Ask HN: What do you *not* like about Basecamp (or your pm software)?

Interesting, was just thinking about this after watching Asana's demo recently

General PM software gripes (jira, project, pivotal tracker):

1. lack of keyboard shortcuts: have to use mouse way too much. org-mode is so much more intuitive and efficient for task management once learned but lacks collaborations and no one wants to put in the time to learn it.

2. Difficult to get a clear picture of the overall status of projects. Project managers have to spend a lot of time gathering status updates and creating reports because we use so many different tools, and the built-in reporting generally sucks.

3. Lack of intuitive structure within data. An ideal PM platform would structure information in an intuitive way that to make it discoverable by people working on peripherally related projects.

Specific gripes w/Basecamp:

1. Don't get notifications when clients upload files, only when they post messages (they often don't understand the difference)

2. Checkboxes to send out email notifications are not checked by default for new messages. Clients always forget to do this, even when we remind them, and then wonder why we don't respond right away.

3. Refusal to use gantt charts. I get that 37signals has a philosophical objection to dependancies and detailed timelines in PM, but sometimes a gantt chart is the best way to visually display a project timeline, especially if certain milestones are missed and impact the rest of the project.

Agree w/ Abinoda - I think the one feature I would like is extreme search-ability (check out Remember the Milk). Since I have quite a few tasks, of varying importance, due dates, milestones, and across features it's hard to literally figure out what I should be working on.

I think Remember the Milk has a decent solution for search, but obviously it's not nearly as complete as Basecamp.

Thirding the "too much noise" comment. It seems BC is a system that lends itself too well to almost-IRC-style posting of comments. Couple that with managers that might not be used to being concise and to the point in what they write, and you have hundreds of messages to sift through, which seems counter to what BC is supposed to help you with - making managing projects easier.

When jumping on a new project I want to read through all the messages, but there isn't a next/prev button. You have to go back to the messages index page in order to get to the next one (including finding you place). And some of their pages take awhile to load.

Generally speaking (Basecamp user here), I feel like there's too much noise and it's difficult for me to focus and navigate through what I need to get done daily.

I think adding a 'Prioritize' feature would be very useful and beneficial. That way you can 'rank' your tasks and sort through them on a number based system.

it can get a little hectic when a lot of feedback is coming in and attempting to find a certain message/file can be cumbersome, if(most often you do) you have a lot of projects you are working on at once. Also I am not sure how it would work, but some sort of way to divide up long term projects and short term projects if that was known.