Prior to the last couple of decades, project managers were responsible for the manual organization of projects and their staff, and whilst they’ll often still play a part in various industries today, project management has moved towards the ‘agile’ framework.

In a nutshell, modern agile project management is iterative – it places the focus on small, movable tasks that can be easily monitored as they progress towards completion. Atlassian describes agile project management software as granular, progressing towards deadlines in timely but small, bitesize chunks.

And that’s where project management software is today.

Revolving around the agile project management paradigm, modern project management software breaks tasks down into chunks that are easily scheduled, tracked, and monitored towards completion.

These chunks are often displayed and organized in a Kanban board or Gantt chart, which have become hallmarks of project management software.

Project Management Software: Features to Look Out For

If you or your business are considering project management software then what features should you look out for?There are 6 main features to project management software:

• Project planning and calendars; Kanban or Gantt boards with deadline scheduling
• Team collaboration; ability to share files from platforms like Google Drive or Office
• Time tracking; to track how long people are spending on certain tasks
• Reporting; reporting progress, issues, updates, etc
• Project budgeting; budgeting tools to track costs
• Billing and quotes; for invoicing and to keep clients and customers in the loop with costs

Not all project management will feature project budgeting and billing and quoting tools, but most contain a way to track numerical values. For example, Monday has a “Numbers” column that you can add to your board, set a currency, and track and analyze expenses from within the project board.

Primarily, though, project management software is about accurately breaking down and tracking a project piece-by-piece. All the main options achieve this goal through a combination of Kambam boards, time tracking, and calendars. It’s also often possible to analyze your project data, e.g. to see who has spent what time on what projects, what jobs remain unfinished, how close you are to reaching the deadline vs the total hours of work remaining, etc.

Without further ado, let’s break down 6 of the most popular project management software options available today:

ClickUp

ClickUp is one of the top-tier project management tools that comes with a crazy suite of features that suit every project, every industry, and every team. They’ve built an impressive repertoire of clients including the likes of Google and Booking.com.

ClickUp is a cloud-based tool with a very generous free plan that allows access to features including 100Mb of cloud storage per workspace. From there, you’re looking at $5 per month per person with other deals for enterprise-level plans.

As one of the most scalable, fully-featured project management tools around, ClickUp has a reputation for being somewhat overwhelming at first glance – you can’t overstate how many tools there are!

ClickUp is an excellent project management for any task or industry:

• Management
• Remote work
• Software development and programming
• Marketing
• Sales
• Design
• CRM
• Health and environment
• Non-profit and charity

You can break ClickUp into 4 main areas, but the total featureset contains some 50 tools or more.

Project management: There are numerous workflow views like Kanban boards, Gantt views, calendar views, activity views, workload views, etc. You can log projects, break them down into their various components, assign them off and then track them in so many ways,

Team management: There are plenty of features for tracking and managing teams. Time tracking is simple, as is the tracking of individual workloads, allowing managers to tune tasks to spread the workload fairly.

Time Management: Set deadlines, task estimates, and monitor progress towards goals. View graphs that break down the time spent on each project/goal/task and how this contributes to the overall completion of the main task.

Collaboration: There are numerous features for collaboration including scrums and sprints for agile DevOps teams, plenty of file upload tools ith team viewing, reports, and more. Work collaboratively in team rooms via voice or Zoom, track tasks and manage team workload to keep tasks fair and equitable.

Niche Features

There are plenty of niche features here too that are optimized for programming or software development. For example, there are sprint management tools and scrum points that can be tracked with different agile charts. Bug tracking is simple and with Git integration, it’s easy to integrate development project management with this coding-specific management platform.

Financial reporting and budgeting tools are also fully featured here, enabling businesses and teams to set financial goals, track costs, and quickly pull up graphs and reports for financial analysis.

No matter the industry or project, ClickUp has something to offer. There are tools for proofing and annotating documents, managing budgets, and resources, chatting to team members, and working collaboratively via Zoom, etc.ClickUp integrates with numerous other software and its public API enables custom connectivity to virtually any other relevant platform.

Pricing

The full version of ClickUp is 100% free, the only caveat being that the total workspace storage is limited at 100mb. For many users, dare we say the majority of users, this isn’t a major issue. ClickUp’s full version costs just $5 each per team member per month when billed annually or $9 when billed monthly, and there are deals for enterprises or very large teams. Overall, this ranks ClickUp as extremely competitive, especially given the vast selection of tools on offer.

