Comindware adds Department Solutions to its Collaborative Team and Task Management Software Suite: Compliance & Policy, Finance & Administration, Human Resources, and IT Help Desk..

[Woburn, Mass.] – Feb, 2013 – Comindware, Inc., a provider of mobile-ready, browser-based collaborative work management software, has included solutions for automation in mission-critical departments, plus over 50 user-requested enhancements.

The new release features department-specific solutions for Compliance & Policy, Finance & Administration, Human Resources, and IT Help Desk, developments made possible thanks to the award-winning ElasticData graph database and universal workflow builders on which Comindware Tracker is built.

Other important enhancements include recurrent Tasks and Workflows, parallel Tasks, time based process transitions, instant Workflow initiation, and more.

Comindware Tracker enables organizations to run tasks and projects smoothly with real time company-wide visibility. It provides a mobile-ready, web-based system through either on-premise or cloud delivery.

“We are listening to customer feedback, and are making the software more user-friendly to fit our customer needs across all the industries and departments.” “We are listening to customer feedback, and are making the software more user-friendly to fit our customer needs across all the industries and departments”, explained Max Tsypliaev, founder, president and chief executive officer for Comindware.

Pricing & Availability U.S. pricing is very competitive and includes the Comindware® Advantage® maintenance and support program. More pricing information is available here. Comindware also offers live online demos on request, to test-drive the solution for both the Cloud (on Comindware servers) offering and the private cloud (on users’ servers).

About Comindware Comindware is a pioneer in collaborative work management software for teams across the enterprise. Its mission: to help people work together more effectively. Comindware was founded in 2010 and is led by a team of successful serial entrepreneurs with roots in several industry-leading software companies, including Acronis, Inc., Parallels, and Kaspersky Labs. A privately-held firm, Comindware is headquartered in Woburn, MA and can be found at http://www.comindware.com/

For More Information Contact: +1 (888) 317-4608

I realize I’ve sort of borrowed a title from a familiar book…but I couldn’t resist. What I will be embarking on now is a seven-part series on what I consider to be key habits of the most successful project managers. Some of this is insight, some is derived from logic, and some may not make sense to everyone. But hopefully it will help most, educate some and invoke good discussions.

On to the topic for this article…a highly affective project manager should be above reproach. First, what does this mean? A quick search online provides this meaning…“So good as to preclude any possibility of criticism.” Another tells us it means, “not deserving of blame or criticism.” I think both of those maybe give the impression that if the project manager is to be above reproach, then they must be perfect.  While no one is perfect, I think most probably get the idea. 

It’s all over the news right now…embattled Yahoo is asking new CEO Marissa Mayer to save the company. Once an internet leader, Yahoo has turned into an also-ran and a string of leaders have either left the company or were forced out leaving it in the hands of Ms. Mayer to clean up and shore up.

Her latest action is to call in the chips for every single Yahoo employee…they must either show up at a Yahoo office for work starting in June or ship out. Ouch. This is the 21st century. And if Yahoo wants to be an innovative company, taking a step back 20 years won’t get them there very fast. In today’s world of virtual teams and remote workspaces (home offices, coffee shops, etc.), it won’t fly well with the dedicated, trusted, and talented workers that Yahoo hopefully employs. What makes matters worse is that many of the remote Yahoo employees affected are customer service representatives who will not benefit at all from the increased thought-sharing and face-to-face meetings that Yahoo says will happen and make them a tighter and more competitive company overall.

Here’s what’s wrong with the idea….

By: Anastasia Chumakova

How can online recruiting software boost HR productivity? While developers claim that using a properly set-up HR activity workspace is highly efficient, we claim that the manager can find the right person quicker, and achieve higher KPI, when using hiring software rather than when managing a recruitment process manually. Here I explain why exactly it’s possible.

Process diagram: Hiring / Recruiting programmed in our HR solution. You can create custom steps with Comindware’s easy drag-and-drop UI.

Our solution enhances HR productivity performance making it possible to:

• Simplify hiring from start to finish
• Fill the (job) opening in less time
• Better inform managers and make faster business decisions
• Get approvals quicker
• Match the right people with the right position
• Track candidates through every hiring stage
• Have a holistic view on the hiring process with online access
• Work the next big opportunity now rather than later

When looking to fill an opening or make an organizational change, HR managers are still likely to initiate and manage the process manually. This is fine when you need to hire 2-5 people. When you need to find the candidates for a dozen of openings or more, it would be the right strategy to have two people instead of one HR manager: one who collects and manages information, and one who chooses the right candidate. Doing so makes the hiring process more costly. Not doing so leads to missed deadlines.

