Basecamp Todo Templates

As a full-time web developer, I spend a lot of time preparing sites to be launched. There are a lot of details to be mindful of, and it’s easy to forget something important. Also, depending on what the website is running off of (Magento, Expression Engine, Movable Type, etc.), they will all have their own unique checklists. So, I embarked on a checklist mission to try and find the best way to keep and manage checklists in a modular fashion. I couldn’t find any good ideas – especially with needing to collaborate. However, my boss and I realized that Basecamp really is the perfect way to accomplish this, using their API. So – I’ve built this straight-forward script to accomplish this for us, and now I’m providing it free for you.

If you would like to stay as up-to-date as possible, and be updated on what I’m working on, when I’m working on it, please follow my Twitter.

http://www.twitter.com/Prattski

How It Works

This script works by gathering all of the todo lists and items from a specific project that you provide the ID for. It dynamically creates and populates a form listing all of the projects in your Basecamp account (in a pull-down), as well as all of the todo lists and items in your project (checkboxes). You simply select which project you would like to add todo lists to, and check the checkboxes of the todo lists that you would like to add, and click submit, and it’s done.

How to Set It Up

You will probably want to setup a new project under your company in Basecamp, strictly to hold and manage your todo list templates in (as the script will pull in ALL the todo lists under that project). However you choose to do it, you will want to jot down the project ID for the project with your todo list templates (found in the URL after “/projects/” if you are on the Overview page). Here you will keep/add/manage/re-order/delete your todo list templates.

Next, open up the script file, and edit lines 20-23, entering your project ID, Basecamp URL, Basecamp Username, and Basecamp Password, and save and upload the file to your server.

Navigate to the script in your browser, and you should be ready instantly to begin adding todo lists to any of your projects.

 

Please consider donating if you find this script useful to you.