At the beginning of the 2003 season one of our mentors suggested the use of what he called an action register. This action register would do exactly as it says “registers actions”.
So ever since I have set out to produce and advance the idea of the action register for my own team.
Many of you may or may not know that I have been working, for the past 3-4 months, on a project called openFIRST. We have been working to complete the only portal development system specifically for FIRST teams. So it made sense for me to set out and develop the ultimate action register module for the system.
What I came up with was something that I believe would help a LOT of teams out.
Running a large robotics team is rather complicated so, being team leader of #1049, I know exactly what has to be going on and when. That is the reason for 80% of the modules features. The other 20% is just for making it look coooolll.
Anyways heres how it works (with screens ;-)).
Now the action register system organizes users into groups. Within these groups one may assign members.
http://www.spyralgames.com/images/screen1.gif
These groups are the base of the entire system. From there anyone who is assigned to that specific group may add new projects and assign people from the groups to it.
http://www.spyralgames.com/images/screen2.gif
From there students may create tasks and under tasks notes that help track whats happening exactly. If this is a special type of project you can even upload files to the db for other students to download and preview its completion.
http://www.spyralgames.com/images/screen3.gif
Every single project, task has a completion amount and target date to notify students about when these are to be completed.
I found this very helpful when working with my team.
Whats great about the module, I think, is that its pretty easy to navigate and has a lot of features. For example for teams are a bit advanced you can use the action register update feature. These automatically e-mails ALL the commits of the day to every single user (depending if they want it or not). Gives them an update and allows them to visit the site. Heres what the e-mail looks like (screen built from Mozilla Mail).
http://www.spyralgames.com/images/screen2.gif
The action register also has a meeting tracker and minute taker. Which is all combined into the projects module for easy access from any member.
http://www.spyralgames.com/images/screen5.gif
http://www.spyralgames.com/images/screen6.gif
So basically there are a lot of features that allow you to administrate your team easily.
My question to the CD community is, what do you think I should add/remove from the features?
How many teams currently use something along these lines, or would want to and what are your thoughts about it?
I know people are going to say that its tough to get students to work on the action register, but I havent found this a problem with my team yet. The students want to use it because it keeps them update, rather than calling people to get new info.
Now this module is still being developed ie. bugs and minor issues plus feature upgrades. There are some rough versions on the openFIRST Nightly Build system: http://www.openfirst.org/nightly/ . If you wish by try downloading it an working with it.
Note that there are also many other action register programs out there. I think Microsoft Projects does something along the same lines. If anyone has any other suggestion for registeres then please list them.
