ZeroDark - Developing a Project Management System

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Last modified: 26 February 2021

ZeroDark is a web-based project management system designed specifically for the Ophardt Maritim shipyard, which is part of the international OPHARDT group of companies. The primary goal of this application is to help managers control teams and processes involved in motorboat production.

Main Features and User Roles

The ZeroDark project management system has three primary user roles:

  1. Manager: The manager is responsible for overseeing all tasks and employees within the production process. With ZeroDark, managers can see the production tasks assigned to each employee, monitor the time remaining for the task, leave comments, and change the status of the task for each employee.

  2. Employee: Employees can view their assigned tasks and track their progress. They can also change the status of their tasks, provide feedback, and communicate with their managers using the chat function.

  3. System Administrator: The system administrator has full control over the application’s settings and can manage employee accounts, set up new users, and grant permissions.

About the Client

Ophardt Maritim is a company that creates reliable and affordable aluminum boats for mass production and develops new hulls and boat designs. They contacted the developers at ZeroDark to replace their paper workflow system with a web-based CRM hosted on internal Ophardt servers.

Development Tools

To create ZeroDark, the developers used several tools, including:

  • React.js: For the frontend of the application
  • MariaDB: As the database management system
  • Docker: For containerization
  • Node.js: For the backend development
  • Nest.js: As a Node.js framework

Additionally, they utilized Git and NGINX for deployment and version control purposes.

Key Features of ZeroDark

Kanban Board

The Kanban board is one of the key features of ZeroDark, designed explicitly for the application. The board allows managers and employees to track tasks in real-time, using drag and drop functionality to move tasks between columns. The board utilizes WebSocket technology to provide real-time updates, ensuring all users are up-to-date with the latest changes.

Employee Management

Managers have full control over employee data in ZeroDark. They can create and edit employee profiles, search for employees based on their tasks or other criteria, and sort employee records in the table by any column. Managers can also change an employee’s status based on their work from home, sick leave, or vacation.

Task Management

The task management feature allows managers and employees to track their progress on each task assigned to them. Clicking on a task opens a modal window with information about it, including its status, completion time, and any feedback left by the manager. Tasks are color-coded based on their status and time to completion.

Conclusion

In conclusion, ZeroDark is a comprehensive project management system designed to help managers control teams and processes involved in motorboat production. With its user-friendly interface and advanced features such as the Kanban board, employee management, and task management, ZeroDark helps Ophardt Maritim eliminate bureaucratic operations and streamline the document circulation process. Thanks to the use of modern development tools, ZeroDark was completed within three months, ensuring its timely delivery and optimal performance.

ZeroDark is a project management system, a web-based HR and task management application at the Ophardt Maritim shipyard. This app allows managers to control the teams and processes of motorboat production. There are 3 main user roles: manager, employee and system administrator.

1

Our task

The Ophardt Team contacted us and we discussed their app design idea, the initial task was to replace the paper workflow system with a web-based CRM. This CRM should be hosted on internal Ophardt servers, available to all employees and production managers.

Managers will be able to see production tasks for each employee, how much time is left for the task, leave comments and change statuses of tasks with employees

In ZeroDark CRM, all internal processes and their interconnection should be displayed - management process should be intuitive, based on the Kanban principles.

We completed development, fully tested the app and launched it into production within 3 months.

Managers can change the status of each employee - set up if employee is working from home, is sick or on a vacation.

2

We have developed a Trello-like kanban board specifically for this app.
The kanban board is made using several technologies. Drag’n’drop function allows to smoothly move items between columns. With the help of WebSocket, the board members can monitor its changes in real-time.

3

Managers and workers can have several common tasks and special tasks as well. Clicking on a task opens a modal window with information about it. The manager can change the status of the task and leave feedback in chat on the work results. The task status and time to completion is highlighted in color.

4

We used phased loading, React methods and webpack configuration to load only necessary resources on the page, which allows us to save traffic and upload only needed details on the page.