Features

• Project tracking using Gantt view, Kanban boards, calendars, and more
• Ample tools for setting goals and project milestones
• Advanced team management and time tracking
• Tons of communications integrations for webcam and voice
• Document proofing and annotation
• Agile tools for programmers and DevOps
• Vast number of integrations including public API
• Project automation
• Map view
• Too many to list!

Pros

• A colossal number of features
• Suitable for all sectors and industries
• Superb pricing with very generous free version
• Every integration you could possibly need
• Niche features for specific tasks or industries
• Scalable to work with extra-large teams

Cons

• Overwhelming number of features
• Users need to spend some time setting it all up to get the most out of it

Monday.com

Monday.com is a well-known collaborative project management software that bears all the hallmarks of a quality program. It has several views, e.g. Table view, Calendar view, Gantt view, and Kanban view, allowing users to monitor tasks and progress them from ideation through to production and finalization. There’s an innovative tagging and messaging system that allows users to converse across projects, and a dedicated chat panel too for individual and team communication.

The workflow can be automated using reminders and other tools that keep the team tracked towards deadlines. Progress can be broken down and monitored using impressive graphs and KPI tables. Overall, it’s one of the simpler project management softwares, but for smaller teams, it works very well and doesn’t bloat with unnecessarily complex features and endless customization.

Monday.com does work well as a CRM too, but it’s mostly focussed on the project management side of things rather than client or customer-side organization. Nevertheless, there’s plenty of room for customization and Monday.com is frequently adding new features to the platform. There are tons of integrations too, so you can easily connect Monday.com to apps like Slack, Google Drive, Docs, etc.

Templates: With over 200 templates, Monday.com enables teams to get and running immediately without custom-building their own boards. The templates cover pretty much anything you can think of.

Automation: Automation in Monday.com is easy and enables teams to set reminders, archive tasks, send files, etc.

Pricing

There is a 14-day free trial,  but there is currently no free version of Monday.com. Instead, you have to pay per seat and costs vary between tiers. E.g. the Basic plan doesn’t allow for Calendar or Gantt view, and costs $8 per seat per month. It scales through the Standard ($10), Pro ($16), and Enterprise tiers which add more apps, automation, features, and integrations.

Features

• Project management focussed software
• Kanban, Gantt, Table, and Calendar views
• Plenty of automation features
• Private boards for higher-tier packages
• Multi-level permissions
• Decent tagging and communication system
• Swift, easy-to-use interface
• Reasonably cheap for smaller teams
• Performance and deadline tracking

Pros

• Nicely streamlined for project management
• Ideal for remote working
• Reasonably priced
• Simple to use without the bloat
• Powerful automation
• Multi-level permissions for Enterprise version

Cons

• Not so expandable as competitors
• Could get expensive for big teams

Kissflow

Trusted by many huge brands worldwide, Kissflow is a workflow-centric project management software with all the usual views and features. Namely, it includes Kanban, List, Matrix, Task, and Project views which are all modular and easy to edit.

The interface is super-clean and simple – whilst some expandability is possibly sacrificed, this is one of the slickest collaborative project management UIs around. It also integrates very well with GSuite, Excel, and many other apps. The APIs are extensive allowing for deeper customization.

Focussed on task management, Kissflow allows users to track processes from ideation and assignment through to production and completion. There are tons of ways to track projects and discuss with team members as projects move through the app’s workflow. Some nice review and analysis features allow team leaders to track project progress and performance. There’s no rocket science here, just pure, slick project and team management.

Multiple Workflows: With so many workflow options, Kissflow is suitable for many teams working across various departments, e.g. marketing, lead generation, CRM, etc.

Integrations: Kissflow’s integrations with GSuite and other apps are seamless and smooth. It’s very easy to work across integrated apps and incorporate off-platform documents into the workflow.

Requests: Kissflow makes it easy for employees to make requests and communicate with others via the platform. This makes it a good tool for managing employee rotas, onboarding, etc.

Pricing

Kissflow does have a free version that covers 3 users for 1 project, which is great. From there, it scales per project, not per seat. The Standard tier covers 5 users for 5 projects at $35/mo total. Additional users are then $5. This works out pretty competitively and there’s decent scalability to ensure you don’t pay over the odds for your team.