That’s the right time to consider using a web-based job-hunting tool when you feel that if you had an assistant who could help you out with candidate / applicant tracking it wouldn’t be a bad thing at all.

Any contemporary HR solution offers the minimum of an online workspace to keep data on each candidate in a single place, organize the HR manager working environment, combined with process tracking capabilities. It’s better when you have email alerts, discussion threads and a mobile version of the solution. This way, you can stay on top of your staffing process 24/7 and never let the right candidate slip through the net. All this makes the hiring / recruiting process both more efficient and less time consuming.

“It’s better when you have email alerts, discussion threads and a mobile version of the solution.” When the organization needs a new employee, the manager hits the «Create Recruitment Request» button and provides the requirements for the candidate. The HR manager gets an email alert for the task. That is how a streamlined recruitment process begins. Both the HR manager and the requester track the recruitment process online, set up a call, a test, an interview and collaborate on each step.

The software stores resumés, portfolios and other files associated with the candidate, and enable you to get a quick view of the current papers and approvals. That’s why the HR manager doesn’t have to switch between solutions: discussions, attachments, task manager, real-time notifications, candidates list, statuses, deadlines and requirements are all accessible online in the recruitment solution. Powerful search helps you find the recruitment process / candidate details along with the attachment in just a few clicks. This means a holistic view and almost an ideal workspace both for HR recruitment activity and for collaboration with the new hire requester.

“Hire the right employee when there are many applicants. Meet requirements. Save time.” Hire the right employee when there are many applicants. Meet requirements. Save time. Hiring is not a process which needs to be costly, so it’s better to save time and money in these areas. Comindware HR Solution has the hiring and recruitment process features to help you take on this challenge successfully.

Anastasia Chumakova is Product Marketing Analyst at Comindware.

She currently explores online process management product development trends, contributes to www.comindware.com and provides tips for better use of Comindware Tracker and online work management solutions.

Have you ever led a project where you were using Microsoft Project but no one else on the project team had a license for MS Project?  Or how about your project client?  Ever led a project where not even your project customer had MS Project licenses?  And let’s face it, those licenses aren’t cheap.  Tired of always creating static PDF files and sending them to your customer and team or always printing out the latest project schedule for team members, customers or executives in your organization who want in on the review but don’t own a license?  It’s happened to me on several projects and it’s not much fun going out of your way to accommodate so many individuals.

Enter Seavus Project Viewer. Project Viewer is a solution from Seavus that allows project managers to share project files for viewing, opening, and printing with everyone involved in the project, while forcing none of them to actually go out and buy the expensive MS Project license that they would normally need.  It is the single best enterprise software for viewing Microsoft Project plans. And better yet, there’s no training needed – you’ll be up and running with basically no learning curve for you, your team, or your project customer….win, win, win!

The latest version of Seavus Project Viewer gives the users an opportunity to work in a fully replicated Microsoft Project Environment for the first time. Seavus Project Viewer is the only viewer on the market to support all available views in Microsoft Project 2010. And they’ve indicated that their development team is currently working on compatibility with Microsoft Project 2013 as well.

Seavus Project Viewer is the only project viewer that provides a collaborative environment for project teams without server installation. With Seavus Project Viewer, team members collaboratively and electronically report task progress to project managers who accept or reject them. Seavus indicates that their Project Viewer's unique features empower teams to get real-time project status as well so as to easily evaluate the project teams' performance and build knowledge for future projects.

Available in 11 different languages

Seavus Project Viewer speaks just about any language you need it to. Now Seavus Project Viewer is available in English, German, French, Spanish, Czech, Japanese, Italian, Polish, Dutch, Russian and Chinese.  Whatever language you need, Seavus has the solution.

Excel integration

With Seavus Project Viewer  you can create and track your project in Excel and view it into complete MS Project style. Your custom columns are mapped and presented into standard MS Project metrics.

Demo, price and try

If this sounds like something your organization can use, then signup for a free 15-day trial.  Still not sure?  Then view a demo online.  You can also see how it fits your budget by using their savings calculator or by requesting a quote.

I always say that communication is Job One for the project manager. If he can’t do that well effectively and on a consistent basis throughout the project engagement then he should probably find another line of work. It’s just not something that everyone is good at or can even master over time.

