Forum Discussion
MS Project Capabilities
I am trying to evalute whether MSP is the right product for our company, but there is so much information out there it's difficult to work out if it can meet our specific requirements, so I thought I would ask the Forum.
We are a small business, 6 people, and we would use MSP to track Jobs that we work on. We are an Office365 company, so I'm looking at MSP because it should be able to integrate. Here are the key things we need, can you tell me if MSP can do this easily:
1. Customised Fields at both the Project and Task level.
2. Calculated Fields - For example, "Probability of Success" x "Forecast Fee for the Job" = Revenue Forecast
3. When someone finishes a Task, the Project can be setup to automatically trigger other Tasks for allocated people, and MSP will send those people an Outlook email notifying them to start their Task.
4. When someone finishes a Task, the Project can be setup to automatically trigger a Reminder Task at a future date, and when the date arrives it will trigger a reminder email via Outlook.
5. Summary Reports than can extract data from any field in the Project or Task. Perhaps via a fully integrated real time interface with Excel.
thanks ... Bruce
Thanks ... Bruce
- Bruce --
In spite of the confusion, you basically have three choices for a PPM tool from Microsoft:
1. Project for the Web
2. Microsoft Project desktop application only
3. Microsoft Project desktop with Project Online
To answer your questions, Project for the Web cannot meet any of those five needs.
Microsoft Project desktop only can meet needs #2 and #5.
Microsoft Project desktop with Project Online can meet all five of those needs. Keep in mind that if you want to use Microsoft Project with Project Online, your organization will probably need help setting up the system and training people how to use it. Hope this helps.
10 Replies
- Bruce --
In spite of the confusion, you basically have three choices for a PPM tool from Microsoft:
1. Project for the Web
2. Microsoft Project desktop application only
3. Microsoft Project desktop with Project Online
To answer your questions, Project for the Web cannot meet any of those five needs.
Microsoft Project desktop only can meet needs #2 and #5.
Microsoft Project desktop with Project Online can meet all five of those needs. Keep in mind that if you want to use Microsoft Project with Project Online, your organization will probably need help setting up the system and training people how to use it. Hope this helps.- BruceTweedieCopper ContributorThanks for the advice Dale, that's very helpful. I think you are right - even though I have used Project previously, that was over 20 years ago. Are you available to help with setup and generally be a mentor? Thanks ... Bruce
- Bruce --
Are you looking for free help or paid help? Let me know.