Forum Discussion
Collaboration in MS Project
I work for a small but growing manufacturing company that uses MS Project Professional to manage a few hundred "micro-projects" that all compete for resources, etc., at any one time. All the micro-projects are managed in one project file.
As the company grows and matures, we are seeing a need to have 3-4 people actively working in the Project file at any one time, as well as an additional 5-6 internal customers that need read-only access to the project data.
Is there a collaboration option in MS Project Professional? I don't think so, but would be very happy to be corrected.
If not, what are the recommended MS Project versions to allow this level of collaboration? Are the third-party add-ons that can solve this problem? If so, which are recommended?
Thank you!
Hello AndyGagnon ,
I would probably look at splitting those up in to individual projects but without knowing the business requirements it is difficult to make a recommendation. You could create multiple projects and used a share resource pool: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/create-and-share-a-resource-pool-in-project-desktop-64a2416e-b811-4ddf-b039-e0347e233581
There are other Microsoft Project apps out there that will offer the collaboration: https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/business/project/
Project for the web supports co-authoring which will allow multiple users to edit the project at the same time - this is a web based app: https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/microsoft-365/project/simple-project-management You could use separate projects here and also use tools like Power BI to easily create reports. Project for the web is web based, users can't edit projects in Microsoft Project Desktop. They can however import projects files from Project Desktop into Project for the web as a new project.
There is also Project Online, this app does allow users to continuing using Microsoft Project Desktop but there is no co-authoring but here you could split out the projects into separate project files and easily create rich Power BI reports to give you the data insights needed: https://query.prod.cms.rt.microsoft.com/cms/api/am/binary/RWpgik
Paul
You’re correct that MS Project Professional on its own doesn’t support real-time collaboration for multiple users. For your needs, consider upgrading to MS Project Online or Project for the Web. These versions are designed for collaboration and allow multiple users to work on the same project file simultaneously and provide read-only access to others.
Additionally, there are third-party add-ons like Project Plan 365 or Sensei Project Solutions that can enhance collaboration features in MS Project.
For more detailed information, you can view the reference on the official Microsoft Project site or other sources.
