Is the project manager any good

[snake]

Can anyone give me any feedback on the WHMCS project manager, is it actually any good?

I am thinking of biting the bullet and replacing my current CRM with WHMCS so I can get everything automated.

[Kian]

It's good for keep track of work hours. Nothing good or bad to say. On a scale of one to five, I'd give it a 3.5.

[zitu4life]

19 hours ago, snake said:

Can anyone give me any feedback on the WHMCS project manager, is it actually any good?

I use PM to help me with daily campany tasks to be carried during weeks. We are not just a hosting business. but also a hardware and maintenance\installation (air conditioner, dish and terrestrial installation, and we expected in future lift\elevator too.

So we use WHMCS to help us getting things organized as we works with home clients  and also business clients all over different city's\streets.
WHCMS it self help us with clients detailed database (we created some custom field), help us with tickets integrated, helps with powerful billing automation,  and now with module front-end template (we have WHMCS as a company website, all integrated).

Relating PM addon, we also use it a lot, even on cellphones (but after WHMCS v7.8 whmcs update PM addon and removing us a great future onf using it on cellphone to mark tasks as completed 😣, we survive, means even on v7.10 we are forced to use PM addon v7.7.1 because they did not fix this small issue)

After all this bla bla bla, lets answer you question.

Yes PM addon is good, it has its own limitation relating widget, you can not set a project to more than one staff at time. Also there is no annual fee to pay, of course there is few updates made since WHMCS integrated it to the system. 

In my specific case, we use it as it still integrated on one single platform that company uses as CORE.

When a company win a big project, we create on PM that project, and I set all project detail there as a task (meeting with client, first client building visit, first draw project,equipment list to be ordered,  I set up project work day 1, day 3, until last day, scheduled electrical project site installation, etc, etc, until last meeting with client to deliver PROJECT COMPLETED.
So I create tasks for staff and set it PM addon, so this addon allow me to organized and save money. My staff usually find every week on PM addon all scheduled task to carry out. So this ensure as a small company to get staff more efficient especially when they use a company car far of my eye to carry out tasks out off office. So those tasks lists mean staff know exactly where and what to do, no need to think...what to do now 🤔🤔

For weekly tasks We usually create as a Project:
Thecnical Weekly Plan 1:
Thecnical Weekly Plan 2:
at end of year we have
Thecnical Weekly Plan 52:

On every weekly plan there is lot of tasks to be completed, if new tasks comes I will inserted according to clients requested support on company. Tasks on PM helps to not forget anything important to be done. it is not easy to deal with a lot of tasks (go to store buy tools, go to client home do some maintenance, proceed with car company maintenance, go to business client receive check, etc, etc, etc)

Every Thecnical Weekly Plan starts on Monday and ends on Saturday. 
On Sundays as project manager\Company owner I will analyse which tasks did not completed and forwarded it to next week (yes i do it manually, because PM addon do not support that future yet).

Tasks can be marked as completed for any company staff as it get completed. On version v7.7.1 is it possible to mark tasks as completed even using cellphones, but now a days only on laptop\desktop.

PS: you can bill your time of work if you are a web developer as Kian told you.

So this is how we use WHMCS and PM addon. I would rated it as 4.

PM addon gives more quality of live as a company owner...Sometimes when I have a really busy day...I only say staff...follow -up PM addon and tomorrow we will talk, and so my company still run. 😅

 

Edited April 16, 2020 by zitu4life
What CRM you are using?

[michael24]

If you are looking for a full grown project management app, you won´t find it in PM. Besides that it get´s the job done somehow.

We are using PM for GDPR documentation about what we did, when and on which product. For that, any client with matching products gets a long term project, where all these can be documented.

That works so lala, as it has some limitations and it does not seem that currently there is much love put into it 🙂

I put my thoughts here:

• The billing mechanism is really basic. It will create an invoice immediately and there is no option to create the timetracking entries as billable items and put this to the clients next invoice.
• You can add messages (for internal use only, client will not be able to see them - not even optionally) but you can´t attach the messages to a specific task (which would be good for documentation...).
• You can integrate tickets at the PM Page, but you won´t be able to attach a project to a ticket when opening a new ticket for example. (You can create a new project from ticket view, but can´t attach existing project.)
• If you have a long running project with many tasks, the newest task is shown last at the overview page so you need to scroll down. Same with messages. Since you can´t really change adminarea templates to sort these entries, there is nothing you can do to change that.

The last point is actually what is worse for us - we only have long running projects. I hope this will be changed, updated and modernized in the future.

