I  suggest your check out Comindware and try their 30-day fully-functional trial of their new workflow automation software. It's free and it supports an unlimited number of users, tasks and subtasks. The graphical Workflow Builder enables visual drag-&-drop design and editing of workflow processes — no IT programming or technical expertise required. Go to http://www.comindware.com to check it out and signup for the free trial.  Your feedback to them is welcomed on the site.

As a project manager, when I think of issue tracking, management and reporting I think…..spreadsheet.  Or a table on the weekly status report.  After all, that’s how I’ve always done it.  It’s adequate.  It’s there.  Reporting from it isn’t really possible – save for the spreadsheet version where you can write tedious macros or do some sort and filter combos.  But it’s not easy and it’s not fun. 

Fast forward to my introduction to Gemini.  My PM life may never be the same.  What does Gemini do you ask?  Well…it does a lot.  It does issue management very well.  But it doesn’t stop there.  Gemini can perform many of the functions that simply run your organization and help you stay in control.  For example, Gemini can perform bug tracking, project and task management functions, help desk and ticketing, integrate with QuickBooks for your financial tracking needs, and plan and manage testing and quality assurance for you.

Gemini has so much to offer so I probably didn’t test it out as much as I would have liked to…but I ran it through it’s paces for a few days and I better understood why organizations like Disney, Motorola, Domino’s Pizza, and Intel are already using various functionality within the Gemini Platform.  It freakin’ performs…that’s why.  I don’t have enough space here to write detail on all of its functionality, so let me briefly tell you about what it can do…

Key functionality

Issue management.  Gemini provides you with full-featured issue management, tracking and reporting.  This is where the wheels meet the road for Gemini – this is its key feature….and it performs mightily.  I wish I had thrown out the spreadsheet and discovered it long ago.

Project management.  The PM functionality within Gemini focuses on task and time management, provides detailed dashboards to monitor project progress and activity, and does an incredible job of managing resources across projects and throughout the organization.  Forget MS Project resource pools…go with Gemini.

Bug tracking.  Like issue management, Gemini provides the organization with great bug tracking oversight and reporting.  Know what’s outstanding, know what’s a priority, and know what’s resolved.  Unlike other organizations I’ve consulted with or worked for, Countersoft actually uses their own product – this product – for this functionality.  That says a lot.

Testing.  While I didn’t get to really ‘test’ this feature out, the product purports to help with test cases and test plans and integrate with Visual Studio.  Managing quality with Gemini will become a less complicated process in your organization.

Financial analysis.  Gemini fully integrates with QuickBooks making your financial planning and analysis a snap.  No other comparable product offers this level of integration.

Help desk functionality.  Finally, Gemini can offer your organization it’s very own help desk and ticketing functionality…it’s built right into the Gemini platform.  Again, I played with this functionality enough to see that it was very full-featured and could definitely perform what it proposes to do on their website, though I couldn’t run it too far through it’s paces in my limited testing.  I was very impressed with this feature as it can be a critical tie-in to your support organization as you deploy project solutions.  The inclusion of this functionality alone would sell me on the product.

Pricing

Countersoft offers pricing plans for their Gemini product starting at 5 users for $399 up to 1000 users for $4,899 with several incremental prices in between.  There is even an unlimited user license for the larger organizations.

Bottom line

It was a pleasure to test out the Gemini product.  Any one of the key functionalities would be valuable standalone products, but all these features are available to you for the one user-based pricing structure.  Buy it for issue management and the help desk features and then reap the extra benefits from all the rest of its included functionality.  

The site offers a free 30 day team trial.  You either download and install or take advantage of the instant on-demand trial.  Both are available here.

AtTask is a recognized leader in the PM software industry and is definitely a great choice for your project management software solution. 

AtTask originated in 2001 and have positioned themselves as thought leaders over the last decade.  Collaboration is critical to project success and the AtTask user interface lends to easy adoption for the project manager, team and customer. 

