Today we completed integration between Teamwork agenda and Google calendar.
In the original project we just dispatched events created in Teamwork to Google calendar, but now we let users export a complete Teamwork agenda in Ical format in order to see all appointments on another calendar server (just like Google calendar but also in another Teamwork!).

Another added feature lets you import one or more external calendars in Ical format and see the events contained in it inside Teamwork’s agenda.

While building the integration, I’ve had all sorts of troubles with date format and time zone settings. In fact we couldn’t assume that calendars working together have the same time settings, so it was necessary to convert dates in the correct time zone every time we tried to do an export or an import.

Now everything works fine and it’s great! You can send every new event created in Teamwork to your Google calendar, you can see all your Google calendar events simply copying the given calendar’s address in Teamwork, and you can also do the opposite!

Labels: TeamworkTalk

Among the rich set of integrations possible with Teamwork, one which we are considering is integrating Alfresco document management with Teamwork's. We were discussing this at a customer (a bank), when they showed us that Alfresco provides file system network access to its document engine, so you can access the document tree throuh the network just by tipying a network address of the form \\alfrescoServer\... . Well then we immediately created a file storage pointing to the root of the alfresco server, so that the area manager can set on tasks roots the document root corresponding to it, and operate! So the inner flexibility of Teamwork gave us immediately a first, rough "integration" with Alfresco, which the customer loved, and makes them immediately operative.

Labels: Alfresco integration, TeamworkTalk

We have ready a new project tree in-place editor; it is really nice, as you can edit in-place any task, including scheduling, assignments and issues. It is also way faster for projects with a lot of nodes.

It is a non trivial feature because tasks in a project have the "annoying" feature that the changes in dates of one task can trigger the change of dates along the entire tree, so local editing becomes global editing all the time.

Technically, it is built with Ajax and a lot of help from jQuery.


In the second screenshot you see the project editor in the tree context:

Labels: ajax gantt tree, ajax project tree

One of Teamwork's customers got acquired:


Interestingly, they use Teamwork along the entire production line, and somehow the order with which they operate, using projects starting with the commercial contact, along to design, production and even logistics, was one of the positive factors led to the acquisition.

Yesterday we tested Teamwork’s automatic Ical calendar export, by having a user with a Gmail e-mail, so that instead of downloading the Teamwork generated Ical message, it was Gmail getting it: it works perfectly. So this kind of synchronization of Teamwork and Google calendars works right now, with the current release (3.2.8), and without any effort from the user: she just writes her Gmail e-mail on her Teamwork user, creates appointments in Teamwork, and gets them almost immediately in her Google calendar.

Labels: TeamworkTalk