If you are looking for a basic PM and you can live with these limitations, it will do it´s job for you.

 

 

Edited May 5, 2020 by michael24

[sol2010]

On 5/5/2020 at 11:34 PM, michael24 said:

If you are looking for a full grown project management app, you won´t find it in PM. Besides that it get´s the job done somehow.

We are using PM for GDPR documentation about what we did, when and on which product. For that, any client with matching products gets a long term project, where all these can be documented.

That works so lala, as it has some limitations and it does not seem that currently there is much love put into it 🙂

I put my thoughts here:

• The billing mechanism is really basic. It will create an invoice immediately and there is no option to create the timetracking entries as billable items and put this to the clients next invoice.
• You can add messages (for internal use only, client will not be able to see them - not even optionally) but you can´t attach the messages to a specific task (which would be good for documentation...).
• You can integrate tickets at the PM Page, but you won´t be able to attach a project to a ticket when opening a new ticket for example. (You can create a new project from ticket view, but can´t attach existing project.)
• If you have a long running project with many tasks, the newest task is shown last at the overview page so you need to scroll down. Same with messages. Since you can´t really change adminarea templates to sort these entries, there is nothing you can do to change that.

The last point is actually what is worse for us - we only have long running projects. I hope this will be changed, updated and modernized in the future.

If you are looking for a basic PM and you can live with these limitations, it will do it´s job for you.

 

 

I agree with most of this - except:

 

1) When I create an invoice it does show all of the line items with times

2) True you can't share messages, but I'm happy with that. Maybe it's for the best - support ticket = single point of contact

3) This is true - it would be good to be able to attach automated project updates to an already associated ticket.

4) " task is shown last at the overview page so you need to scroll down" you can re-order with drag and drop. 

What I would like to know is - how can you edit the file template to add some customisation?  There is nothing showing in the SIX template files - only in addons > project management - but I assume modifying these will mean they get overwritten if (fat chance) there is an update to the PM core files?  So how can we add some custom text block at the top of the PM client view  ?

 

[brian!]

8 hours ago, sol2010 said:

So how can we add some custom text block at the top of the PM client view  ?

if you wanted to avoid touching the templates, then you're probably looking at using a hook - but they're basic templates, so if it were me, i'd be tempted to just make your modifications to the templates (remember that 5/6/21 all use different templates) and keep a copy in the same folder... then after an update, if the file sizes are different (e.g they've been replaced), then see if there are any changes and replace with / edit the copy.

[sol2010]

Thanks @brian! will do.

Meanwhile - unless it is escaping me - I can't for the life of me work out how to generate / send a project management Time Tracking report.   Any one know how to generate that other than "invoice selected items"  ?

I guess I could manually copy and paste to a CSV - but was rather hoping there would be a "print" or download function.....

 

[snake]

anyone using wbteampro
seems a lot better than the office whmcs module.

https://marketplace.whmcs.com/product/1434-project-management-activity-tracking

not many reviews in the marketplace

[yggdrasil]

On 4/16/2020 at 12:53 AM, snake said:

Can anyone give me any feedback on the WHMCS project manager, is it actually any good?

I am thinking of biting the bullet and replacing my current CRM with WHMCS so I can get everything automated.

Not really, it's basic but works ok if you need complete integration with WHMCS which is the whole idea of using.

For simple tasks and things, it works but don't really expect to manage big projects or replace a proper project manager platform. It's more a task manager than anything else. What you see on the WHMCS and docs is what you get, nothing more and nothing less.

[snake]

I have been trialing  wbteam pro and while it seems ok, it does seem quite buggy and clunky.

as soon as I installed it, it changed the default language of WHMCS to dutch, which started to confuse my clients. They of course denied it was anything to do with wbteampro.

On the projects/tickets page, it confusingly shows all your existing  active tickets, which are not related to any project.

When you reply to a ticket, it sends you a notify of your own reply, which gets annoying quite quickly.

When you make a change to a project, the notification sent to the client doesn't tell them what has been changed, so its just confusing. It gives the impression a blank reply has been added or somehting.

Currently the benefits of whmcs integration are not outweighing my external pefexcrm system.

[snake]

I bit the bullet and purchased the WHMCS PM, and it is rather disappointing in how basic it is, and doesn't seem to have had any updates in years,

I am thinking of getting a module developed to integrate with Perfex CRM.
Which has a decent project manager, proposals, estimates, contracts and lead tracking and is cheap as chips at only $59