“Can I use Drupal for project management?” Definitely.
Given all its content-oriented baked-in capabilities — file management, version control, easy content creation, and editing — Drupal makes the perfect software for:
- managing your projects the easy and the... smart way
- streamlining communication among your team members and with your contractors
In this respect, Drupal provides its own feature-rich distributions to help you put together your robust setup in no time. “Distributions” that come already packed with a set of useful sub-modules and themes, that all support the core functionality: project management (and smooth collaboration).
And without further ado, here the 2 most popular Drupal distributions for project management and team collaboration for you to evaluate first: RedHen and Open Atrium.
1. RedHen CRM
Loaded with robust and modern features, this Drupal-native CRM is designed with flexibility in mind. Meaning that it integrates seamlessly with the enterprise solution that you're using (Blackbaud, Salesforce) and it supports a wide range of use cases...
And speaking of its functionalities:
- engagement tracking and monitoring
- data management: information about your contacts, the relationships among them and with your own company (e.g. memberships)
- event registration integration
- one-page donation forms to custom-tune to your liking
As for those many use cases that this Drupal distribution's built to accommodate, let's pick just a few real-world examples:
- It's the best choice if smoothly integrating your CRM with your other enterprise solutions is critical for you
- It streamlines tracking interactions with your contacts and organizations. Furthermore, since you can easily integrate it with your website, you get to leverage the provided data in order to adjust the user experience accordingly...
- It allows you to customize it and thus to give it a Drupal-like look and feel: to integrate it with modules like Rules or Views, to go for the same field creation UI, etc.
- Is your contacts list a huge one? This CRM comes to your rescue with some powerful baked-in tools: an efficient find-and-dedupe interface, an automated filter built in the UI, that you can use to filter your contacts by specific fields, etc.
- It automatically syncronizes data in your Contacts list with any newly updated data on your Drupal Users list
In short: RedHen CRM makes one of the top choices when you consider using Drupal for project management purposes. It's a lightweight, self-contained framework, more of a “cluster” of multiple specialized modules:
- Organization
- Activity
- Fields
- Organization Group
- Dedupe
- Registration
- and a few more...
2. Open Atrium
Looking for a Drupal-native distribution built around the team collaboration functionality?
One that should be:
- convenientyly extensible
- “loaded” with robust collaboration and information sharing features?
Then Open Atrium fits the profile in the slightest detail.
Built on top of the Organic Groups and Panopoly modules, it's a framework flexible enough to support discussion configurations by key criteria like team, project, organization...
And here are some more powerful features worth considering when you're still thinking whether you should use Drupal for project management:
- an access control system, that grants granular control to certain sections of your project
- a drag and drop layout with plenty of widgets to select from for customizing your landing pages and dashboard
- file storing and sharing features
- built-in Events, Files, Discussions, Issue Tracking, Document Wiki
- an easy to customize, responsive theme
The END!
These are but 2 viable answers to your “Can I use Drupal for project management and team collaboration?” type of question. 2 of the options available that best meet some of your main requirements when looking for a project management software:
- to be easy to use
- to ship with an entire collection of file management and communication features
- to be flexible enough and allow quick customization and seamless integrations
Have you tried other Drupal modules/distributions built around this functionality so far?
Image by jessica45 from Pixabay
