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"Our managers were slaves to our old project management system."
- Manager Register.com
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What Project Management Software Edition Do I Need?
The following questionnaire will help you determine whether you need Project Insight
Enterprise, Workgroup Edition, or a Workgroup Professional Edition.
1. How many people will access the project management software?
Please estimate the total number of team members that will access the project management software,
including executives, partners, clients, vendors, subcontractors, or others.
2. I need a(n)
project management solution.
A hosted solution is one that Metafuse provides for you.
This is an ideal scenario if your own internal IT
team is too busy, if you do not have an internal IT team, or just
do not want the hassle. If you need to get a project management
system up and running quickly, this is your best option.
An installed system is project management software that you put on your own server.
The Project Insight Enterprise Installed Edition requires Microsoft Windows Server 2003,
and Microsoft SQL Server 2005.
3. Do you need to export or to import from MS Project?
If you have used MS Project regularly in the past,
have many team members that still have current licenses,
and would like the option of importing project templates into
Project Insight and/or exporting information back out of
Project Insight, you may want this feature.
Or, if you wish to ship Project Insight projects to external or non-Project
Insight individuals, this feature may be important to you.
4. Do you need to capture any time and/or expenses entered
at the project and task level, and also capture non-project related
time such as paid time off or office time?
Or do you need to report on time and expense entries across multiple projects?
All Project Insight Editions allow you to enter time at the task and project level.
Project Insight Enterprise Editions and the Workgroup Edition with the Advanced Accounting
Add-On allow you to enter time, at the company or organization level. For example, you can enter
time spent on a customer, without striking time on a task or project. These Editions also
allow you to get more detailed reporting across multiple projects and companies, and create invoices.
5. Do you need time or expense report approval processes?
This optional feature allows you to have project team members
submit timesheets and expense reports to their managers for approval.
Email alerts appear in the approver's email box, notifying
him/her of a pending timesheet or expense report.
6. Do you need to create invoices for your time or expenses?
If you need to bill back to your customers, or internal departments, the invoicing
features allow you to aggregate billable expenses and time entries from multiple projects
onto "invoices." These invoices can be exported to MS Excel, or they may optionally be
exported directly into QuickBooksTM format.
7. Do you need to route documents, tasks or projects for approval?
Workflows and approvals allow you to route any file, document, task, project or other item in Project Insight. For example, a project scope
document can be routed to a list of approvers. Alerts are automatically emailed to approvers in sequence. Comments are posted along with acceptance or denial.
8. Do you need cross project resource allocation reporting?
Cross project resource allocation allows you to view
all of your team members' schedules across all projects
in the system, and to see how many hours of work each has
scheduled. The purpose is to be able to identify
any over burdened or under allocated individuals.
9. Do you need to allow your customers to login, while keeping their projects and
data separate with permissions?
This Project Insight option enables administrators to set up project spaces with
permissions at the company or organization level. When permissions are configured,
the project spaces are set so that each of your customers
will only see their projects and documents.
10. Do you need to track issues at the system, project or task level?
Often issues or road blocks arise on projects or tasks. Team members may assign issues to other team members for resolution.
What's more, you can run reports on all issues across all projects in the portfolio.
11. Do you plan to integrate Project Insight with other software applications?
Project Insight can be integrated with any ODBC compliant software using the Project Insight Web Services for hosted systems and/or the full SDK for installed systems.
If you anticipate wanting to synchronize data from Project Insight into an accounting or other software system,
you may do so using the Project Insight Web Services or the Project Insight SDK (SDK Installed Only).
12. Do you need to make specific customizations to the software (change forms or create new forms)?
Customers that purchase Project Insight Enterprise Edition have the option
to customize their own project management system using the Project Insight SDK or to engage the Project Insight Professional
Services team make modifications to the software.
13. Would you like to have the Project Insight interface branded with your company logos and colors?
Project Insight Enterprise Edition can be branded. Branding incorporates an organization's
logo to the upper left hand corner of every web page, and adjusts all the colors and styles
in the application to match the corporate look and feel.
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