Features

• Matrix, table, list, Kanban, and multiple other customizable workflows
• Integrations with GSuite, Office 365, and many other apps
• Advanced time and performance tracking
• Quality messaging system
• Slick, intuitive UI
• Lots of templates for different teams across various industries

Pros

• Fast and efficient with robust UI
• Focussed on project and team management with little bloat
• Plenty of views and templates
• Excellent APIs
• Fair, scalable pricing
• Good messaging system

Cons

• Doesn’t have the same level of automation potential as other software
• Not as easily expandable as ClickUp

Kanban Tool

So you’ve looked into project management software and decided you only need one thing: the Kanban board. Kanbans are the mainstay of most project management software, allowing businesses and organizations to break down tasks into manageable chunks and view their progression through swimlanes until completion.

Kanban Tool is focussed entirely on Kanbans. Despite its simplicity, it’s trusted by some huge brands worldwide. It even has an on-premises version which could save money vs SaaS project management software.

In terms of functionality, the Kanban boards here are endlessly customizable. Set task dependency, assign tasks easily to teams, track their progress using advanced reporting and automated email reminders and comments. The integrations list is also pretty much endless and with well-documented APIs and SDKs, Kanban Tool is open to full customization.

Security: Kanban Tool boasts advanced security and compliance features that are sometimes overlooked by other collaborative project management software. 2FA, advanced access tiering, and single-session sign-on are all included.

Endless Customisation: The Kanban boards can be customized in more ways than can be described. These are called ‘Power Ups’ – there are over 30 Power-Ups that can be attached to the customizable boards.

Pricing

Pricing is very fair here, with a free version for 2 boards for 2 users with no file attachments. There’s a standard Team package for €5 per member with unlimited boards and attachments and an Enterprise package for €9 per month per member.

Features

• Advanced Kanban boards
• 30+ Power-Ups to modify and customize Kanban boards
• Well-documented, extensive APIs
• Process automation
• Excellent security features
• Analytics and performance suite

Pros

• Extremely robust for Kanban board management and workflows
• Tons of customization
• Cheap for most users
• On-premises option for enterprises
• Robust security
• Automated reminders and comments

Cons

• Purely for Kanban workflows
• Simple UI

Workfront

Workfront by Adobe is one of the world’s leading project and team management software. It’s oriented towards remote work but can be used by anyone looking for a robust team management program with deep functionality for work across nearly any industry.

The programming and software development features are well-developed, with Gantt boards that allow for Agile DevOps and tons of project tracking features.

The dashboard is one of Workfront’s greatest assets, allowing each team member to view their own personal projects, performance, and time management breakdown. The centralized communication hub is extremely good for networking teams together efficiently. Collaborative working spaces allow teams to work from within the app.

Workflow is well-engineered for teams of all sizes; tasks can be assigned, prioritized, tracked, and broken down with KPIs for analysis by managers. Integrations with both Adobe products and third-party apps are extensive and there are well-documented APIs for deep customization.

Permissions: Easily set and manage advanced permissions across all employees and teams.

Visual Collaboration: Collaborate in powerful visual spaces; annotate images, videos, etc, all within the app.

Advanced Reporting: Create reports on KPIs and project progression. Analyze individual, team, and project performance with charts and graphs.

Pricing

Workfront pricing is on request – you have to contact them directly. As you might expect then, it’s not cheap, working out at something like $30 per user per month. Of course, it depends on your project and needs. This is advanced collaborative project management software geared towards SMBs and enterprises as well as productive smaller remote teams.

Features

• Multiple views including calendar and Gantt
• Visual collaborative working space
• Advanced workflow management
• Extensive APIs
• Deep integration with other apps
• World-class security
• Plenty of permissions options

Pros

• Deep functionality for virtually every industry
• Superb support for enterprises and SMBs
• Innovative visual working space
• Excellent messaging system
• Endless API and app support
• Powerful reporting and KPI analysis

Cons

• Expensive
• Need to put some time in to get the most out of it

Asana

Asana is one of the newest and fastest-growing project management software around. It’s modern, innovative, and well-made for remote work and small, agile teams. There are 3 main layouts; List, Calendar, and Boards, all of which enable deep customization.

Team management is simple and the internal messaging system is great. One of Asana’s headlines is its brilliant UI that offers the perfect balance between simplicity and flexibility – it’s got something for every type of team ranging from software developers to creatives, agencies, and more.

