward, but if you want a pretty user profile page like me, you'll have to urge your users to click the edit button. It looks really bland and boring otherwise. I like the option to download a VCF card for each user, based on the details submitted, by the way. Very corporate-ish.
Since this is a collaborative software, you'll work a lot with projects and tasks. The first thing you need to do is to create a new project. You do that in Administration, yet again, and then Project administration, where you'll find a list of your current projects, and also an Add project button. I added a project for my Notes Blog WordPress theme, mostly to try stuff out, but also to keep track of the time spent on things.
Every task belongs to a task list, and that in turn belongs to a milestone, so your next step would be to add a suitable milestone. For me, that's an alpha version of the theme. Then you add the task list associated with the milestone, and populate it with tasks. It is all very straight forward, and you can of course appoint everything to different persons working in the system.
If you've ever used Basecamp you probably recognize the work flow. While Collabtive is simple compared to Basecamp, at least so far, it does the basics very well. We'll be running it in my company for now.
Step 3: Cool Little Things
There are some cool little things that I'd like to point out with Collabtive, the first being every date field in the system. When you click the field, a calendar just pops up, and when you've picked the date, it disappears. No icons or nonsense like that, just a simple and obvious functionality that I like.
Speaking of icons, here and there you'll see a disk icon. Hover it to get further options for saving down the associated data, which could be your task list or whatever. Most stuff can be saved as an Excel or PDF file, which is cool. Sure, they could just have had small icons for each of these, but the hover functionality decreases clutter, even though it encumbers the functionality somewhat. Since this is something I won't use on a daily basis, I think it is good as it is.
Another cool thing is the online list in the sidebar. If you're online at the same time as another user, you can start at chat right then and there with him or her, just by clicking a speech bubble icon to the right of the username.
The Timetracker feature could prove useful as well, you access it on the various project dashboards, where you can easily add a time report for when you worked on the project. This is certainly a good thing, but as always it depends on you remembering to fill out the time tracker form each time, and to add even smaller edits to a project, otherwise it won't be a truthful time report in the end. Still, easy to use and manage.
There is support for themes, and if you visit the Collabtive forums, you'll find a few threads about it, but at this time the standard theme is the one you'll build upon. Also, there's no documentation on this, so that's a limitation of course. That being said, just building from the standard theme should make it fairly easy to do some minor edits to fit your need, should you want to brand your install a little harder.
Wrapping It Up
I'm impressed by Collabtive so far. There are a few things I think it lacks, one being a choice of themes to style it. This, along with more localization files, is probably just a matter of time, since the system overall is responsive and easy to use, a true option to Basecamp for smaller organizations.
One thing it has to sort out, however, is a backup functionality. I want it to e-mail me database backups, and perhaps even do backups of uploaded files, so that I can restore my collaborative system should the server end up dying on me. Hopefully this is due in an upcoming version.
Give Collabtive a go if you need to manage your team, it's worth a shot! Also, don't forget to let us know how the Basecamp import feature works out for you.
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User Comments
( ADD YOURS )Keith October 7th
Great article Thord! Never heard of collabtive before. Hopefully this gives Basecamp a run for it’s money and invokes a bit of friendly competition
Ahmad Alfy October 7th
I’ve used Basecamp for about a year during my work as a freelancer and Its definitely amazing.
Collabtive looks very promising and I am gonna try it now!
Thanks for the nice article!
Owain Llewellyn October 7th
What a coincidence, I was over at freelance switch looking at an article on activecollab and noticed this software…
Looks really simple to use. Just what we need at our studio.
Thanks for the run through
Will deffinatley be checking this out.
Owain
http://www.icomcreative.co.uk
Barttos October 10th
I think that activeCollab is the best in this category
Ben Griffiths October 10th
Not heard of this app either, but it does look good, thanks
Joe Hana October 10th
I´ve tested some of them and I can say - activeCollab is nearly the best solution for every purpose in Project Managing: Templates, Langualizazion, Modular build (you can extend it anytime), and much much more.
Lamin Barrow October 10th
This article showed up in my RSS reader about 3 days ago but it vansihed(may be it got deleted or something). I first came across his app from he theDailyApp website. It’s good to have it here and thnx for the walkthrough.
Owain Llewellyn October 10th
@lamin
Yeah I saw it too, I read through it and by the time i went back to the home page it had vanished…
Owain
http://www.icomcreative.com
revy October 10th
Pretty cool. My company is looking for a good collaborative software package right now. I’ll fire this off to the manager for a look. Thanks!
insic October 10th
hmmm ive tried this application already. but it seems cant cater all my companys needs. but its great.
Julien L October 10th
Thanks ! It well be usefull soon.
BroOf October 10th
Okay thats cool stuff! I will use collabtive in the future! Thank you!
Taylor Satula October 10th
Huh. I like it. Seems usefull with some tweaks
James October 10th
Looks quite useful, thanks!
Jad Graphics October 11th
Wow! This is cool.
Philipp October 11th
Thank you for the very positive review.
Some words about your feature wishes:
* 2 additional themes will be shipped with Collabtive in the upcoming 0.4.9 release. This will give users greater choice (they then have 3 themes to choose from)
* Collabtive 0.4.9 will ship with even more localisations. We should be supporting > 20 languages by the time 0.4.9 is released.
* Database backups will be possible from within Collabtive probably in 0.5 - at this time you can simply dump your mySQL database to a file using your DB admin solution.
