JoDo.im - symbiosis of jabber-server and freelance management system

This service was created primarily because I needed it myself. Since 2002 I have been doing web development with the involvement of freelancers.

After some time, I had permanent employees and freelancers. The first time, the discussion of projects and work on them was carried out with voice, phone and email.

Skip the prerequisites of creation and go to the functional
Phone, voice and Skype : this kind of control has certain advantages in that you can use eloquence, compliments and reprimands. But practice shows that if the freelancer is chosen poorly, then all this is useless. And if successful, then you can do without calls.

Nevertheless, when controlling the voice, there are a number of drawbacks: what is said is often forgotten. Recording calls is difficult and even more difficult in these records later to find what and when it was said.
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The problems with “forgotten”, “this was not said”, “I understood wrong” are huge. In a project where many details can not be relied on this method of control.

E-mail : during the execution of work, inevitably there is a huge number of deficiencies and corrections that need to be indicated to the performer.

These remarks are scattered over several dozens of letters, and again something is forgotten, lost, and so on.

Web-based task management system : After that I tried the egroupware task management system. Pretty heavy system (in terms of page generation speed). It turned out to be very difficult to convince the frelasers to use it REGULARLY. Yes, with proper discipline, this is a good decision. However, discipline is one of the weakest places among freelancers. Quite a lot of fields. It is necessary to make intellectual efforts to understand how to fill them. That distracts from the task itself. Conclusion: not caught on. The system is not obvious and not as simple as desired. Freelancers strains to understand it.

ICQ : The main disadvantage of ICQ was that she did not keep the history of messages on the server. And I had to insist that freelancers include a message log.

If the freelancer informed me that I did not leave such a wish or formulated differently, then I sent him a part of the log indicating the times of the posts so that he could be sure that he was wrong.

Search in logs is tedious. If I worked from another computer, then there was no ICQ log on another computer and there were difficulties.

Gtalk : So the next step was switching to Gtalk. This is a Google service based on the open protocol Jabber. Message history was on Google servers. Search has become easier. The binding to a specific computer has disappeared.

This solution of the above is the best.

Nevertheless, various glitches were found in the Google system. Something from what I had was not a freelancer. When searching, Google bites out random fragments from the correspondence, which is not so convenient for sending to the freelancer.

When I asked a remote programmer: “What are your remaining tasks?”, Then a five-minute pause followed at best, when he rummaged through his notes and logs before formulating the answer. And he was, as a rule, not accurate. The programmer had access to several dozens of repositories, and received many small requests for projects every day.

Of the 10 wishes, 5 was done, 3 was done, but not so, and 2 was forgotten. And a freelancer with a clear conscience said "" Everything is done! ".

In some cases, it turned out to be convenient to make a document in Google Docs. And give the right to change the freelancer. He crossed out what was done. Over time, this method leads to huge strikethrough arrays of strings, in which you need to look for unfinished improvements. Discussion in the document itself is also inconvenient.

As a result, I got the idea of ​​a useful (for the purposes of working with freelancers) instant messaging system.

1. It must recognize when the task is in the text and memorize it.
2. Tasks can have subtasks.
3. The freelancer should not physically be able to report on the completion of the task, if there are outstanding subtasks.
4. The customer must at any time see the list of tasks of the freelancer and the list of sent tasks for verification.
5. You can change statuses for tasks: accept, cancel, close, freeze, reopen.

What happened?

A jabber server JoDo.im was created (which can be decrypted as Jabber ToDo or Job To Do).

The customer registers through the site and gets a new account in his jabber-client. Freelancer can be registered on any jabber-server.

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

For example:

+ Remove Fatal Error from such a page
This bug occurs if we click ....

In response, the customer receives:

Created task 1.

A freelancer sees:

New challenge 1
Remove Fatal Error from such a page
This bug occurs if we click ....

To create a subtask, just write:

+1 Forgot to tell the details ...

The number of permissible nesting levels is practically unlimited.

The service enters the tasks into the database and then the task list can be viewed through the site’s personal account, or directly in the chat window by sending the #tree command to the freelancer.

Your task tree:
1. Remove Fatal Error from such a page (Open)
└1.1. Forgot to tell the details ... (Open)

Also, tasks can be created through the site - in this case files can be attached to them.

Freelancer to send a task for review writes:

#done 1 Optional Freelancer Comment

The customer receives the message:

Check task 1
“Remove Fatal Error from such a page”

The customer accepts the task as follows:

#ok 1 Optional Customer Comment

Tasks can be prioritized using the commands: #top , #up , #bottom , #down .

The remaining commands can be viewed using the #help command or the help section on the site.

Normal communication - goes as usual. Thus, in the discussion thread with minimal effort, we acquire the capabilities of a task management system.

So that the work does not arise in case of any problems with the jabber-server, by default, the duplication of all tasks and status changes on the email is enabled to both the customer and the contractor.

To organize your own business, you can create virtual artists (bots) for yourself. Just add the contact any_name@bot.jodo.im to your contact list. At the same time you do not even need to register.

The system is free. And in the future there will also always be an opportunity to work with her for free. Planned monetization - tariff plans with additional features.

Results of implementation.

Freelancers quickly cut in the mechanism of the system - in fact, in addition to the ability to use instant messages and know a couple of commands do not need anything. In applications for freelance exchanges, I wrote "Knowledge of Jabber is mandatory." People were no problem.

The quality of final products has grown: after all, no customer’s wish is forgotten.

Concentration at work has increased - peeping into the mail is distracting with various notifications from social networks, personal letters, etc. - and here is a pure text interface in the chat window.

Mobility - my own main customer works with me from a mobile phone. I myself often set tasks with PDAs when I can't sleep. Jabber-clients are for all platforms.

Let's try?