Well it might actually be classified as two but you get the idea. When I first downloaded the software, I have to say I was a bit skeptical but once I installed it and looked at it, I was in awe. There is so much that you can do and it really does have a place for nearly everything that I work with on my development projects. On top of all that, Ontime is so flexible. Creating additional fields for the stuff that means something to me is very easy.

Recently, I've seen quite a bit of comments concerning notifications and alerts and Axosoft has done a fine job trumpeting the gospel of the feature as it is presented in version 8. I have watched the videos and now I understand what that does.

Unfortunately, it seems that there has to be a significant amount of 'wriggling' involved to get it to work how you might want and I don't really like that. Notifications and alerts have their place but I don't really work like that. I don't want any more emails coming to my Inbox. I don't read them all anyway. I want to see things in Ontime work a little differently. For example, when I create a task, project or whatever, if it has a due date and an estimated duration, Ontime should tell me that according to my current scheduling (weekdays 9 to 5), this couldn't work. Something like a 'must start by' date taking scheduled working hours into account. If a task moves into that 'impossible to complete on time' zone, Ontime should tell me. If an item is set as critical but it's completion or status is not happening in the required time, I want Ontime to tell me. Also status updates/notices that are tied to the percent complete would not be unwelcome.

In a perfect world, tasks that are running Ontime would be one colour, tasks running late would be another colour and tasks that are overdue would be a third colour. That in a nutshell would make Ontime perfect for me. Now if I can just summarize this into a proper feature request.

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-- Sandi L.
Kingston, Jamaica

Hello Sandi,

Thanks for all the feedback! 

I see what you mean about OnTime somehow calculating the viability of an item's various date/duration fields, and I think it would make a great Feature Request. I imagine there would have to be some kind of System Option that would allow you to set the working hours for your team, if needed. Then OnTime might have a basis for calculating which due dates/estimated times will be possible or impossible. I'll leave that to our developers to plan out if they see fit, but thanks again for the suggestion and I hope you submit the idea to our development team via our Customer Portal. You can always include a link to your forum post within your Request, just to give them more information about your idea.

Also, I love the idea of color-coding the items in the main grid. I've submitted a Feature Request for this myself, and I encourage you to submit one as well. I agree that it'd be great to configure a different background color based on Status or Workflow Step. There could be a number of ways to implement that idea, but hopefully we'll get some more Feature Requests and perhaps it may be included in a future version on OnTime. 

Again, thanks for all your feedback. Let me know if you have any other ideas/questions.  

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Thank you,

Tom Harder
Axosoft Support
support@axosoft.com
1.800.653.0024 option 3
--'Fear the Bug' Podcast--

Thanks for responding, Tom. It's the kind of thing that shows that your company really does care. I have one more question/issue.

Do you think it would be feasible for Tasks to be tied in some way to Features, sort of a sub to Features. Usually, Tasks are driven by the aims of the Project which, in my mind, could be defined by the Features. Actually, it would be work for me just to be able to add Features to the Fields List for the Tasks template. What do you think?

Actually when I think of that it makes me think that the percentage of relevant Tasks complete should update the relevant Feature complete. Funny how this kind of thing can snowball. ...

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-- Sandi L.
Kingston, Jamaica

Hello Sandi,

You're not the first to suggest linking Tasks to other item types, and it seems that idea is becoming requested more and more as our users really dig into OnTime. Right now you can relate items using the Related items tab, but there is no real dependency created between the 2 items as far as actually updating completion, status, etc.

Again I suggest submitting this as a Feature Request in our Customer Portal, as the more demand we get for ideas like this, the more consideration we give to the idea. Thanks again for your feedback, and let me know if you have any other ideas.

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Thank you,

Tom Harder
Axosoft Support
support@axosoft.com
1.800.653.0024 option 3
--'Fear the Bug' Podcast--

I've figured out how to add Features as a pick list to my Tasks template thanks to the thread #14495. I'm happy with that for the time being but I have gone ahead and submitted my request for linking Tasks to Features. Thanks.

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-- Sandi L.
Kingston, Jamaica

When I sat down and really thought about having the Tasks as a kind of sub to Features, I realized that some Tasks would not relate just to Features. Others might relate to Defects, some to Incidents, etc. With that in mind, having Tasks as an independent section kind of makes sense.

Now I know that OnTime does not function as MS Project does with project tracking etc.  but oh how I wish that it could have some of its more relevant functions. Anyway, that's my two cents.

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-- Sandi L.
Kingston, Jamaica