"Since joining the Hudson Valley Chamber of Commerce..., I have worked very closely with the staff from KutterGroup on several website projects. We first brought a very outdated site up to a very usable standard, and then began work on a completely new site. Having just completed most of the work on the new site I can say without reservation that KutterGroup has outstanding work ethics and skills! They have gone beyond what was expected many times, which has encouraged us to give their names to several businesses that were looking for website help. We hope to continue to use their services for a long time to come and to share their name with others."

Ron Forehand, President & CEO (2007-2010)
Hudson Valley Gateway Chamber of Commerce
www.hvgatewaychamber.com
Peekskill, New York

"KutterGroup has brought a high level of navigational creativity and structural flexibility to MBS Associates' new website. Jim Kutter has worked closely with our staff right from the start. We were able to get our new site built and live on a tight schedule and continue to add content and new features with excellent support from KutterGroup."

John Sommer
MBS Associates
www.mbsa.info
Montrose, New York

"Jim Kutter has been an incredible asset for the Paramount Center for the Arts since I first took the job as Executive Director in 2003... He created and implemented the entire "back-end" of our website, and designed an effective and streamline content management system with which we can manage and maintain information and images on our site in real time. Jim always makes himself available to the Paramount for trouble-shooting, advice, and feedback. Simply put, the Paramount would not have the internet presence and efficiency if not for Jim. We are deeply grateful for his expertise and generosity, both of which have greatly aided our organization immeasurably."

Jon Yanofsky, Executive Director , (2003-2009)
Paramount Center for the Arts
www.paramountcenter.org
Peekskill, New York

Ruby script to compute and post summaries to Basecamp

Submitted by jim on January 9, 2010 - 9:46am

It's no secret that we use basecamp a lot and love it.

About a year ago, some of our clients wanted to be able to log in somewhere and see a status of how many hours they had left on their retainer, or how much their bill would be at the end of the month.

So I came up with a quick and dirty script that does the following:

logs into basecamp
iterates through each client
looks for a configuration message in a pre-defined category (stored as YAML)
does it's calculations based on the configuration
posts the results back to basecamp under another pre-defined category

Here's a sample configuration message for a basic maintenance client:

Hours: 2
Run Dates: 10, 20

This tells the script that the client purchased 2 hours of support each month, and that the script should post status updates on the 10th and on the 20th of each month.

Here's a more complex example:

Limit: 1000
Developer A: 75
Developer B: 45
Run Dates: 10, 20

This tells the script that the client has a dollar limit of $1,000 a month, and the two developers assigned to it bill out at $75 and $45 per hour. It's also set to post results on the 10th and 20th of each month.

Again, not rocket science, but allowed us to provide clients with an automated status update so they could keep a handle on costs.

I'm posting it here to share as something neat, but please bear in mind that it comes with no warranty of any kind. It worked well enough for us, ymmv.

Let us know what you think!

Attachment	Size
main.rb	3.16 KB

Ruby script to compute and post summaries to Basecamp

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