You are here: ActiveLabs | ActiveCollab Modules and Services » Blog »

What’s in a name?

Share on Twitter

What’s in a name?


Last week we talked about the dreaded question, “Am I using it right?” I suggested that as activeCollab users, we forget about the “right” way, and seek to find the way that works for us.

One major roadblock I often see when talking with people is that it’s easy to get hung up on the names of features — and miss out on the benefits of the function.

This week’s tip…

Forget about the names. Focus on what each “function” can do for you and your team!

Here’s what I mean: What comes to mind when you hear the word Ticket? It depends on who you ask. The concept of Tickets is a popular one in the Customer Support world, and because of this, a lot of activeCollab users can be confused about the value of, or even dismiss Tickets altogether. Most of us have some sort of experience with Tickets. The first thing that may come to mind is “Trouble Tickets”, but what if we removed the name of this feature for just a few minutes and reviewed the functions for what they bring to the table? Could you and your team, or clients approach these differently?

With each of our new nameless “mystery objects” we can….

1. Start with a main body area to post content, i.e. questions, copy, attachments, notes, links, images, etc.

2. Associate this mystery object to a category, milestone, due date.

3. Assign a person, or multiple persons…. one of them being ultimately responsible. And they will get an email notification when they are assigned.

4. Subscribe people for future updates and notifications even if they aren’t assigned to it – great for monitoring progress.

5. Reply to the email notifications to send in feedback, attachments, or give approval on the content of the notifications and it will be added to the running commentary on the thread.

6. Easily get back to the main content and review the history of work and comments related to this mystery object right from an email notification link.

7. On top of all this, add a related task for ourselves or someone else, and set a due date with the same great email notifications and automated reminders x days from the due date.

8. Mark it as completed and it will be automatically be available in an archive for future reference.

9. Not only this, but you could have an unlimited number of these objects as part of a larger object called a Project!

10. Ok I may have gotten carried away…. but there’s more… and I’m sure you could come up with some of your own too.

Sooo… do you think you could put a feature like this to use?

Now are we seeing the the same limitations as we did when we just thought of these as Tickets?

Are your team or clients seeing limitations based on the names of features like Tickets, Milestones, Tasks…. even Projects? Did you know that getting past this could be as easy as renaming it with a Localization file?

What’s a Localization file? Here’s another great example…the Localization file’s purpose is to support multiple languages i.e. German, Spanish, Dutch, etc…. But if we don’t get hung up on the original purpose, we can leverage the value of the feature! After all, aren’t we really talking about “language” anyway? It’s about getting your activeCollab installation speaking your “language” that makes it most usable.

Take some time to think if naming alone may be holding you back. Could “Requests” be a better name for Tickets in your environment? It was for one of our clients. What about any of these… Subprojects, Articles, Missions, Campaigns, or [insert your ideas here]? How about you? Do you need to find a new name for Tickets? OR just a new perspective so you can jump in and use it differently? Apply the same principles to Projects, Milestones, Pages, and Tasks too!

I hope this inspires you to ignore the “names” of features and focus on the “function”! With activeCollab there are so many possibilities to create a system that is perfect for the way you want to work, these suggestions are just the beginning. If you need help with a new perspective or optimizing for your needs — I’d be happy to help you more in a Rock Your Workflow session or three icon smile What’s in a name?

BACK TO SCHOOL BONUS: For all my fellow students of life and perpetual learners… We’re offering a Rock Your Workflow special right now in the spirit of Back to School. Just enter the promo code BACK2WORKFLOWSCHOOL — and you’ll get 20% off on Rock Your Workflows (and anything else in your cart too!)



If you enjoyed this article, get your free weekly Tips to Rock Your Workflow with ActiveCollab!



More from The Labs blog

Categories: Blog

Discussion

  • Praveen Reddy

    Thanks for the useful article. Quick question. How do I localize the name “Task”? I am able to do others but not Task

    Once again thank you for writing up this wonderful article.

  • http://www.tekture.com Nathan Sudds

    Hey Praveen, you are very welcome!  I believe you’ll find most of the “Task” references in the Resources area of the Localization settings.   Select resources here: http://screencast.com/t/kvWGmHyQEOA

    And you’ll see several references to Tasks, you’ll need to replace them all to make sure Tasks are consistently renamed in various areas…  Here’s a few for example: http://screencast.com/t/gtIoVWLTV4

  • http://www.tekture.com Nathan Sudds

    Hey Praveen, you are very welcome!  I believe you’ll find most of the “Task” references in the Resources area of the Localization settings.   Select resources here: http://screencast.com/t/kvWGmHyQEOA

    And you’ll see several references to Tasks, you’ll need to replace them all to make sure Tasks are consistently renamed in various areas…  Here’s a few for example: http://screencast.com/t/gtIoVWLTV4

  • Praveen Reddy

    Please note that, to change a Phrase (for example “milestones” to be called as “phases” )you will have to edit all the categories in the Languages. It’s not enough just to edit Milestones section as other section such as Tickets and Dashboard will still retain Milestone.

    Because you will be reviewing/modifying almost 2000 sentences, plan for each you want to change all at once and do it category by category in Languages section.

    1) List of all changes
    Milestone -> New phrase
    Tickets ->
    Tasks ->
    discussions ->
    xxxxx
    xx
    2) Go though each category and search for each of these phrases and replace by new.

  • http://www.tekture.com Nathan Sudds

    Thanks for sharing your experience Praveen – if you have a lot of changes to make, it would probably be easier to download the localization files and do a search for all references to the word you are changing so you can easily make those updates. 

    I’ll try to put together a quick tutorial on how you can make this easier using a tool like Notepad++ and the Find in Files feature.  What would be ideal, is a quick search and replace, but the best approach in light of activeCollab’s setup is to use the search to highlight the references and then copy and paste the phrase replacing the word you are “translating” i.e. Done adding tasks?  =   Done adding actions?

    This will make it easier to go through and find the changes you need to make quickly and be sure you don’t miss any references. In order to do that, you’ll need to add an translation file for each item from the Admin > Languages area first then download the files from the /custom folder within your activeCollab root directory.

    If you need help with this, please let me know

Help

Notice: Undefined property via __get(): icon-code in file /home/active/public_html/site/wp-content/plugins/micropoll/lib/MicroPoll.php on line 365 in /home/active/public_html/site/wp-content/plugins/micropoll/lib/MicroPoll/Structure.php on line 65