Posted by madcapjack on October 4, 2007 at 1:48am
Hi. Allow me to introduce myself. I'm a student at university in the US in a graduate web development course specifically oriented toward drupal development, including module development. In searching for a project to do for this class, I've become rather frustrated. Every time I think of something to do I find that its already been done by some module or another, or can be done using some combination of existing modules. That's a good thing for the drupal user community, but not so good for me.
I don't want to bother anyone really, but if they have an idea for some kind of module they'd like too see but haven't had time to make themselves, and which can be finished by December or so, let me know, 'cause I'm interested!
Thanks.
Jacob
Comments
Project Management Dashboard / Suite
Here's the module I've been dreaming of making for a couple of years now but just haven't gotten around to it:
project management dashboard spec
Outliner:
Start with a really fabulous outliner - one that acts like Omni Outliner. (Maybe even one that will import omni outliner exports. OPML file format is used by both brainforest, omni outliner, life balance, scrivner and other outliner programs.
The important thing is that the outliner can have unlimited numbers of indents. I've thought a bit about this and think it can be done with arrays and jquery.
It would be nice to have a column for prioritization and be able to sort by priorities. (See Omni Outliner.) It doesn't need to have all of the functions of the current omni outliner, but a few versions back, all it did was have unlimited indents and checkboxes. It was elegant. I'd love to have one on the web.
The reason for this is that by being able to drill down to several levels of granularity, you can break the largest task into 15 minute subtasks or child tasks, grouped into parent tasks. Top level might only have three items. Drill down and you can have thousands of tasks, painlessly organized.
Todo List:
Once you've got that. I'd like to be able to take the highest priority items from my outline and turn them into a current todo list, so that I don't have to search the entire kaboodle to find what I'm supposed to do next.
I'd like to be able to email these tasks to my teammates around the world.
Details panel:
I'd like a kind of dashboard. On the left you have the outline. On the right, you have a window (panel/block) for each task. Highlight a task on the left, see the info on it on the right. This info would be emailed with the task.
On that panel, I'd have a field for the importance of the task to its parent task. That way, if you have something that's absolutely crucial to its parent, but the parent isn't that crucial to the overall project, then the task would be ranked lower than a task that might be low within a crucial parent task. You could come up with an algorithm that would calculate the next logical task based on an algorithm of crucialness given the importance of something within its parent tasks.
Is this a repeated task? Do you want to complete its subtasks in order? Notes about this task? Dependencies on other tasks? This would go into the Details panel. Due date. Stuff like that.
I'd like to be able to put in estimated time vs real time for how long it takes to do something. That way we can improve estimates over time.
Perhaps a view for estimates. How long it took with last year's similar project and what's a likely amount of time. - eventually this would be useful for quoting.
Also on this side would be a panel that would have a calendar with different views. Day, week, month, year. Be able to export to iCal, of course. Show what's due on that day.
I'd like several different reports from this that would be useful for working with clients and co-workers. Overviews. Quoting. I bet there are others here who have better ideas on this than I do.
Anyway, that's the module I'd wish for. If it's too much by the end of term, just a great outliner would change the way I work with Drupal and my team a great deal.
Sproutliner Source Code Available
You can check out the open sourced Sproutliner project and perhaps be able to hook into that to make a module.
Here's the page: http://sproutliner.com/
Here's the source code: http://sproutliner.com/source/
Business directory
There are people wanting a "drop in" solution for business directories rather than having to build it themselves from a bunch of contribs and custom coding. See http://groups.drupal.org/business-directory
Michelle
my ideas
In short...
A "prediction market" module. This is basically a module to make your Drupal site a stock exchange. The uses of this are basically limitless, but they are very powerful.(see more at dojo announcement of open development process and drupal.org project pageA "scoopt" clone. Ok, I don't even know what scoopt is. But lots of people want one or at least want something that does "vote on posts/comments, those rankings bubble up to user rankings, which increases the strength of future votes by that user"
I've been dreaming about working on these for so long without any progress that I'm now happy to see anyone working on them ;)
Good luck in whatever you do.
--
Knaddisons Denver Life | mmm Chipotle Log | The Big Spanish Tour
knaddison blog | Morris Animal Foundation
Thanks
I want to thank everyone for their excellent suggestions. A lot of good ideas! I'll put them forward in class.
Best,
Jacob
You could also put some
You could also put some effort in unifying some duplicate modules out there: community_tags and taxonomy_user e. g.
One idea for a new module that I am carrying around for a while now is a smart module that shows one-time help texts whereever you want in a page. Users could remove the help text box by closing it. It would set a cookie or a value in the user table and never come back. This could work with an input filter:
[helptextstart]Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Pellentesque ligula libero, tincidunt vel, faucibus sed, cursus non, urna. Curabitur nunc.[helptextend]
I havent done a lot of research on this though. Probably it already exists :)
http://www.twitter.com/lxbarth
helptip
It needs some love, but yes, http://drupal.org/project/helptip
--
Knaddisons Denver Life | mmm Chipotle Log | The Big Spanish Tour
knaddison blog | Morris Animal Foundation
My ideas
Hello madcapjack,
What I would love to see, but have not had time to build or find-- a bulk taxonomy setter.
For example, when you're in /admin/content/node and you have your list of filters; your list of results and your list of bulk actions.
- a module that does a form_alter on this form to add in a dropdown of taxonomy
- then you check off the nodes you want set to the new taxonomy
- when the form is submitted, the new module has a hook to listen for the taxonomy then adds the term_node association if one isn't there for that term_node combo already. It would leave existing term_node combos in place.
All the best,
Mike
Tech - http://technicalmike.blogspot.com
Rants - http://mikedewolfe.blogspot.com
Etc. - http://mike.dewolfe.bc.ca
Work - https://www.shawndewolfe.com/
Education - https://cinchacademy.com/
Etc. - https://shawn.dewolfe.ca
My First Drupal site - http://www.comminit.com
Taxonomy Node Operations
Hello All,
Please ignore my former post. I found almost exactly what I requested: Taxonomy Node Operations (http://drupal.org/project/taxonomy_node_operations).
All the best,
Mike
Tech - http://technicalmike.blogspot.com
Rants - http://mikedewolfe.blogspot.com
Etc. - http://mike.dewolfe.bc.ca
Work - https://www.shawndewolfe.com/
Education - https://cinchacademy.com/
Etc. - https://shawn.dewolfe.ca
My First Drupal site - http://www.comminit.com
Well...
I want to thank everyone again for their ideas, and to let everyone know how our project turned out. My colleague Roger Borges and I went in for creating a prediction market module. Its still a little buggy, and keep in mind that its our first drupal development project (be kind!). You can check it out at www.vacatola.com/drupal
Best
Jacob aka madcapjack