Anybody here use Project Tools on any of your forums? If so, what do you use it for and how do you like it? I've been thinking about the up-and-coming vBulletin Suite but I cannot justify purchasing it. The CMS is what I am interested in trying. I have absolutely no use for the Blog add-on, and I'm not sure if I have a use for Project Tools (hence the creation of this thread). As of now, I think it's silly to purchase the whole suite just to be able to use the CMS. Any suggestions? What are your thoughts, and are you in a similar situation?
It occurred to me the Project Tools might be useful when planning a gathering or convention, but not every forum will need that and we've been using private forums to handle it well enough.
Project Tools is an issue management program. At vBulletin.com, it is only used for bug tracking publically but that is really only a portion of what it can do. You can create any kind of issue in the system for any kind of project. Different projects can have different issues even on the same site. Many people don't really think outside the box and so can't grasp a use for the tool outside what is presented to them. To many it is simply a bug tracker when it can be so much more. You can use it to help plan events, develop software, rebuild an engine, plant a garden, interior design, handle suggestions, customer support, and much more. All it takes is a little creativity and some mapping. Projects don't even need to be open. You could create a project with a roadmap to show your users how to do things like build an aquarium, hypermile their car and a lot of other things. Basically anything with steps. I use it on my local intranet to show daily chores and who they are assigned to in the family. Really just an experiment but it works.
We just bought it! I LOVE it. We are using it for a couple things. Currently, only our admins and super mods have access to it. 1. I put all the technical type projects I am working on in there for more visibility to the rest of the group because being the techie admin, the workload can be invisible to the non-techies 2. I open a ticket for every "This is broke!" or "Can we have this?" as either a Feature or a Bug 3. We use it like a regular project manager. We are currently rewriting much of the canned FAQ verbiage in vBulletin, so we have a project called FAQ with tasks under it of each piece of text to be rewritten, people make their suggestions, we track status. LOVE IT. Well worth the money. Even if I was the only one using it, it has become invaluable in tracking my vBulletin work, as I am the only one doing anything related to site design and upkeep.
Yes it could. Anything where you need to break things up into steps and users may need to either comment on individual steps or you're assigning steps to different individuals. It is more suited to group projects out of the box but can really be used for any project with a little creativity.
