Project management for design teams
The project's history moves out of the shared folder and into the database: every revision, every upload and every delivery to the customer with a date, an author and content you can verify.
A building lives in a network folder. Nobody is quite sure which file is the good one, two people edit the same drawing on the same afternoon, and what was sent to the customer last month no longer exists anywhere. ws2 brings to engineering design the mechanics software development has used for twenty years — revisions, branches, merging, restoring — kept in a database on the office server, and without asking anyone to learn how to drive a repository.
Every upload becomes a dated, signed revision. Content is identified by the content itself, so two identical files are the same object and a changed file never passes for unchanged. Any revision can be restored — and restoring adds a new revision, it never rewrites history.
Each person has a workspace — a branch — in the building, and a copy of it on their own machine. Everyone's work stays apart until it is merged into main, the production branch. The merge compares three versions (the common base and both sides); what conflicts stops the operation, and a person picks the side.
Every issue gets a protocol number (2026-0007), points at the main revision it came from and stores the fingerprint of each file — it copies no bytes at all. Years later, what the customer received is still reproducible. Every item says what it is against the last issue of the same path: new, changed or already sent.
The delivery schedule records milestones — phase, discipline, due date, owner and progress — and the team panel sorts people worst first. Nobody types “late”: it is the due date read against today. The originally agreed date sits beside the current one, so rescheduling never erases the delay.
The project is registered with customer, code and owner; then the whole folder is imported and becomes the first revision of main. Progress shows in the status bar and the import can be cancelled — the interface never freezes.
One person, one branch, and one copy of it on the workstation — the same files, none of them duplicated on the server. That copy is what the designer opens in the usual drawing software.
Uploading the workspace writes a revision. Comparing with the local folder shows, file by file, what differs — side by side, with the two panes scrolling together. When the work is done, it is merged into main.
The schedule milestones say what has to be delivered and by when. An issue comes out of main, gets its protocol number, goes out by email (one ZIP, or one attachment per file) and waits for the receipt to be recorded.
Office totals at the top and one card per building, with search and paging.
The whole folder enters as the first revision of main, with progress and cancellation.
One branch per person and one copy per workstation: download, upload, compare.
mainThree-way comparison; the merged branch stays alive and a conflict stops the operation.
The diagram of the branches: main as the trunk and each workspace coming out of it, with merges coming back.
The database on the left, the disk on the right. Binary files are compared by content, never by date or size.
Brings a revision's content back as a new point in the history — so the restore itself can be restored.
Issue, send by email, record the receipt and cancel with a reason. A protocol is never deleted.
Milestones by phase and discipline, with owner, reviewer, priority, progress and the agreed due date.
One bar per person, sorted worst first: late, due soon and on time.
In the corner of the screen when a project opens, without stealing focus from whoever is typing.
Project, profiles, people and computers in four rows. The card arrangement is stored in the database, for the whole office.
Project data and org chart as a self-contained page: A4 through A0, plus Letter and Legal — print or save as PDF.
Firms, builders and individuals, with the details invoicing requires.
Five actions per resource, a permission matrix, and personal grants that add to the group's.
Driven by the Windows Task Scheduler, written by the server itself, verified by restoring and reported by email.
An issue copies no file at all: it points at the main revision and stores the fingerprint of every file. The number is per project and per year, and the turn of the year happens on its own. The email carries the number in the subject, a plain-text body (it is a receipt, and it will be printed) and attachments rebuilt at send time. If the mail server is down, an already numbered protocol is not undone — resending is not reissuing.
Four rows — the project with main under its name, the profiles linked to it, the people (each one once, with the doors they came in through) and the computers where the work is mirrored. Drag the cards, snap them to the grid and save: the arrangement lives in the database and the whole office opens the tab with the drawing as you left it. The report button puts it on a sheet — A0 for the meeting-room wall.
Sign-in by email, with registration confirmation and password recovery by code. Access is granted per resource and per action (access, create, read, update, delete), through the group profile and through the person's own grants, which add up. Enabling and disabling has three scopes — the person, the link to a group and the link to a building — and switching off is never deleting: the row stays, marked, and comes back with one click.
ws2 does not ask the office to change drawing software, or the way it works. It gives the project folder the memory it never had — and the customer a protocol that still stands up five years from now.