Review: Project Management for Outlook

All businesses have projects. Although managing projects in an organized and coordinated way can be a challenge even for experienced project managers, that's why there are software applications like Microsoft Project Manager.

If you are skilled in using MS Project Manager, you can put together complex projects, assign resources and dependencies, generate Gantt charts, and generally stay on top of the progress of your projects. The problem is that most of the people in small offices and on project teams don't have the same skills, or even want the same level of involvement in the management of the projects. They want email updates, simple ways to understand and report progress, and no extra software.

TrackerOffice is a natural for these folks. The application lives alongside Microsoft Exchange Server and presents its information within the Microsoft Outlook client application. This combination removes the complexities of dedicated project management applications and presents the information in a familiar context. It also adds a missing component to the process; the communication function.

TrackerOffice uses some of Outlook's existing functionality to present information in the context of Outlook folders. It uses customized forms to present project and task information, and produces alerts and updates from its data. Those reports are then sent automatically via email to the participants.Starting a project

Seasoned project managers will want to continue using Microsoft Project to initiate their projects then export the project to TrackerOffice. Although TrackerOffice respects the project details and will present them properly, it isn't possible to set up dependencies and other project specific details within TrackerOffice. What's more, updates made in TrackerOffice are not reflected back in Microsoft Project, making the relationship a one-way street. Still, the functionality added to the process more than makes up for the missing link.

It's possible to set up an unlimited number of sub-folders within a project. These folders are based on a set of predefined templates that cover a range of topics including discussion lists, to-do items, invoices, requests, status updates, and time and expenses.

Making, approving, and tracking purchases that pertain to a project is always problematic. TrackerOffice includes a purchasing module that enables users to initiate a purchase request and route it for approval. I would have liked to see a multi-level approval workflow, but the single-stage approval process that the system provides is a good step, and works well. Purchases and invoices are then tracked through the system and automatically included in progress reports that the system generates.

Projects tend to generate and rely on documents, memos, and other associated files. TrackerOffice lets you set up folders to contain these files so they stay with the project and are available to other users from a central repository. Unfortunately, any documents need to be copied and pasted into the document item rather than dragged and dropped as objects. This means that text documents are useable, but external documents, particularly non-Microsoft documents, need to be referenced and stored externally.

Time reporting is a central function of updating and reporting project status, and TrackerOffice includes a time recording function. I was able to enter my time used against specific projects and tasks. When I went to record the next week's time, I was able to copy the previous week's time record and simply modify it to reflect my hours for the current week.

Bringing it all together

It's possible to create multiple projects in TrackerOffice. Projects can include the same team members and have the same contacts, however these records are not part of your Exchange database. TrackerOffice stores all its information in an external database, making it necessary to recreate contact information. Calendaring and email are enabled by Exchange, bringing all the standard Exchange functionality to the mix.Reporting and report distribution are significant strengths of TrackerOffice. The system can be set to generate requests for status updates to team members. Once the participants add their updates to the system, a consolidated report is generated and sent by email to a predefined set of recipients. Reports can include any of the various information available in TrackerOffice.

Individual projects are not cross-connected, so information included in one project is not automatically available to another even if the projects are related to each other. Even so, TrackerOffice's data warehouse function allows reports to be created that combine multiple projects into a single (even if not interactive) view.

I found TrackerOffice easy to understand, mostly because of its integration with Outlook. It delivers a lot of function to an application your staff uses every day. Any project management-specific functionality you may give up by using TrackerOffice will be more than made up for in user acceptance and interaction. It will also reduce the workload of the project manager in manually updating and reporting from MS Project Manager.

TrackerOffice is available as a bundled application with a minimum configuration of 25 users selling for $15,000. Maintenance, upgrades, and support are available for 18 percent per year. The system is also available as an extension of Lotus Notes, and provides the same functionality for that platform.