Outlook Project Management Solution

Outlook project management solution is a client-server network solution that makes possible for multiple people (workgroup) to collaborate at shared projects & tasks in real-time regime using their own MS Outlook. The point of establishing such a network resides in pursuing the following goals:

• Organizing a shared database of contacts (people). This multiuser registry of contacts can be used to concurrently store, access, and share profiles of all project stakeholders, managers, participants and outsiders;
• Advanced capability of assigning the tasks (jobs, appointments, etc) to other contacts (users) and setting up the real-time control over these tasks (this feature is absent in standard Outlook’s setup);
• Project management Outlook synchronization – this is a capability allowing managers to bring a group of users together into one shared environment where business data can be synchronized (interrelated and shared), so everyone can get access to the same array of information to operate it always updated – for example to see a to-do list of delegated MS tasks so everyone concerned in the team can observe statuses of these tasks;
• Sharing the MS calendar between multiple users, so that everyone in the project team can display the live project timeline of tasks and stages. Such a Calendar has different regimes to work, including Week, Month, etc;

•  Project management Outlook integration – information that was available only at computers of team members can get interrelated, so particular workgroup members don’t operate an isolated databases anymore but they get their databases synchronized (connected to one shared system) where managers can derive and analyze what they are interested in;
• In order to establish this style of collaboration, you have to buy and install Microsoft Exchange Server to turn MS Outlook into a multi-user solution to share tasks with your team. Installing of project management MS Exchange Server needs additional investments and IT-wise efforts from your team – these requirements are not really friendly to capabilities of small and medium businesses (which usually have to operate with limited IT-budgets).

Alternative/Analogue to MS Outlook

There is a less expensive and easier alternative that can be used instead of expensive and complicated MS Outlook solution – it is called VIP Task Manager. It has an inbuilt analogue of contacts – Resource List, and PM calendar – Calendar mode of VIP Task Manager, which can work in multiple regimes including Daily, Weekly, Monthly and  Yearly. Besides this, task management functionality of this program is very similar to MS Outlook, while it is even better in some aspects, including MS templates – VIP Task Manager also allows you to create templates (of tasks, processes and projects) to store them in Archive mode and retrieve them immediately once they are demanded. The following benefits make VIP Task Manager even better than MS Outlook solution:

• You don’t need to make any complicated efforts for installation – this program can be just easily installed over your LAN in a few minutes, as it was initially designed as a client-server solution that can make your project team to jump into working process right after fast installation;
• No need to buy any additional software modules – no need to make any additional payments for server component, you pay only one time to buy a required number of licenses (which means a number of users able to cooperate at the same time), while the server component of VIP Task Manager is delivered to you for free in the software’s single setup file (including both server and client components);