When I’m talking about communication on the project, I’m usually referring to the project manager’s communication with the project team and the project customer. A constant information flow of project status and task assignments is necessary to keep the team focused and engaged, the customer engaged and satisfied, and everyone informed and working toward the same goals. That’s a critical piece of the project manager’s overall responsibility.

In the complex world of project management, project leaders are always looking for an edge.  Overloaded with too many projects at once, faced with the increasing demands of project team members on multiple projects who are often dispersed in far away locations never to be seen face to face, and tasked with managing customer project stakeholders who have their own agendas, the life of the project manager can, at times, be a hard one.  What if the project management software we use to manage these engagements and keep everything on track actually could make life a little easier?  Well, Wrike is certain that solution can do just that….

Wrike is an online project management platform for making work fast, easy and efficient for both co-located and distributed teams. Its flexibility enables multifunctional teams to collaborate and get things done successfully all in one place. Your project teams can schedule, prioritize work, discuss and track progress in real time — all with just a few mouse clicks.

With Wrike, you can easily monitor and adjust your team’s workload and keep an eye on several projects in one place. Working with the interactive Gantt charts is easy and gives you a quick overview of the most important things.  That’s critical when you need to provide a quick view project report for customers and for senior management. Outlook add-in lets you convert emails to tasks and saves plenty of time. As a result – you quickly see the overall productivity of the team grow.

With the Wrike project management solution you get:

• A central hub for all your work.  Plan, prioritize and discuss tasks, collaborate on documents and keep track of work progress — all in one place.

• An easy to use, intuitive interface.  Most actions, even creating tasks from emails, take just a click or two.  Most actions related to tasks and projects also just take a couple of mouse clicks.

• An all-in-one solution.  Adjust plans on the Gantt chart, discuss issues, keep control of the tasks and create time reports – you can easily do all these with Wrike.

• Top-notch data security.  Wrike hosts servers in a world-class SAS 70 datacenter, provides SSL protection, with data backed up nearly every second.

• Nothing to download, install or upgrade.  Users simply create an account at wrike.com in a couple of minutes and then access their data in a web browser, from any computer or smartphone. Whenever a new feature is released, it’s available to users in your account automatically, without any effort required of the user.

About Wrike

Customers from 55 countries, ranging from local nonprofits to leading international brands, rely on Wrike in managing their projects, teams and businesses. Testimonials from enthusiastic customers tell the story better than any marketing pitch: "30 hours saved on routine tasks each month," "three times faster task completion," "doubled team efficiency with Wrike." Learn more about these and other significant improvements that Wrike made possible on their Customer Success Stories page.

Want to learn more about Wrike?  Go here for a tour of the software, or checkout pricing options.  Signup is easy – it takes less than a minute and there’s nothing to download or install…ever.  Not quite ready to make the commitment?  Then start your free trial today.

You and your team start to breathe a sigh of relief as you head down the home stretch on your project. Maybe it’s been six months, maybe it’s been two years. In either case you’re bound to be relieved that it’s just about over and you’re ready to successfully transition everything to the project customer. To that end, you want to make sure that ‘done’ really does mean ‘done.’ There’s nothing more embarrassing than handing the solution off to the customer and their user base only to find that you’ve left something out or forgotten or neglected to successfully complete key tasks on the schedule that were clearly your responsibility to complete.

I have found the following list to be very helpful – and critical – things to consider when making sure the project is actually done and ready for handoff to the customer…

Project managers must be communicators, decision makers, organized thinkers, taskmasters, and sometimes hands-on technical experts.  But negotiators, too?  Oh yes…and it happens all the time.  So often we’re probably not even aware of all the situations as they occur.

From my experience over the years, some key reasons project managers are forced into the role of negotiator include:

• Customer request for a different resource or skill set
• Functionality planned for a later phase but suddenly needed now
• Out of scope work that has to happen ASAP
• Change order that the customer is pushing back on
• Key resource needed for the project from an internal department
• Budget vs. timeline conflicts
• Additional funding needed – either internally or from the customer
• And many, many more…

Whether you’re rolling out a custom solution to the client or just implementing an out-of-the-box product on a short-term project, the need for training of the customer – or possibly even training of the trainers at the customer’s location is a very real and likely possibility. The plus side is it is definitely a revenue increasing activity. The downside is that it will take a considerable amount of planning and activity to pull it off correctly, and you will need to plan well for it in your online project management software schedule…possibly even over plan for it because of the inherent risks and potential cost overruns involved.

The key areas that need to be addressed include: who will conduct the training, where will it be conducted, when the training will be conducted and who on the client side will need to be trained.