Now that things are rolling, one of the biggest needs to address right now is to shore up the lines of communication and some of the overall scheduling and request process. So over the past few months and weeks I have looked at many different project management/collaboration/task/ticket type of tools. I have come up with some criteria of what I want in a system and the needs that we have. I also have used some other project management tools in the past, like basecamp but I am looking for something with a few more features. But that being said I don’t want something as bulky and ugly as Microsoft Sharepoint.

Some of the things I really want are: Self Hosted, No monthly fees, Unlimited Users, Well Designed UI, Email integration & notification, Calendar, Task Assignments, Open API, Large Community

I eventually landed on ActiveCollab as the one stand-out winner. I seems to have just about everything I am looking for. There is a substantial one-time price tag for the initial software, but there isn’t a reoccurring monthly fee. One thing I wish ActiveCollab had out of the box is Gnatt charts. I am hoping to be able to find them through some type of plug-in.

So what tools are you using to manage your teams? Google Docs? Basecamp? Pen and Paper?