Private client issue tracker using Project + OG modules

This is a site building recipe to build a private issue tracking system. It is still pretty experimental.

The goal is something kind of like BaseCamp or Unfuddle, but the recipe lacks many of the features provided by those services. You could probably add on more modules to match those services if you really really wanted to do so. Further, the goal is to create a site where people involved in different projects can login to the site but only see information related to their project (you might call these people clients). I've followed a pretty conservative path - I assume that some users will be confused by configuration and may make mistakes so I'd like the only way to make a mistake be that the content is hidden/private instead of shown. The big exception to this relates to files. I chose to use a public filesystem, but certainly if you really really care about the privacy of files you should use the private file system option.

Assumptions are that you want to create "projects" which are all separate "clients" and inside of each of those are
1. Documentation or discussion content
2. Issues for the project
3. (could be extended with) Events/milestones

1. Start with Drupal core
2. Install OG in two steps - install the "Organic Groups" module and then install the "Organic groups access control" module.
3. Don't do any real configuration of OG just yet.
4. Install Project module Project_issue and Comment Upload
5. Edit the admin/content/types/project-project and make it a "Group node"
6. Visit admin/content/types/project-issue and turn off "promoted to front page" enable "Standard group post (typically only author may edit). No email notification."
7. Visit all the pages in admin/project and configure as appropriate
8. Visit admin/og/og_access and set "Visibility of posts: " to be "Visible only within the targeted groups." and then "Private Groups: " to be "New group home pages and default audience are always private."
9. Visit /admin/og/og and set things as appropriate - set the "Groups directory control" to "New groups don't appear in the groups directory. Administrators control the directory exclusively." and "Registration form control:" to "New groups don't appear on the registration form. Administrators control the form exclusively." and "Audience checkboxes" to on (maybe not...l) and "Audience required" as "required"
10. Install OG Project
11. Create a "client" role for clients - i.e. people who need access to information inside of project-groups.
12. Grant the client role the ability to create and "edit own" on all the appropriate content types. Grant them "access comments" and "post comments" and "post comments without approval" and "access own projects" and "access projects" and "access own projects issues" and "access project issues" and "assign and be assigned project issues". Grant them the ability to set the appropriate issue statuses (probably all of these, but not necessarily). Allow them to "upload files" and "view uploaded files" so that they can post screenshots and maybe get/review patches.
13. Edit the file extensions on admin/settings/uploads. You probably first need to grant more space in the file size per upload/per user. Also, allow lots of image types (screenshots) and common code file formats like "gz tgz patch diff test info po pot"

Ongoing Maintenance/Configuration

1. If a project has a main person that is involved with it, it can be helpful to assign the project node to them (though this also has implications for OG, so be sure you trust that person). That provides the benefit of the "My Projects" link showing them their issues.

Known Weaknesses

1. I've configured the ability to assign issues to other people. The "assigned" field doesn't seem to care which group a person is in.
2. creating a new issue at example.com/node/add/project_issue/PROJECTNAME/bug should automatically select the group
3. the link in the "Group details" block which automatically selects the Group should also automatically specify the project...

These will be fixed in future versions of OG Project

[Moshe: You can use hook_og_link_alter() or some similar function in D6 to change the links in the Group details block as needed. Similarly, you can preselect the group based on the project with a little hook_form_alter() glue code].