AtTask

AtTask (@task) represents very nice solution for all knowledge workers to collaborate and accomplish the work most essential to the enterprise. This tool gives executives and managers the ability to increase productivity and reduce costs by helping bridge the strategic vision and objectives of their portfolios with project execution.

One of the things that really attract attention from the very beginning is AtTask’s Client List. It’s hardly possible to find another company that would have similar client list. Here are just some of the clients: Apple, Adobe Incorporated, Amazon.com, Hitachi, Toyota, Volvo, the Walt Disney Company, Fujitsu, McDonalds and etc.

The only thing I didn’t like at once is that there is no way to watch the demo before you leave information about yourself. Probably this can be easily explained by the quality of service company provides and the niche they occupy, still many users may not like it.

Moreover despite the fact that this product is a multilingual one, it supports just most widespread languages (Chinese, Japanese, French, German, Spanish and English).

In other respects you will like this solution for sure. It’s really multifunctional having some unique features. But we will discuss it a little bit later. Now let’s check AtTask’s user interface.

Here is a fully customizable Dashboard:

Projects Page:

Portfolio Optimization Page:

And Timesheets:

As you see it’s a really modern, nice looking, customizable, and user friendly interface. In fact there are much more screenshots to look at; they are divided according to the topics (Management, Collaboration and Integration) and subtopics. Please visit this page, if you want to check all of them (first of all you will need to choose topic).

Finally l would like to mention the main distinctive features of this tool:

• Make the reports you need: over 50 standard reports with the ability to customize them according to you needs
• Complete all-in-one tool: providing Management, Collaboration, and Integration tools in a design that is easy to use and full of powerful features that help companies get work done.
• Clik feature: desktop extension of @task that makes managing tasks and updating status easy, so managers and executives have the up-to-date information they need. You can view, download, and upload documents with Clik.
• Mobile device support (iPhone, Blackberry and etc.) and WAP integration
• What-if Scenario Tools
• Gantt Chart support
• Capacity Planner: planning multiple projects while keeping all resources equally balanced and usable without overloading their workloads or over-booking their schedules
• and many others

To check all the features available, please visit features page.

Basecamp

Basecamp is a very popular web-based project-management tool developed by 37signals. It offers pretty standard features (to-do lists, milestone management, file sharing, time tracking, messaging system and etc.), and you can hardly find in it something unique, unavailable in other applications. That’s why given solution has been criticized for being too simple.

However to my mind it’s a little bit irrational, because in fact its simplicity is the only reason the great majority of Basecamp users like it a lot. Of course, you can find a lot of disadvantages of the given solution if you want to (we will discuss them more in detail a little bit later). But in this certain case the main idea of the project can be stated as following: “Why should you pay for a more expensive multifunctional tool and spend a lot of time to learn how it works, if there is something cheaper and simpler that includes only the features you need?”.

Another point of criticism consists in the fact that Jason Fried, 37signals Chief Executive Officer, refuses to implement different kinds of changes requested by some of the users. We can hardly know for sure what the reason is for that, but most likely 37signals don’t want to make their tool more complicated.

For justice’ sake it should be emphasized that there were some positive reviews as well (for example, in New York Times). Moreover this tool is not as poor to features as it may seem to be from the very beginning, because there is a decent amount of add-ons and extras. It works with a variety of iPhone apps, third-party billing/invoicing tools, mock-up review software, time tracking tools, widgets, and more. You can learn more about that here. In addition to that Basecamp offers integration with its own Campfire product.

As regards the disadvantages (if we can call them in such a way) here are some of them:

• There is no way to install Basecamp on your own service. Moreover they don’t offer installable versions of any of their products. The products are only available as hosted ones.
• They don’t provide phone support
• At the moment there are not so many languages supported and etc.

Finally let’s take a closer look at the UI of this tool.

Here is the Dashboard:

To-Do List:

Milestones Page:

Time Tracking Page:

You can watch a tour or check more screenshots here.

Daptiv PPM

Daptiv PPM represents a browser-based project management solution that makes collaboration easy and efficient. This product should probably be ranked among the best ones. It offers an extra handful of collaboration features, including a discussion board/forum. As developers mention, given tool “being flexible for both simple and complex methodologies, is designed to work the way you work”.

Despite the fact that Daptiv PPM is pretty easy to use, you will need to spend some time to learn all the features and capabilities, because it’s a really multifunctional tool. Its dashboard being very informative is completely customizable. Another thing you will like for sure is a user friendly interface that facilitates your working process.

In addition to that, Daptiv allows you to easily extend the standard capabilities of our software. Designed for business users, not coders, Dynamic Applications give you the power to model and support your business processes with new applications.

Let’s check the screenshots of the main sections of Daptiv’s user account.

The first one is Dashboard Page:

Capacity Planer Section:

Tasks:

And Investment Map:

Such an intuitive user interface will be accessible to everyone in your company – from product developers and IT teams, to senior executives, marketing departments and portfolio managers. Please visit this page to take the tour and see Daptiv PPM in action.

As far as the main distinctive features of Daptive PPM are concerned they are the following:

• Daptiv’s Capacity Planner allows you to better plan, schedule and manage resources.
• The opportunity to work the way you want:team members can view their tasks in a variety of ways
• Dynamic Applications feature: Daptiv lets you build your own business applications
• Daptiv Work Intelligence ™: critical insight into how your business is performing at both portfolio and detailed execution levels
• Project Transit feature: projects created in Microsoft Project can also be integrated with Daptiv, and vice-versa
• The opportunity to publish web forms to collect data from users outside of Daptiv PPM
• Monitor project health using color-coded Project Health Indicators and etc.

If you feel the necessity to learn more, please check benefits and features pages. To be Continued…

Related posts:

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

Tags: AtTask, attask project management, AtTask’s Client List, Basecamp, basecamp project management, daptiv ppm project, Portfolio Optimization Page, Projects Page