CentralDesktop

CentralDesktop represents a very successful solution for businesses to collaborate, manage projects and connect their people. It has very decent, but not excessive, functionality; of course some of the users may want something to be added, but for the great majority it will be more than enough. I recommend you to take a closer look at this tool because it seems to be one of the best solutions described in this review. For now let’s check the screenshots, so you can see the way it looks.

Here is Project Home page which provides project overview:

Though at the first sight this page may seem to be pretty simple and not as substantial as it could be, it has the most important data concerning the project: recent activity, overdue tasks and milestones, opportunity to manage the member involved in the project and etc.

Another important page that has to be mentioned is Task page:

This page is organized really well – it includes absolutely everything you need regarding the tasks: priority, detailed view, opportunity to add comments, opportunity to move tasks, filtering tasks, tasks Calendar view and etc.

The last thing we are going to check is Discussion Page:

Despite the fact that it looks simple, it has all the functionality you need (rich text formatting, opportunity to edit and delete comments, collapsing and expanding comments and etc.). The only thing I would add is the opportunity to use avatars and add smiles.

Main characteristic features:

• Web Meetings
• Audio conferencing
• Custom domain and branding
• SSL 256bit encryption
• API access and etc.

Pros and cons:

+ descriptions for projects and tasks
+ separate panel for discussions (this panel is used for files as well)
+ simple and detailed view for files and discussions
+ rich text formatting
+ commenting on tasks and files
+ opportunity to edit and delete comments
+ Calendar panel
+ detailed reports
+ ability to create documents and spreadsheets
+ priority for tasks

- although the interface is decent enough it might be better
- no subtasks (though some may consider task lists as replacement)
- no Gantt chart view for tasks

Customer support service

The response from the customer support service was received less than in 24 hours – great result.

Project Mark: 5-

Copper

Copper is a decent online project management solution that has a powerful and nice-looking interface designed to reduce time spent finding information, so your team can get back to doing more work and less admin. It should be mentioned that Copper is really easy-to-use tool, so you can start working immediately without the necessity to learn how it works. It has pretty decent functionality which differs significantly depending on the package you choose (there are four of them).

Now it’s time to look at the screenshots of the main Copper modules. The first one we are going to check is Projects Module:

It looks simple enough, but informative at the same time. Nice thing about this module is the opportunity to expand and collapse a project in order to check the tasks included in it. When you expand a project all the tasks are displayed with the most important data (priority, progress, starting and ending date, and etc.).

Next and the last page to be discussed is Task Overview page:

As you can see this page consists of several segments – each of them includes important data about the task (general task info, recourses, comments, unloaded files). Such a structure significantly simplifies the working process and saves time.

The main reason why in this certain case we got just two screenshots is that almost all the modules have very similar structure, so there is no need to discuss them in detail. It will be much better for you to try a demo account and check this tool in action.

Main characteristic features:

• Very simple and easy-to-use tool
• Nightly backups
• SSL 128bit encryption
• Four different packages: standard, studio, corporate and enterprise.
• Great list of current customers and etc.

Pros and cons:

+ commenting on tasks
+ opportunity to edit and delete comments
+ priority and progress (for projects and tasks)
+ description for projects and tasks
+ task dependencies
+ opportunity to colorize projects
+ Gantt chart view
+ Calendar panel
+ separate panel for files
+ opportunity to create subtasks (starting from Studio package)

- poor text formatting options (using tags)
- no separate panel for discussions
- no comments on projects

Customer support service

We didn’t get any response at all.

Project Mark: 4

Related posts:

1. Back to Online Project Management Tools: Part 4
2. Back to Online Project Management Tools: Part 3
3. Back to Online Project Management Tools: Part 2
4. Online Project Management Tools Part 1
5. Online Project Management Tools – Part 3

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