I blame my entire self-hosting hobby trajectory on a single piece of software that I used over a decade ago and fell absolutely in love with:

CCC One

If any of you have ever worked in collision repair (body shop, insurance, estimating, etc), you know what I’m talking about. The user interface was essentially - you open the program and are presented with a list of all the vehicles that have visited your shop, with some basic identifying info including the current status (estimate only, in repair, etc). You select a vehicle and open it up, and you’re presented with everything related to that vehicle, including estimates, workorders, POs, parts, service time, repair time, photos, ties to LKQ and other used parts vendors for pricing, and a host of other useful shit - all separated neatly into tabs and clickable links.

I’ve been going mad trying to find something in the FOSS world that comes even close to this in order to keep track of my own projects, inlcuding vehicles, computer builds, other random shit. So far though, I have found only kanban boards (which are missing key project management features), or full-fledged CRM suites with way more added bloat than I will ever use.

I’m not looking for FOSS software with a 1:1 parity to CCC One; but there has got to be SOMETHING in the FOSS world that at least has some semblance of this capability. I use Planka right now, and it’s fine, but there is just so much left to be desired.

Am I just expecting too much? If I am, please tell me. Or maybe help me better utilize the tools I already have.

Thank you SO SO MUCH to all who contribute to the FOSS community, you guys are serious rock stars. I barely understand if and for loops…

  • just_another_person@lemmy.worldEnglish
    41·
    2 days ago

    So…CCC seems to be a very basic inventory management solution. What this generally describes is a system compromised of a database with a front-ends that makes sense of whatever the particular project is (car repair), and provides an easy to interact with the database.

    What you’re using now is simply for workflow management of projects in a simplified way, which is probably not what you want.

    So you need a database, and you also want an easy way to interface with it, so you can check out the plethora of inventory management solutions in the FOSS space, but if you want something pretty simple that you can more easily customize for your needs and workflow, have a look at the FOSS alternatives to Airtable like nocobase. You set up a simple data structure, then can slap together quick forms to work inside of with whatever fields and data you choose. Dead simple, but very extensible.

    Edit: Also check out Baserow maybe

    • Lka1988@lemmy.dbzer0.comOPEnglish
      1·
      2 days ago

      So…CCC seems to be a very basic inventory management solution. What this generally describes is a system compromised of a database with a front-ends that makes sense of whatever the particular project is (car repair), and provides an easy to interact with the database.

      What you’re using now is simply for workflow management of projects in a simplified way, which is probably not what you want.

      Yeah, that about sums it up. Planka is a great kanban board, but kanban boards lack actual project management features in the way i would prefer to use it.

      Nocobase looks promising. I fired up a demo to poke around with.