Fogbugz is a collaborative project management software that’s pretty well thought. I have a fogbugz account since many years (2003 I think). I do not really use it, because I cannot customize it or hack it but I keep an eye on the project because they have very talented people working there and they have great ideas.

Sometimes, I think “let’s start using fogbugz and my life will be easier”, but my secret goal when designing zena was to make it capable of handling the simple project management tasks I need (todos, assignation, tracking). So I will keep trying to fly with my own wings.

swap and where clause were the first steps to change zena into an application capable tool. The next steps where the live filters and the draggable tags. Having a way to display all versions (and diff information) of a node with their comments would be the final steps.

Once all this is in place, we will have a very powerful tool to display current tasks, to enter working times (through DataEntries), to make bills (just a special kind of Letter), print them (from the web with a ‘print’ mode or by producing a nice pdf with xslfo) and track their paiement (dynamic attributes).

Zena is growing fast, but I’m happy to see that it’s a very coherent construction that gives you a lot of freedom to do things your way (or your customer’s way).