LAMPDocs

DeskAway

DeskAway is an online project collaboration service that provides teams a central location to easily organize, manage and track their projects. It has really great functionality and very intuitive interface, ensuring thus a simpler and a more powerful way to collaborate and work smarter. In addition to that there are some really nice features which you can hardly encounter in any other online service of this kind, but we will talk about that a little bit later (check pros and cons).

Here is the first screenshot – Project Overview page:

Given page contains just the information you need (project description, latest activity, overdue tasks, milestones and issues) – nothing extra, but it’s more than enough for a project overview.

Another important page that is checked very often as well – Tasks Page:

Here you can do everything you need: expand and collapse tasks to check the description, reorder, add comments, edit, delete, check the priority, reassign and etc.). All tasks are grouped in task lists. To my mind there is nothing to add to this page – it’s really well organized.

Messages Page is also of great importance:

This page is as simple as possible – you can just create topics and add messages to it.

Main characteristic features:

• Opportunity to create own templates
• Issue tracking
• SSL 256bit encryption
• Five different packages including free on
• Opportunity to export all the data and etc.

Pros and cons:

+ descriptions for projects and tasks
+ ability to create task lists
+ separate panel for files in each project
+ separate panel for discussions in each project
+ Blog panel
+ commenting on tasks and files
+ detailed reports
+ Issues panel in projects
+ opportunity to create documents
+ opportunity to create own templates
+ adding tasks and replying to task comments via email

- no subtasks
- poor text formatting in tasks, comments and descriptions (using tags)
- no comments on projects (frankly speaking in this case it’s not a big deal)

Customer support service

The response was received in 2 days – pretty decent result.

Project Mark: 5-

Read more…

Most likely the great majority of you has already become familiar with the first review of Online Project Management Tools, so there is no need to explain what an OPMT is. In case you haven’t, please spend some time to read this post, because both reviews will significantly help you to choose the best tool.

In fact at the very beginning we didn’t plan to prepare a couple of reviews dedicated to OPMTs; however after deciding to use such a service to quicken and simplify the working process, we felt the necessity to carry out a thorough research in order to find an even bigger amount of decent OPMTs, ensuring thus the opportunity for everyone to get the tool he/she needs.

Despite the fact that given review should be regarded as a continuation of the first one, there are some distinctive points concerning the way it is written that should be emphasized:

1) In addition to the main characteristic features we decided to mention most important pros and cons (though we tried to be as impartial as possible, you may disagree with us in some cases);

2) At the end of every OPMT description there is a rating, so you can see what our approximate estimation of a certain service is. As you understand there are several points we take into consideration while giving a mark:

- functionality;

- usability and user interface;

- advantages and disadvantages;

- customer support service.

3) Emphasizing the way customer support service works. We sent a letter to every OPMT’s customer support service, so you would be able to see how fast we received responses if we did at all.

4) At the very end of this review we are going to mention “Lampdocs’ choice” OPMT.

As far as the services that we are going to describe are concerned here is the complete list of them (please pay attention that they are listed and described in alphabetical order):

1. 1st Manager
2. ActionThis
3. AjaxWorkspace
4. CentralDesktop
5. Copper
6. DeskAway
7. Huddle
8. Intervarls
9. LightHouse
10. LiquidPlanner
11. OnStage
12. Pelotonics
13. PlanHQ
14. Planzone
15. ProjectManager
16. ProjectSpaces
17. SamePage
18. Staction
19. Wrike

1st Manager

1st Manager represents a decent project management and team collaboration online solution that has an intuitive user interface and is very easy-to-use. 1st Manager can hardly be considered as a multifunctional OPMT, because it includes only the basic tools to plan and monitor your projects. Overall given solution produces quite a positive impression having some nice features you may need. But before we go ahead with the features, advantages and disadvantages of this tool, let’s check the screenshots that were made from our account.

Here is the Project Overview page:

As you understand this is one of the most important pages because it provides all the information about the project, and allows you to do many things: to check all the tasks (current and overdue ones), to check the latest activity, to export the data in .xls, .csv or .txt formats, to generate PDF documentation and etc.

Another important page you will visit a lot is Tasks Page. Here is the way it looks:

Here can do almost everything you need as far as the tasks are concerned: to check the status of a task, to see if there are some comments on a certain task, to check task priority, to learn more about a task (to check task description) and etc.

The last screenshot we are going to check is the Detailed View of a Task:

Here you can get or edit all the information about a task, edit alarms, change status, assign users and etc. Moreover as you can see there is an opportunity to comment on tasks.

Now as you have an idea about this solution we can proceed to its main characteristic features:

• Simplicity and intuitiveness
• Multilingual support (currently just 3 languages, 5 more coming soon)
• You can choose the version you like (hosted solution, own installation or even source code option)
• Opportunity to create project templates
• SSL enables browsing
• Exporting all the data in an appropriate format (Excel, PDF, CSV, Text, iCal and etc.) and may others.

Finally let’s see what the most important pros and cons of this OPMT are:
+ rich text formatting (tasks and comments)
+ ability to enlarge and decrease the editing window
+ description for tasks
+ commenting on tasks
+ priority for the tasks
+ Gantt chart view
+ a lot of ways to configure alarms (notifications)
+ detailed reports

It’s a well-known fact that many Internet users would like to create their own websites and start to earn money in the Web, but at the same time the great majority of them don’t want to learn HTML, CSS, PHP and different technical aspects of web page production. Although learning of all the mentioned things is very important; nowadays it’s possible to create a website even if you have no idea about them at all. So how you can do that? The answer is by using website builders.

Generally all the website builders are divided into two types:

1. Online Website Builders: represent online tools or SaaS (Software as a Service) provided by web hosting companies which help users to build and publish the websites without learning something.
2. Offline Website Builders: represent the software which runs on your computer and helps you to create pages for a website offline, so you can publish them on any host you want.

In the given review we are going to discuss the Online Website Builders because they are generally easier to use, so almost every single Internet surfer can use them to build quite decent websites. In fact the only thing you need while using an online website builder is to be a little bit Internet experienced, know how to use your mouse and be ready to create something.

Despite the fact that online website builders are very easy to use, it doesn’t mean that they should be used just in case you want to create a basic personal web page; if you need to create a professional business website or even a design free (not template based) website they can be helpful as well. That’s why some of the professionals use online website builders to save time and easily maintain the websites. Another reason why a pro may decide to use an online website builder is that some of these tools provide users with the source code.

Let’s take a closer look at the major advantages of Online Website Builders:

• it’s a really fast way to create a website
• no need to have any skills or programming experience
• the opportunity to use your tool from any system (any OS, any browser and etc.)
• «what you see is what you get» tools (WYSIWYG)
• the ability to save money (generally such tools are pretty cheap or even free)
• everything you need in one single place
• quite a significant amount of templates to use