[eforman]

well first off i should say it's a great piece of software. often we bitch about things only because so many other things are good it makes us frustrated it's not perfect. which of course is unreasonable. the needs we have are fairly typical for a small business, i would think. a lot of stuff needs to get done, and different people are responsible for different things, sometimes more than one person is responsible for the same thing, and people need to be aware of other people's progress on their various actions - especially when they're in the same project. the Delegation feature of Things is great although not necessary if everyone has their own account and access to a shared account (plus Things doesn't quite sync the way we need it to). i know OF has a "waiting" context which you can use to approximate delegation but it doesn't really cut it.

different folders for each user within one shared database might work but agreeing to not edit while someone else is editing is hard to enforce. perhaps two simple fixes while waiting for real multi-user functionality could resolve this.

1. a warning when the database file is already open. this is built in to the Mac OS already for file sharing.

2. the ability to view, at least, if not edit, an additional database - for example how iCal or Address Book allows you to "add accounts." if this is technically difficult, then the ability to switch to another database easily would be better than nothing.

i'm no expert, these are just some initial thoughts. i'd love to hear what other groups or small businesses that use OF do. or maybe they use different software?
in the meantime we will try each having his or her own database and combine it with the old school method of sending a million emails to inform each other about what is done and what needs to get done.