* Backups will be implemented at a later point
Kind regards
Philipp Kiszka
Collabtive lead developer
Patel Strategy October 11th
We too have tried Collabtive for our project management needs. However, we then moved to the open-source (free) ProjectPier.
ProjectPier, in our opinion, is more developed and better functioning. It is more customizable and has more features, almost the same features offered as Basecamp without the cost. ProjectPier is also just as easy to install as Collabtive.
But either way, both Collabtive and ProjectPier are fabulous assets for clients to manage their projects with the design team.
Learn more about ProjectPier: http://www.projectpier.org/ [the actual product is much better looking than the website
]
Our Client Extranet: http://patelstrategy.com/extranet/index.php?c=access&a=login
Saikat October 11th
Great stuff buddy! Thanks for showing this.
Nihilizon October 11th
Great article! I’ve been looking for one of these programs to use for my site.
Roshan October 11th
I’ve used Basecamp for about a month and then I switched for activecollab. After using for nearly one complete year I cannot love it more. I am simply addicated to this little application.
Although I am very open for ideas so I will be trying to out. Who knows it satisfy my requirements better then my previous scripts.
Thank you for the quality information and review. Thank you.
Roshan
Freelance Developer
http://www.instantshift.com
B.Zakaria October 11th
Good Job !
Curt Simon Harlinghausen October 12th
I like the simpliticimy. But activeCollab is just better.
Except of the simple Calendar Function, what is missing.
Sofar.
Stay tuned
Simon
creation and technical solution
for viral and guerilla marketing
http://www.wunderknaben.com
Jash Sayani October 12th
I tried doing all this on my server. Installed PHP 5 and MySQL 5.0 and on opening install.php, I got the OK indicators for all fields. Then I filled the database details as localhost, database name: collabtive and my username as root and my root password.
It says: Database connection could not be established. Pls check if database exists and user credientials are correct. Using a SQL database connector, I can connect and have complete access to the database.
Any suggestions….?
Dave Brookes October 12th
Many thanks, will check it out!
Christian Dalsvaag October 12th
The design of this application is very little appealing. The use of those ugly icons doesn’t make it better. Looks has a lot to say about a thing, so if you want to compete with the big guys like BC, you really need to make templates that does not look like this one AT ALL.
First impressions are really important you know, and from what I saw here - I would never use this piece of software.
I am a professional developer, running a company in Norway.
So, PHP. Again. Everything is built using PHP nowadays, (this is NOT a negative reply to PHP in general - I love PHP and have been using it for 6 years). I’m just saying, try something new - look at BC, it’s written entirely in Ruby (Rails), and I feel that there is a unique touch to it. When I use RoR I also get this special touch, or at least i feel - people really need to try new languages. Cause this really LOOKS like a PHP application.
But yea, the overall application design I can sum up like this: crappy.
I’m just trying to be honest, and help the developers - do something about it.
Thanks for the tut.
Aditya Gholap October 12th
In my company we use Deskaway - my pick for the best and fastest improving app of the year. i’ve heard that active collab doesn’t have email integration. Is that true. In any case - try DeskAway (if at all) mostly for its clean interface and great analytics features.
angeloff October 13th
It`s very nice. But i need time to use to it.
However i think i`ll try. I`m looking for something like this for a wile.
Good Job!
ilyas TEKER October 14th
looks great..
thanks for sharing
Tommy M. October 14th
Great program. I did a review on this on theDailyApp. However, I found CollabTrak to work just as well, except you have Clients log in and can pay via Paypal. It’s a one-stop project management and customer care app. (http://thedailyapp.com/workflow/customer-care/collabtrak-free-project-management-for-designers-and-clients)
Dan October 14th
If you’d like a tool for managing your time and projects, you can use this application inspired by David Allen’s GTD:
http://www.Gtdagenda.com
You can use it to manage and prioritize your goals, projects and tasks, set next actions and contexts, use checklists, schedules and a calendar.
A mobile version and iCal are available too.
Aanga October 15th
Wow…just wow. I love this! I downloaded it and put it up on my server to play around with, and so far I really like it! Thanks so much for the article!
Jan Rozehnal October 18th
Hey, great article. I have never see Collabtive, thanks for sharing. I can recommend ProjectPier or ActiveCollab.
Bye
Shane October 18th
I don’t think anyone can really say something looks like a PHP application. PHP has the ability to generate any XHTML of course, so to say that the presentation of this is linked to a server-side scripting language is rather silly.
Gustavo Macedo October 19th
Great Idea! I’ll try that!
jbcarey October 19th
I’ve installed this at home and that’s thanks to this tut.
Sainath October 21st
Hi i think this will be very useful to me.
Thanks
Blaze October 21st
I’ve just run it on my computer and loved the simplicity of the project, of course, I’m waiting for new releases with new features. I’ve made my own full (polish) translation and now feel there like at home - that was the best way to meet the Collabtive and I must say, it’s a very good piece of work, love the design, it is clear and working on it is just a great experience
Love this project
I sent my support to them (about fixes that should be included), hope, they’ll read it and answer what they think about it 
Love,
Maciej Smolinski
Shak October 22nd
its a new concept of work but think very good
Isaac October 25th
Collabtive looks interesting - I hadn’t seen that before. Have you guys tried GeniusRoom - it’s a new one out there too. I know a couple design studios I’ve worked with use it to manage their clients.
mindreframer October 29th
Give Redmine (http://www.redmine.org/) a try, it’s really awesome!
Alex November 19th
ditto redmine
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( GET A GRAVATAR )Your Name November 21st
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