Tim
Life is good Joined: Nov 2007
Location: Kalamazoo

For the past couple of years I’ve slowly been developing this site, or as a project/application name ‘The Image Store.’ It’s been fabulous to work on, allowing me to stretch my imagination and use the tools I have to build a great application. While it has its drawbacks, missing features, and a few bugs here and there it’s a pretty solid and easy to use app. It’s also a pretty quick, though of course limited to my bandwidth (6x1). Currently it has around 1400 images and files stored in 100 or so collections and articles, not to mention the 5500+ thumbnails of all the images. And it weighs in at over 2gb of data. It is essentially an open source program though I’ve not gotten around to compiling it all together so it can be used by some one other than me (lots of lose ends).

Why do I mention all of this? Well because I’m not a developer, architect, or other highly paid programmer type. I’m hardly even a junior developer. My roots of IT come from the customer support side. Being in the industry for 10 years, earning my keep and paying my dues all along, but always striving to reach that next level.

In the past two years however I’m been faced with less than appropriate issue/request tracking tools for the type of business I’ve been in. While working in the corporate office for Meijer, I used a titan of applications ‘Remedy’. Truly a great request tracking/helpdesk application. On a search for open source solutions to fit the bill as a helpdesk application I found BugTracker.Net. Its actual usage is for bug tracking as its name suggests and is very useful and customizable. The company I work for now is actually using BTNet, though an order version that has been heavily customized to meet the workflow required for the company. Another was BugNet. This being more of a project management (PM) software than a helpdesk app. It is very similar in nature to Gemini that is distributed by CounterSoft. I’ve used both in the past though never to their full extent and both are great for PM.

But I need something different, something that combines both project management and helpdesk. Here is what I need:
   - .Net front end
   - SQL datastore
   - Customizable workflow
   - Organization (client/user classification) and project based user security
   - Group/user based request assignments
   - Internal/External request submission
   - Very granular C-T-I + based request tracking 
   - Easy to use and “client friendly” front end 
   - An in-depth IT based user environment 
   - SVN Integration 
   - Open source
   - CMS style documentation module
   - Granular email notification system
   - Full scale auditing of events
   - Private messaging system <- Optional but could increase communication

What have I found? Nothing. So starting last month I’ve started building my own Project Management/HelpDesk application. Enter: {art}.

The target audience is a SaaS (software as a service) style company or people like me building open source (or even closed source) projects that want a full cycle PM app for there client/user base to interact with and that is different from the rest.

Of course this may not pan out. It may take longer than I want but it’s something that I want to do and to put a different spin on things. I’ll be taking great influence from the above mentioned apps but again with my take on how things should be. I’ll also be making the source available for checkout in SVN, and as I reach milestones and releases I’ll be compiling and posting it here. I’ll also be working out details and posting things related. After all, for me the best way to figure something out is to visualize it. It might also help draw attention to it.