Task tracking across multiple projects

Question

I'm looking for an app with these features:

1. Able to create projects or some way to strongly group tasks
2. Able to add tasks with due dates
3. Able to assign tasks to a person
4. Able to write comments to a task
5. Able to mark task status (open, in progress, closed, etc)
6. Able to view tasks by project or view all tasks across projects
7. Able to view tasks by person assigned
8. Able to send notifications when tasks are added or changed or comments are made (email preferred, but in app is okay)

Nice to haves:

1. Prioritize tasks
2. Add and report on hours
3. Able to easily change due dates on a task by dragging on a calendar
4. Able to see tasks in a calendar view
5. Able to some how determine if a task due date is feasible based on estimated hours and the number of hours the assigned person works per day.

The main feature we are looking for is to be able to view all tasks that need to be done regardless of project. Because we work on several projects at once we need some way to prioritize tasks globally.

Most popular task tracking software like Pivotal Tracker, Trello, Asana, etc don't seem to have that feature. The closest one I have come across is taskworld which hits all my main points, but I would like to find some alternatives.

Answer 1

I suggest you JIRA. It has a downloadable, self-hosting version and available as an online service. Both are web-based.

Able to create projects or some way to strongly group tasks

It supports multiple projects, you can define components inside projects (every issue can belong to zero or more components), you can also tag issues and create a special issue type (called epic) and group issues by them.

Able to add tasks with due dates

It's supported. You can set your own custom fields too.

Able to assign tasks to a person

It's supported. Every issue has an Assignee field.

Able to write comments to a task

It's supported. You can also mention any JIRA user with @FirstName LastName in the comment and the mentioned user automatically gets an email notification.

Able to mark task status (open, in progress, closed, etc)

It's supported. You can define your own statuses and you are able to create custom workflows.

Able to view tasks by project or view all tasks across projects

It's supported. You can search for issues by any criteria. It supports a basic, user-friendly search form as well as an SQL-like query language (called JQL).

Able to view tasks by person assigned

It's supported. You can search for it but the Issues Summary for a Project screen is also very useful.

Able to send notifications when tasks are added or changed or comments are made (email preferred, but in app is okay)

JIRA sends emails when the status is changed (including new or modified comments) to every related person (reporter, assignee). Furthermore, anyone can watch any issue. Watchers get notification emails also on issue state changes. Users with proper permissions can add (or remove) anyone to the watcher list but usually anyone can watch any issue if they're interested.

It's possible to set up project and JIRA level notifications, so a project manager can get notifications from every (or just a specific type of) issue changes.

JIRA has activity streams which can show the recent activity in your JIRA instance or in the selected project, so you can easily see what's happened today or in the last few days, which issues has been solved, commented etc.

Prioritize tasks

Every issue in JIRA has a priority field by default. (It's not too useful alone.)

With the JIRA Agile plugin you can create a sorted list of your issues (called backlog). (You don't have to use Scrum as a project management framework for that.)

Add and report on hours

It's supported. You can log time to every issue (except issues with closed state, but you can change that).

Able to easily change due dates on a task by dragging on a calendar

JIRA has a Calendar plugin (maybe more than one) but I've never used that.

Able to see tasks in a calendar view

As far I see it's supported by the Calendar Plugin above.

Able to some how determine if a task due date is feasible based on estimated hours and the number of hours the assigned person works per day.

I've no experience with this. (We are using the agile board/backlog and planning work/releases by story points.)

The main feature we are looking for is to be able to view all tasks that need to be done regardless of project. Because we work on several projects at once we need some way to prioritize tasks globally.

The Agile Plugin supports that, what you need is an Agile Board with a proper search query (filter) which searches in all of the related projects. It works quiet well for us.

Answer 2

If you accept paid services, I can advice you BaseCamp. It was an Online Project Management Software.

• You can create Projects. In the project
  • You can create to-do lists, you can assign each to-do item to specific user or users and can set due dates. T0-dos have check boxes that allows easy update.
  • Project based discussion board
  • Each to-do record have its own discussion board. You can attach files to discussions from your local computer or from Google Docs (I used gmail in registration. I am not sure if it supports other mail clients' document services)
  • You can create events. It allows you to define repeating events like this day each week/month etc.
  • Project calender shows events and to-dos' due dates
  • Updates section displays latest created events, to-dos files etc, warns user for updated to-dos and upcoming events.
• You also have a general calender, which shows all events and to-dos in all projects. You can switch to project-based calenders easily.
• You can see progress or each project through Progress tab. It displays updated based on project
• You can see all files, all open to-dos etc through Everything section. This sections shows related content from all projects
• You can manage projects by mail You can use mailing to use many functionality of the base camp. It created a mail address for each project like [email protected] and you can create to-dos, create documents, send files and create discussions by sending mail to that address. Also you can forward mail to that mail address to archieve that mail in your basecamp project.

Progress screen:

Everything screen:

I used it previously as a free service. It offers 60 day free demo.

Answer 3

You should take a look at Eylean board as it offers most of the things you are looking for:

• You can create several projects on one task board and add tasks to them, as well as due dates.
• The tasks can be assigned to a specific person, they can be commented on, you can add files, description and other things to them.
• You will be able to track the progress of the tasks as they move across the board, and you will be able to see all the projects and all the tasks on one board in order to get the general scope.
• You will see the information of your team, such as tasks assigned, hours worked, etc.
• You will be able to get notifications on new tasks/comments directly to your e-mail.
• You will also get live reports on the progress of the project, such as burndown chart, which will let you estimate if the project will be finished on time.

Answer 4

Also take a look at Deskun.

All the features you need, intergated with Gmail and Google Apps. You can create and manage different projects and queues, set priorities, assign and re-assign tasks, change access rights and so on.

Answer 5

https://www.redmine.org/ has everything you requested besides drag-n-droping in Calendar. Probably there exists plug-in for that task...

It is free and open source and need to be set in house. Most of famous VPS hosting provides have ready to use images/droplets with Redmine installed and preconfigured.

There is easy to use 3rd party package: https://bitnami.com/stack/redmine