Zoho Projects 2.0 – Get it done!

After alluding a new product launch recently Zoho have unwrapped Projects 2.0

Is this really a big deal? Hell yes, if you do any sort of project work and collaborate with customers, suppliers or both to get your work done. The real evolution here is that Projects 2.0 is designed to allow work progress to be tracked in a ’social’ way. Now its very easy to say the words ‘band‘ and ‘wagon‘ here but this is just a natural evolution and plays to the strengths of the platform it is running on, namely Zoho’s Platform As A Service.

As a frequent user of Zoho Project for the last quarter I can see the improvements right away. Beyond the very simple and intuitive (are you listening Microsoft? …No I thought not) arrangement of milestones, tasks and task-lists they have added improvements in spades across the whole user experience.

The new highlights are:

Project planning

• Import plans made with Microsoft Project (.mpp files)

Project Collaboration

• ‘Project Stream’ is a visual representation that shows users the latest activities related to their project(s).
• A twitter/facebook status update to alert your project teams to what you are working on (or drinking, eating etc )
• A Shared Project Calendar keeps allows everyone to upcoming deadlines and meetings and active tasks
• Project Wiki lets users maintain all the project-related content in a centralized place where other project members can contribute easily.These are rich text documents and images editable on-line to allow solid reference content for the users.
• Group chat and “always on” chat room give users a single place where they can go to quickly discuss issues. Multiple chat rooms can be opened to discuss different issues.These remain between sessions so you can revisit and open the conversation again.

Integration with the award winning Zoho Office – allows users to create/edit/view documents using just their browser! – This is the killer really. No MS Office, no MS Project, no storage required…does it get any easier?

Project Tracking

• The vastly improved Project Dashboard offers an  at-a-glance view of the upcoming tasks, milestones, meetings and anything else happening around the project.
• Improved ‘My Home’ with role specific data and options such as the ability to create or import a project, add a user or filter a task list.
• Extended project reports now goes further and shows progress against the plan
• For those teams with external customers, the Timesheet makes it easy to log and track who has spent how much time doing what. In addition, integration with Zoho Invoice makes it easy to create, send and track invoices.

Collaboration is at the heart of Projects 2.0

Projects Dashboard

These are only the new or improved features remember, and a quick look tells you that better collaboration is at the heart of all these changes. SaaS is breaking down barriers for businesses and organisations all over at the moment. Think about what it would take to collaborate on this scale with a client, and your own suppliers on a project of any real size? Just traversing the multiple domains and email servers is a great achievement. No more emailing copies of the plan to a distribution list to have it change in 4 places at once.

Lets face it, a project is one place where ‘being on the same page’ is crucial. Well now you can, and all without breaking the bank.

In short, the Project Management application has evolved in a tremendous way. They new Project 2.0 is far better equipped to increase the productivity of the teams and, also, to break down the information silos. The cost effectiveness of SaaS applications means that all these features comes without making any dent on the company’s coffers. In spite of the severe economic climate, these are exciting times for businesses dealing with IT.

~ by mthurmancredible on July 1, 2009.