Basecamp by 37signals

There have been lots of times when I’ve wished for an easy application to take care of what ever ailed me. A few years ago I once spent a whole week of evenings trying to find just the right online calendar to sign up with so that I could view it anywhere, log in and change things from anywhere and integrate appointments from a handheld. There was none to be had that I could find. A few months ago when I tried to find one that would let both Mac and Windows users log in and view the same appointments and let both/all users add/edit/delete, I think I even heard the Internet laughing at me.

So when Joe and I started doing Crawberts fulltime and it became obvious that if we didn’t find a solution, one of us (me) was going to yank out all their (my) hair due to not being able to keep on top of what was going on with all our projects, we found Basecamp created by 37signals. I guess I had been living under a rock because I had no idea that it existed and how this was so, I’ll never know. Because I have to tell you that it has completely made my life worth living.

When Joe initially pointed out their website and told me I might like it, I was plenty skeptical. I’ve been burned after the initial blush of new-to-me techy love. There was a part of me that thought, after reading through all the material and realizing that it could actually be really cool if it actually worked like it actually said it did, that laughed and mocked my quickness to return to folly. But, once I read that these were the same people that created Ruby on Rails, I was ready to give it a try. That, and they offer a free plan with great functionality which I initially signed up for. I think it was about 15 minutes between that and upgrading to the next level up and about 3 months before upgrading again. And as if that weren’t enough, remember when the ‘yellow fade’ first came out? Them.

Since then, Jason Fried has become one of my heroes. The more I learn about him and read things he’s (co)written, I’m thankful that there is an example out there of how to do it right.

My favorite Basecamp features:

1. It actually works like it says it will.
2. You can import writeboards from one project to another as well as view the last and current versions of any writeboard you are editing.
3. All milestones for all projects are viewable from one page or per project.
4. Auto-emailers for new messages for the entire crew with one tick box.
5. So freakin’ easy to learn and navigate that you forget you never knew how to use it.
6. It actually WORKS like it says it will!
7. They are still making improvements like the new time log for hours worked by employees. Huzzah!
8. From the client’s perspective, they don’t ever leave our site.

Things I wish it had or that I could customize:

1. Color-coding the projects in the milestone calendar on the main page view
2. As the main Admin, I wish I received an email no matter who posts a message and no matter where they post it instead of them having to add me to the list. When I’m juggling so many clients/programmers and there are lots of new messages coming in, I don’t always remember to check where I might have missed one. When a client or programmer forgets to include me in the message thread, I sometimes miss the message for a few hours/days and that is potentially sad. There may be something I’ve been unable to find that would make this possible.

All in all, a 5 star product that I’m proud to recommend. And just using it every day reminds me that my plans to create a new division of the company and have it work really, really right might not be so far fetched.