Project Open is a task/time/billing management tool. The marketing web site is very trendy and in comparison the look of the actual tool is very disappointing. Fortunately it’s about more than looks. The tool is fairly intuitive if at times you are overwhelmed by options. It is however more oriented towards project tracking and report generation than it is to helping those actually involved in the project. Not for me.
A couple of days ago I received an email from this company saying that they thought that their solution would meet my requirements. I’m afraid that it doesn’t.
Easy Projects .NET is primarily a task and billing tool that seems to be oriented towards marketing agencies that wish to manage multiple client projects. The opening page gives a project summary and along the top are the options Notifications, Message Board, Workflow History and Project Activities.
The workflow history and project activities sections are mainly reports, though you do have the possibility to add new activities to the latter. Strangely there is no calender associated with these. The message board is just that, there is no forum/discussion functionality. Notifications is simply an administration feature that allows you to choose when and how you would like to be notified of changes. That’s it! Considering the limited numbered of options the interface is overly complicated and I keep wondering whether I’ve missed something… One thing that drove me crazy was the opening of new windows at nearly every turn. I had 5 open at one stage!!
This one is not for me.
DeskAway is very well done. It is probably the best I’ve seen so far for my requirements. The drawback is that it is only available as a hosted solution and I’m worried about data security.
The design is clean, well laid out and results in a highly intuitive system. Help notes and videos are available in each section should you get stuck. Features offered by project are: milestones, tasks, issues, timesheet, document management, collaborative documents, team directory, forum and reports.
Milestones, tasks and issues all work well. The document management section allows for the creation of one level of folders, versioning, meta data (description) and comments. Simple but well done. The forum feature however is a little over simplistic, with no text editors and no possibility for attachments. The blog is in the main section and is independant of projects - a great pity as it works well. Most project features give you the possibility to alert team members via email when something changes.
As well as a blog the main section also contains global and personal contact lists, team members for all projects, site search and a personal calender.
I’m very tempted by this system but worried about security and longevity. I’d also like to tweak a few things, which obviously can’t be done with a hosted, standard solution.
Kiwi Manager is an online project management tool available hosted or self-hosted. It appears to be designed for graphic/marketing agencies. Features within projects are: document management, approvals, forum, mockup, task manager and tickets.
From the word go the system confused me. It opens to the projects page, where there are a list of ongoing projects and in tabs the projects at different stages of development. I was lost for a bit… Once I worked out how to get into a project the various features were laid out in tabs (standard layout that works well.) I first played around with the document management feature. It took me nearly five minutes to work out how to add a new file/folder. The system isn’t very intuitive. In addition, the system is too techy. Eg. Folder and file names cannot have spaces, when uploading documents you are asked if you wish to place them in root, file directory, etc. I stopped testing at this point as I could see myself fielding too many calls from confused users…next!
OPM Creator is a bare bones online project management tool. I really liked its simple layout and no frills design. Features include: document management, tasks, timeline, Gantt, Email (messaging) and forum. The level of functionality is pretty good. I struggled with a couple of things that were not very intuitive and I still don’t know how to add new users, but that aside it a great little tool for small projects.
SantexQ is a hosted task/time/billing management tool. It doesn’t respond to my needs so I didn’t bother testing it.
WORKetc looks like a nice solution. It is geared towards small businesses and covers project management, CRM, billing, time sheets and more. It is probably too much for me but I’d have liked to have tested it anyway. Unfortunately there is no demo version available via the web site and I’m not paying to test it!!
Project 360 is a nice looking application and is well laid out. The division between general admin and project management creates no confusion. The features list is good: tasks, document management, team/workgroup, milestones, calender, time sheet and ideas/forum. Its a pity that the features themselves are so limited: the document management tool does not allow for folder creation or tags; and in the ideas/forum section it is only possible to add a one line comment and there is no reply feature.
Project 360 is only available as a hosted application.
Moving on…
ProjectOffice.net is in beta so I didn’t bother testing it out. It seems to be mainly orientated towards task/time management.
ActionThis is a hosted task manager. I didn’t try it out as it doesn’t meet me requirements.
