We need a solution to workflow issues on some of our forms. We have a form used for getting things on the schedule. It is big, cumbersome, and a pain in the neck to get to all the steps it needs to reach.
Someone wants to set up an event so the grab the .doc from the network and start writing in the details. It gets printed up and handed to the person in charge of them. Copies are then sent to each department affected by the event and they approve their portion. It makes it to the final decider and then it get put on the schedule.
This process takes longer than it takes to do all other preparations for some events, and it has trouble routing to the proper locations.
We have Sharepoint Server, but have not learned to use it yet. There are some applications that piggyback with Sharepoint to do this, but the one we have looked at costs $6,000. Someone recommended a module for DotNetNuke, but I have not heard its name and I am not comfortable with dotnetnuke (We would host it externally at first to shrink the learning curve involved with setting up all the server software, especially since there is Windows hosting out there for $5 per month.)
How do you do manage project planning workflow?
If you’re talking about purely event management, we swear by EventU (http://www.serviceu.com). It’s completely web based and when someone fills out the event request form, it’s automatically routed through the appropriate people and then dumped to a big calendar. If the event is public it will show up on our web calendar too.
We use EventU, but it is only a portion of the process. When the process is started they are supposed to check room availability on EventU, and then later in the process those rooms are scheduled for them.
What we don’t have on EventU is the ability to manage other resources and people. Our event planning includes purchases, budgets, publicity, technical personnel, room setup, cleanup, air conditioning, security, emergency response teams, childcare, food, and other items. It is 13 pages long.
Have you had a look at Basecamp? I’m not sure it would meet your needs.
I had looked at http://www.basecamphq.com but I’m not sure it does the type of workflow we need. However, since you mentioned it I will send up up the chain to see if we could bend our procedures to it.
It looks like it would work well with our big programs, but we need to track even small events but doing a quick search on EventU for what is happening this week brings up more than 150 items, and this is a quiet week.