Beyond just regular projects, I found that AtTask excelled at helping organizations manage reactive work and template best practices to better manage repetitive types of tasks and projects. The changing nature of the way organizations manage work and the workforce demands tools that provide value at every level of the project management process. AtTask seems to do this very well. A UI which will seem familiar to project professionals used to current social media tools facilitates the collaborative environment where project team members can share contextual information along with status information about projects, tasks and issues - giving project managers and executives a more complete picture of exactly what’s going on within projects.

The cost

AtTask is very reasonably priced at $25 per user.  There are special packages available if you want to rollout it out at an enterprise level.

Requirements

AtTask doesn’t require much – since it’s cloud-based it only requires a current web-browser to run so it runs well in either a Windows or Mac OS environment.

Who is it for?

AtTask is really intended for any business that needs to better understand and organize their work.  This can mean traditional IT or software shops – large or small – consulting practices, professional service providers, general business operations, or marketing-focused companies.

As tested, the project management software was very robust and should appeal to project mangers across the board regardless of industry.  That, along with the business intelligence tools needed by executives to inform decisions and a UI designed to engage individual team members makes AtTask a great solution for more experienced project professionals as well as organizations new to managing project-based work.

AtTask is available in seven different languages to it is truly a global solution for any organization that needs a good project management software tool.

Some key features

Easy to use interface

Project management software usually isn’t known for making it easy for anyone but experienced project professionals to use their software and participate in the process. However, AtTask appears to have broken this stereotype by seemingly making their software accessible to everyone on the project team: project managers, individual team members and project stakeholders should all have no trouble mastering this web-based software. The TeamHome interface makes project management accessible to everyone by leveraging the familiar collaboration metaphors associated with social media.

Seamless integration with Microsoft Outlook

Outlook users have access to all the sophisticated project management tools available in AtTask making it possible for project managers and team members to organize and understand their work without ever leaving Outlook. It’s as easy as simply dragging an email message into the AtTask tab and naming the task.

Available for iPhone and Android

There is an iPhone and Android app for AtTask making it available for PMs and teams on the two most popular smartphone platforms. Everything available on the desktop via TeamHome is available with both the iPhone and Android apps.  While I didn’t have the right equipment to test the Android app, I do have an iPhone and was impressed with the interface and functionality.

Comprehensive reporting

The reporting capability of the product right out of the box (figuratively speaking, of course) was solid.  If you need more, though, it’s easy to create customer views and dashboards as needed.

What is wrong?

Local vs. cloud

Because AtTask operates in the cloud, offline users are out of luck.  But this is usually only a rare or periodic need.

Too much configurability?

I immediately recognized that AtTask offers a significant degree of configurability.  This is a good thing, unless you get overwhelmed or a very novice user – or possibly a new PM.  Just be careful and you should be fine.

Who is the competition?

• Daptiv
  
• Innotas
  
• Clarizen
  
• Microsoft Project
  
• Liquid Planner
  
• CA Clarity
  
• Primavera

Bottom line for business

AtTask offers one of the most innovative solutions for managing not just projects but all kinds of tasks. Its unique approach to UI makes it easy for project team members (with little or no training) to start using AtTask to organize and execute on their work right away.  To me this is an important consideration as few busy project professionals have time for additional training tasks. (NOTE: Information I was given by AtTask indicates an upswing of 400 percent in end user adoption attributed to their new UI.) Whether you’re a seasoned project professional or the CEO of a small to midsized business, AtTask can help you get your work done and keep your team working together cohesively.

Diskeeper promise to keep IT organizations running at maximum efficiency by removing performance bottlenecks with its patented data optimization and fragmentation prevention technologies.  With over 40 million licenses sold and over 90% adoption at Fortune 1000 companies, small business to large corporations rely on Diskeeper software to provide unparalleled storage performance and reliability to their laptops, desktops and servers. Diskeeper Corporation further provides real-time data protection and instant file recovery with Undelete software.

