JoDo.im — symbiosis jabber-server and system management freelancers

This service was created in the first place because they were necessary to me. Since 2002 I have been in the web development with the involvement of freelancers.

After some time I got permanent staff and freelancers. First, the discussion of the projects and work on them was carried out by voice, telephone and email.

to Skip the background and go to the control panel
Phone voice and Skype: this type of control has certain advantages in that you can use eloquence, comlimenti and reprimands. But practice shows that if the freelancer is chosen, then all this is useless. But if successful, it is possible to go without calls.

However, when you voice a number of disadvantages: often forgotten what was said. To record calls, which is hard and more harder then these entries to find what and when was said.

Problem with “forgot”, “it was said”, ” I knew not” – huge. In the project where many details can not be put into such a control method.

mail - during the execution of the work inevitably, there is a huge number of deficiencies and corrections that need to specify to the contractor.

These observations are sprayed by dozens of letters and again, something forgotten, lost, etc.

Web-based task management system: After that I tried the task management system egroupware. Rather heavy system (in terms of speed of page generation). It turned out very difficult to convince frilanserov her REGULARLY use. Yes, with proper discipline, this is a good solution. However, discipline is one of the weakest places for freelancers. Quite a lot of fields. Need to make intellectual effort to understand how to complete them. That distracts from the task. Conclusion: do not stuck. The system is non-obvious and not so simple as desired. Freelancers bother to understand it.

ICQ: the Main disadvantage of ICQ was that it did not keep the history of messages on the server. And I had to insist that freelancers have included the log messages.

If the freelancer has informed me that wishes I didn't leave or formulated differently, I sent him the part of the log indicating the time of message, so he could see what was wrong.

Search in the logs is tedious. If I worked with another computer, on another computer, log ICQ was not was problems.

Gtalk: So the next step was the transition to Gtalk. It is a service of Google based on the open Jabber Protocol. Message history was on the servers of Google. Look for made easy. Gone was the reference to a particular computer.

This decision of the above the best.

But nevertheless found various glitches in the system of Google. Something that was in me was not from a freelancer. When you search Google wykonywac arbitrary pieces of correspondence, that is not so convenient to send to a freelancer.

When I asked the remote programmer: "What you got problem?", then followed in the best case, a five-minute pause, when he was going through his notes, logs, before you formulate a response. And he was usually not accurate. The programmer had access to dozens of repositories and receive many small requests for projects every day.

Of the 10 requests 5 done, 3 done, but not so, and 2 were forgotten. And freelancer with a clear conscience, saying," "All done!".

In some cases it was convenient to make a document in Google Docs. And give the right to change the freelancer. He crossed out what had been done. Over time, this method leads to a huge strikeout arrays of strings in which to search for the undone revision. Discuss in the document also uncomfortable.

In the end I came up with the idea of useful (for the purposes of working with freelancers) instant messaging system.
1. She needs to recognize when the text is a task and remember it.
2. The tasks can be subtasks
3. Freelancer is not physically must be able to report the task execution if there are outstanding tasks.
4. The customer shall at any time see the task list of a freelancer and a list of the sent task to check
5. The task can change the status to accept, cancel, close, freeze, open again.

What happened?

Was created your jabber server JoDo.im (which can be deciphered as Jabber ToDo or Job To Do).

The customer registers through a website and starts a new account in your jabber client. a Freelancer can be registered on any jabber server.

When the freelancer is sent a task, it is preceded by a plus sign and a space.

For example:

+ Remove Fatal Error from this page
This bug occurs if you click....

In response, the client receives:

the Created task 1.

And the freelancer sees:

New task 1
To remove Fatal Error from this page
This bug occurs if you click....

To create a subtask, it is sufficient to write:

+1 Forgot to give details...

The number of permissible nested levels is practically unlimited.

The service puts the task into the database and then the task list can be viewed via the personal area of the website, or directly in the chat window, sending the command #tree freelancer.

Your task tree:
1. To remove Fatal Error from this page (Open)
└1.1. Forgot to give details... (Open)

Also tasks can be created using a website — in this case, it is possible to attach the files.

Freelancer to send the problem on check writes:

#done 1 Optional review freelancer

The customer receives a message:

Test task 1
"Remove Fatal Error from this page"

The customer accepts the task:

#ok 1 Optional review customer

The tasks can change priorities using the commands: #top, #up, #bottom, #down.

The rest of the commands can be viewed with the command #help or in the help section on the website.

Communication — as usual. Thus in the flow of the discussions with minimum effort, we gain the possibility of task management system.

To work did not stand up in case of any problems with the jabber server by default included the dubbing of all tasks and status changes to the client and the contractor.

For arranging their own Affairs can be just virtual artists (bots) for myself. It is sufficient to add the contact любое_имя@bot.jodo.im in your contacts list. You don't even need to register.

The system is free. And in the future also will always have the opportunity to work with her for free. Planned monetization — subscription plans with additional features.

the results of the implementation.

Freelancers quickly understand the mechanism of the system — in fact in addition to the ability to use instant messages and know a few commands don't need anything. In applications for freelance exchanges I wrote, "Knowledge Jabber necessarily". People were no problem.

Increased quality of final products: there is no customer's request is not forgotten.

The increased concentration at work looking into various distracting email notifications from social networks, personal letters, etc. — and then purely text-based interface in the chat window.

Mobility — my own main customer is working with me from your mobile phone. I often set tasks with a PDA when you can't sleep. Jabber clients are available for all platforms.

Try?

Article based on information from habrahabr.ru