General Information
Name: TwprojectVendor Open LabHosting options for: Locally hosted starting at 1 user per annum at 45EUR. There is also an interesting non-expiring license option that allows unlimited users up to 5000EUR. Web hosting starting at 53 EUR per month for 10Gb storage and 10 users Cloud versions are more expensive but you get more storage and 10 users. It’s impressive!
Homepage of twproject Basic features: Creating projects
The projects tab allows you to create new projects. You can tick to indicate that the milestone start and end dates (which you choose) are milestones. You don’t have the need to enter the end date. Instead, you can put in the project duration in a number of days. It will calculate the end dates for you.
You can also specify the type of project (you define the types), and you can mark it with a range status types (active/suspended, completed, failed or undefined – not sure what the last one would be).
A screen similar to the create project screen is used to add tasks to a project. I did get lost as to which task or project I was on. Although there isn’t an obvious indicator, there is a link that will take you to the project tree. This will allow you to navigate and see where you are.
You can see what has been modified on the projects home page, but you cannot see if it is a task or a project. This is confusing and could be easily fixed. There are many online FAQs and the option to request help via Twitter. However, this did not work for the demo version.
Time and people management
The resources tab allows you to create new resources. They can be selected within the task/project via assignments once they have been created. You can specify the role that they play (project manager, stakeholder/customer/worker) and you can also estimate the number of work hours (operator load) required by that person.
A timesheet module has a great feature that allows people to ‘clock in’. The clock starts when you start working on a task, and it stops when you finish. The button to start and stop the timer are both red. I would have expected the opposite.
You can access the ‘check worklogs’ function and view reports from the timesheets tab. These include worklog approval and analysis, day missing or exceeding worklogs and assignment of priorities. Operator load and overall plan are all covered. If you have many projects and resources and need to keep track of what is happening and where potential problems may exist (either budget or resource capacity), you can create a report that will suit your needs.
View the resource calendar in twproject. Once a resource has been added to the task, it will remain open until someone closes it. It’s best to make it a task you frequent because it will have a shortcut to your home page. You can also go to the Projects tab. Overall, the navigation of this product was confusing.
Costs can be set at the task or project level. You can assign an hourly rate to resource which will be used in cost calculations. If everyone is filling out their timesheets, there is a neat feature that allows you to get an instant update on the financials, including current margin.
Keep everyone together
The homepage displays your open projects, open issues and appointments. It also shows what I’ve most visited. This is a useful shortcut considering the navigation challenges. It looks good and you will find it easy to use once you get used to it. It is more suitable for people who are familiar with project management.
Software review: Twproject [2014]
