Whether you a gal with an idea or a large corporation with a team handling a large project, you need to use a Project Management software which can help you collaboratively manage the tasks, team, activities, milestones and the entire project work online.
Easy Projects is an online software (hosted by the company on Microsoft Azure cloud) for planning projects and sub-projects containing assignments with tools customized for planning and execution (in case you want to host it on your own server, you can contact them directly for the pricing). By using several tools like Gantt chart, Resource Loading Simulations, Project Calendar, Project Health chart, Hours by Project chart, Estimated vs Actual Hours chart one can manage his/her team and tasks quickly, with all his/her projects and activities. Easy Projects provides basic features like task management and collaboration, time tracking, budget management, issue management, billing and invoicing.
In the world of a lot of project management apps, Easy Projects is one the best project management software available. It comes in three versions: Lite, Pro, and Enterprise.
Easy Projects Integrations
Although you don’t have direct integration, one can to connect to apps like Google Apps, Dropbox, Box, and other services via Zapier (kind of like IFTTT). This is a dampener since Zoho Project, LiquidPlanner, and Teamwork Projects integrates with them directly (no need for Zapier). The easy project does, however, integrate with Toggl (time entry system), Zendesk (ticket management system) and Evernote.
Let us now go through the different components of this project management software.
Easy Projects Features Walkthrough
Team Collaboration
One of the perks of having Easy Projects software is that it makes working together extremely simple with team messages, attachment of files, unread notification. The project manager can remotely call a meeting i.e. discussion of a team-members and instantly assign tasks to his/her team members. This type of collaboration increases a company’s efficiency to produce at big-scale and decreases chances of mismanagement.
Team Messages: Easy Projects allows all team members to communicate at a project and task level. This way all team members can keep organized and categorized information to use further in future without any hassle or taking notes locally at their computer or notepads. Every discussion is saved on the cloud so that if someone misses a conversation, he/she can refer to notes. Messages can be posted online or by sending an email to Easy Projects from an email client. When adding a project or an activity through the details screen, any team member can attach files which will automatically become available for download to other team members.
Team Collaboration in Easyprojects
Time Tracking: Easy Projects is a flexible tool for tracking time for wages and billing.
Easy Projects offers the variety of ways to track time. A participant can add his or her time while project manager can also himself add time entry for his/her team members allowing a team to avoid ambiguity. Any participant can choose the method that suits him the best: single entry, weekly submissions or a built-in timer with stopwatch functionality. He can also log old-time entry whenever needed. In weekly view, a participant can edit or remove per day based entries of a week which gives him better control and a better interface of a time log. A project manager has privileges to see billed and non-billed hours for every team members with a graph which gives him the better overview of what’s going on with the time of the project.
Time Tracking for EasyProjects
Time Tracking for Easyprojects
Time Reporting: This time tracking system gives the participant an option of generating reports to log time which gives him efficiency and reduced redundant activities. After submission of time logs, a team member can immediately utilize this data by generating reports: Time Sheets report for the detailed breakdown, Billing Report for charging clients and Payroll Reports for calculating wages.
Time Reporting in EasyProjects
Personal To-do: This is the page for team members’ personal work. With the simple design, “My Assignments” ensures that team stays on track. “My Assignments” is designed to reduce the learning curve and give team members all the information they need to do their job without any distractions. On this page, all the team members can see everything they are supposed to be working on as well as provide the status update or quickly record time. “My Assignments” also allow team members to access the entire message history and file upload history for all the tasks they are working on. They can share the newest developments with other team members very quickly and conveniently. This interface helps to let project manager know how far along his/her team member has gone on the task. A team member can raise issues, get help, and share files: all within a click or two away.
Task Scheduling: Task scheduling for prioritizing team member’s task is not allowed in the software which could have given him a better overview of the project.
Assignments: Creating self-assignments within assignments, tasks and projects are not allowed which does not help a team member to keep track of his sub-assignments. Personalized cloud-based note which helps him take small notes related to the project or task can give him or her better control over the software.
Notifications: No real-time notifications of the creation of project by the administrator or assigning a task to the contributor or any other team member. He is required to refresh the current page to see the assigned task/project. Real-time notifications can increase the efficiency of the team member when he is not actively using the Easy Project software while doing browsing or doing some other work.
Reports
Project reports allow a team member to produce just under a dozen different reports for various purposes. He can use filters like Project summary, detailed time sheet, Activity list, Activities due in, Delayed activities, Time spent. These reports are allowed to be imported in Excel format for further formatting or can directly be printed. Plus, one can create your own reports using our Report Generator. Built-in dozen sample templates are provided for customized report generation in seconds. One can create his own table, chart and metric reports using different data sources such as projects, tasks, or time entries. He can customize everything from date ranges to the report’s appearance. Any report he creates can be published to the Dashboard.
Gantt Charts
Easy Projects allows Project managers and team members to draw Gantt chart of their projects to get the overview of the timelines and where it’s heading. There are two types of Gantt chart available:
- The “Activities chart” one shows scheduled activities grouped by project.
- The “Resource utilization” type “Gantt chart” offers a graphical representation of planned schedule grouped by user.
Numerous filters are available to draw Gantt chart like Project name, users, range, and can be sorted out.
Business Intelligence
Easy Projects has taken the reporting capability to the next level of providing the functionality of Dashboards, connected data sets, and even drill downs. So they call this their Business Intelligence package.
Video Walkthrough of EasyProjects
For further reading:
“5 Considerations in Selecting the Right Project Management Tool”
