We use Basecamp on every project that we do, small or large. We do find though that despite its simplicity and intentional lack of features it can still overwhelm our less technical clients. With the beta launch of SWM imminent we though that a decent Basecamp plugin would be useful…
I can connect Basecamp very easily to my SWM account and all of my clients within SWM only get access to the projects that they are involved in:
In the above screenshot, we have a few projects and the associated client, when those clients log in to SWM they will only see their projects – no extra set up necessary.
Once we click through into a project we then see a quick overview of that project. All milestones, to-do’s, latest messages and a way to add a new message. We figured that if you want to set up to-do’s and milestones then you’d actually go off and use Basecamp to do this. As a visual indicator for clients as to what remains to be done and what has been done this is more than enough.
Once we get down into the conversation itself, we have the main message at the top, with replies boldly stated, going down the page. This avoids any confusion that any client may have and ensures that all know which topic is being discussed.
Adding a comment is simple and attachments can be made to the comment (as they can the initial message itself). We use the SWM asset manager for storing files (not Basecamp), this enables assets to be shared across multiple applications i.e. we can use the same files stored against Basecamp here as we can in any other application within our account, such as Wordpress, Plone, Vanilla, etc…
That’s pretty much it (for now). This is not meant to be a replacement for Basecamp, but a way for people that use Basecamp to integrate it into a envirnoment that their clients don’t need to re-learn. Once a client can update the website , monitor social media, be part of a project (and whatever else) in one place, they will thank you – a lot :)
More to come soon.
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