What Diskeeper is all about

As the IT environment becomes more complex, performance bottlenecks in the underlying infrastructure can seriously affect an entire site’s productivity. Diskeeper® 2011 data performance technology brings a critical efficiency boost to IT sites that is constant, automatic and cost-effective. It proactively prevents up to 85% of all fragmentation (scattered file fragments randomly stored across the hard drive) before it can even occur and instantly defrags the rest.

Key Diskeeper business features:

IntelliWrite® technology.   Dramatically improves system response no other solution can touch. At the deepest level of system activity, files are written in pieces and scattered around the disk, creating a profound waste of system resources and progressively accumulating I/O bottlenecks. IntelliWrite prevents this fragmentation before it can happen by writing files contiguously.  IntelliWrite is the only technology that can prevent fragmentation on thin provisioned disks without requiring movement of any data and consequent increases in thin provisioned storage.

NEW! InvisiTasking® technology. The most intelligent and adaptive background processing technology ever available has been improved to use even more idle system resources faster, so Diskeeper can maintain performance on even the largest and busiest systems with zero resource conflicts.

NEW! Instant Defrag™ engine. For the first time ever, no newly fragmented files can slow performance, because Instant Defrag immediately defrags those files before they can be read. Instant Defrag is a new intelligence that understands how your files are used and ensures they never have to be read in pieces. Combined with IntelliWrite, every system runs at peak performance 24/7 regardless of workload. No system has ever been able to do this before!

NEW! Efficient Mode. In addition to an extensive defragmentation mode, Efficient Mode offers the greatest net gain in system I/O resource savings ever available. It is smart enough to know what fragmentation is a problem and immediately targets and eliminates fragmentation that directly affects system performance.

NEW! Free space consolidation engine. This new and advanced engine swiftly consolidates free space and tightly integrates with Instant Defrag to handle new fragmentation as soon as it is created.

The Titan Defrag Engine™ technology, which runs on volumes of 60GB or greater is the only solution capable of handling volumes of many terabytes and millions of files. Titan Defrag Engine takes only hours to defragment volumes of a few terabytes where other methods take days, if they can function at all. Exclusive to Diskeeper EnterpriseServer, the Titan Defrag Engine is the only technology that can defragment volumes of 10-20+ terabytes.

Terabyte Volume Engine® technology. The only defrag technology with the necessary horsepower to eliminate the rapid fragmentation build-up occurring in high-traffic system volumes handling millions of files.

I-FAAST® (Intelligent File Access Acceleration Sequencing Technology) improves file access and creation on an average of 10-20% beyond the benefits gained with defragmentation alone, by optimizing placement of your most frequently accessed data.
In future articles, we will learn more about Diskeeper’s other product offerings including those that serve home and home office settings as well as Diskeeper for the public sector. To download trialware for some of Diskeeper’s many products, visit their site here.

With the release of version 8.7, Journyx ProjectXecute combines cross-project resource allocation and financial forecasting with a full set of tools for maintaining compliance and audit trails for government contractors.  The new features in this version allow companies subject to the Defense Contractor Audit Agency (DCAA) to manage contracts from the planning and bidding stages to successful completion and post-mortem analysis.

According to CEO Curt Finch, Journyx has many years of experience providing government contractors with the tools needed to automate compliant time management processes using their  Journyx Timesheet software.  Many customers have used the time tracking, rule enforcement, and approval workflow information to pass DCAA audits. 

Now that ProjectXecute 8.7 includes the complete DCAA tool set, government contractors can continue to maintain their compliant time process while gaining access to features for project resource planning, financial projections for contracts, and robust reporting on resource availability and project status/variance.  ProjectXecute also includes a variety of standard integrations with popular accounting and payroll systems to ensure accounting processes comply.

Time Management for DCAA

The tools for designing a compliant process start at the beginning with the capture of time fromtime-tracking for employees, and move up the chain through approvals to payroll and billing.  While government contractors aren’t really given a choice about whether or not to track their time, when the process is quick and hassle-free compliance is easier for everyone involved.  I found through my testing that ProjectXecute offered a nice variety of time entry screens that can be customized to fit many different types of employees in an organization.

