CodePlex Feature Request: Project Status Dashboard
Aug
29
Written by:
8/29/2009
I have begun to build up a list of projects on the popular project repository, CodePlex. In doing so, I have noticed a management problem, in terms of usability and convenience. When you are logged in, and go to the home page, there is a convenient shortcut area on the right side, that will take you to your projects. It lists all of the projects that you participate in, regardless of your role in that project. This alone is just fine, but what if I want to know more about two or more of the projects?
Think about things such as: number of downloads, number of page views, page view increase/decrease percentage, creation date, last activity date, and so on. If you have 5 projects, and want to know all of that, you either have to spend about 10 minutes navigating to and through each project, or decide to move to other things that deserve your time. This is not good if you want to actually increase visibility of your project. Since they have added advertisements to projects, such information becomes even more important.
Let consider this information… What if you had a chart that looked something like this, where the column headers allowed you to sort the data by the respective column?
| Project Name | Number of Downloads | Page Views | Page View Change | Last Activity | Open Issues | Creation Date |
| Project A | 5 | 33 | +20% | 8/26/2009 | 0 | 8/20/2009 |
| Project B | 24 | 78 | -5% | 8/15/2009 | 3 | 7/2/2009 |
| Project C | 2 | 16 | +3% | 8/22/2009 | 1 | 8/17/2009 |
| Project D | 154 | 533 | -34% | 7/29/2009 | 7 | 5/22/2009 |
| Project E | 77 | 129 | +43 | 8/27/2009 | 3 | 6/10/2009 |
With information like shown above, this puts you in a powerful position to market and manage your projects. I am telling all of you about this not because I want you to develop this or to whine about it. Rather, I am telling you about this, because I created a feature request on the CodePlex website. Their features work on a voting system. The more votes a proposed feature has, the more priority the CodePlex team gives it on their road map.
So what are you waiting for? Vote to get a Project Status Dashboard put into the CodePlex website. Even if you don’t have your own projects, this feature will help you by the project owners being able to better manage the project.