Personal project lists and memorized entries give employees short cuts for getting time entered quickly.  Their companies are also able to set up rules and selection filters that ensure time is entered correctly. Notations for corrections can be a requirementmight be required and are available for reporting and audit support.  The software also allows nicely for workflow approval processes so as to ensure that the appropriate managers review employee time and corrections.  When all time has been reviewed and approved, integrations, such as the one for with popular software such as QuickBooks, allows users to move the time data into systems for payroll and billing. 

Project Resource Allocation and Financial Projections

Integrated with the time capture process Pare project tracking and resource allocation for project teams is integrated with the time capture process.  When developing a work plan for a bid, contractors can review future availability of the necessary resources using bar graphs that allow them to quickly identify where there is excess capacity or where additional hiring might be necessary.  They can also assign pay and billing rates to resources, which allows them to plan and adjust assignments to maximize profit potential.

The cost and revenue information is captured in highly configurable reports for both forecasting and comparing plans to actuals.  Text and graphical report types can be run directly in the browser with options to filter or /group data, show charts, run reports in different formats, schedule recurring reports and copy/email reports for distribution.  An Excel-based reporting engine that includes real-time access to the Journyx data provides even more customization options for charts, graphs and calculated fields based on pivot table reports.

Dashboards for Project/Resource Status and Analysis

Resource allocation views, combined with automatic warnings and alerts, allow project managers to keep the work on track.  For example, a project manager may receive an alert of an estimate change from a team member indicating he needs more time to complete an assignment.  The project manager can then use configurable dashboards to determine if adjustments are needed to meet deadlines for this assignment.  She can use reports and the bar graph views mentioned above to find available and qualified resources to that will assist in completing the assignment on time.  Availability views give a complete picture of the demands on resource time, including other assignments, administrative work, and scheduled leave and holiday time.

Project dashboards are also useful in determining why projects run late or go over the allotted budget.  With variance tracking, project managers and executives can see how and why the actual work deviated from the original project plan and come up with improvements to the estimation process going forward.

First Take
Journyx ProjectXecute 8.7 is a flexible program for managing resource availability and enforcing compliance for work performed on government contracts.  Project teams subject to the DCAA should be able to make good use of the resource allocation and project monitoring tools in the product while automating the required time management process all in the same system.  

Clarizen, creators of the popular web-based project management software of the same name, is starting to wow the PM industry all over again with their newest release – which was just announced on October 20, 2011.  Clarizen InterAct, which is part of the Clarizen version 5.3 release, is a patent-pending email server that takes email from being a communication tool to being an execution engine. 

The capabilities InterAct adds in terms of project communication for project managers such as myself can really be a game changer.  Users can now customize mailboxes and build their own rules to perform just about any operation in the software including initiating or updating projects, logging issues, or performing time-tracking functions, to name a few.  InterAct improves how project teams collaborate, work assigned project tasks, and engage with their project managers and customers using something they already use throughout the workday – their email system.

InterAct features include:

• Gives users the ability to engage with Clarizen from any device using any email client.
• Allows users to send email directly to Clarizen, which in turn updates tasks and projects automatically, without needing to login.
• Includes predefined mailboxes that help utilize the most commonly used functionality within Clarizen, making it fast and easy to begin emailing Clarizen.
• Offers customization so emails can perform almost any action users are able to do within Clarizen when logged-in.
• Generates vCards for each mailbox in InterAct so users know which email address to use when sending messages for specific projects and tasks. 

Additional features new to Clarizen version 5.3 include:

• Stopwatch: Helps users understand who is working on what, empowering teams with a new level of visibility into projects and resources.
• Relations Summary Fields: Users can look up related objects and calculate formulas such as the sum, average, minimum and maximum of related entities’ fields.
• Single Sign On and LDAP Integration: Organizations can configure Clarizen to synchronize with their AD/LDAP system to enable single-sign-on and single logout to various applications depending on the connection to the corporate network.

To learn more about InterAct and Clarizen v5.3 visit Clarizen.com