At its core, Asana is streamlined towards project and team management and this is where it excels. It’s super easy to set deadlines, assign team members and track task progression from ideation to production and completion. Integrating with GSuite is simple and seamless, allowing users to effortlessly sync their Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides work with the app.

Team Management: Asana excels at team management. Easily tag, manage and communicate with team members whilst passing on feedback and positive reinforcement.

GSuite: Google apps are particularly well-integrated with Asana, allowing teams to easily collaborate using Drive, Docs, Slides, etc.

Analytics: Break down project progress and monitor individual and collective contributions to tasks. Forecast how long tasks will take and predict whether or not they’ll be finished on deadline.

Prices

Asana starts at $11.99 per user per month on the Premium Plan. The Business Plan is $23.99 per user per month. The Basic plan is free and with unlimited projects, it’s probably the most generous free plan for collaborative project management software.

Features

• List, Calendar, and Board views
• Manage teams and set tasks and deadlines
• Track project and individual progress
• Integration with GSuite apps
• Communicate with individuals and teams via message or Zoom
• Analyze project progress and forecast time until completion

Pros

• Slick and intuitive UI
• Superb integration with Google apps
• Generous free version
• Excellent team management features
• Track time and project KPIs

Cons

• Probably best for smaller remote teams
• Lacks some automation features

Summary

Some excellent collaborative project management software here. Competition in this space is super-tight, but each of these brands has something unique to offer.

ClickUp is a bit of a standout, but what it gains in colossal functionality it loses in intuition. However, with a little work, teams can bend and flex this extraordinary software to manage pretty much anything they want.

Kissflow, Monday.com and Asana are simpler, more streamlined and oriented towards modern project and team management. They’re both superb for smaller and medium-sized teams.

Workfront is a bit of a beast, both in functionality and cost, but it’s status as one of the world leaders in project and team management says it all. It’s worthy of serious consideration.

Kanban Tool is ideal for businesses who just need  an advanced Kanban workflow solution.

Each one brings something original to the table.

The post Best Collaborative Project Management Software appeared first on Software For Projects.

In municipal project management, project management software fulfills a similar role to what it fulfills in a business context.

Indeed, many aspects of running a city, town, or other urban areas are similar to running a business.

There are tasks to track and delegate, projects to manage, reports to analyze, and so on and so forth. Project management software breaks down large tasks into bitesize chunks that can be easily accessed by different team members, organized, and most importantly, completed.

Municipal project management software saves both time and money, reducing paperwork costs, streamlining team objectives, and monitoring tasks efficiently from ideation to completion.

Paperwork alone costs businesses, organizations, and institutions millions of dollars each year, wasting valuable working hours in the process.

Project management software erases the need for paperwork whilst strengthening teams, equipping them with the tools they need to crush deadlines and stay ahead of the game.

What is Municipal Project Management?

Municipal project management relates to businesses, institutions, and organizations that operate in both the public and private municipal sectors and industries. Clients include State and County authorities, real-estate developers, retailers, and construction managers. Municipal projects also extend to event management, day-to-day local and areawide admin, and pretty much anything else that involves countywide, citywide, or other areawide planning.

Municipal project management also involves construction and repair, waste management, event planning, and data reporting (e.g. environmental reporting or accidents).

Of course, there are many tiers and scales to municipal project management.

Individual departments may need a way to collaborate their teams together, which is especially important for remote work.

Traditionally, teams might have used a combination of email, Office, and GSuite, relying on spreadsheets and other manual reporting methods.

Now, project management software can empower municipal teams and departments with an effective means to plan and structure their projects.

Software Features for Municipal Project Management

So what sort of features are useful for municipal project management?

Project management software has 6 main features:

• Project planning calendars and other project views; the first step for any project is to set your goals and deadlines, organizing them with smaller tasks and deadlines. Project management software offers a variety of views to help teams track both macro and micro tasks. Kanban boards are one such view that allows teams to visualize task progress from ideation to completion.
• Collaboration and communication; getting your team singing from the same hymnbook is vital for project management. Municipal project management makes team networking and collaboration easy, allowing team members to view the same information and use in-app tools to work together.
• Security and permissions; municipal project management software should have advanced security and permissions features to limit data access.
• Reporting and analytics; generating reports and forwarding them to other organizations, businesses or authorities is a vital function of municipal project management software.
• Email management; municipal project management involves high volumes of communication. Project management software makes it easy to organize and manage email communications.

Let’s take a look at 5 of the best options for municipal project management software.

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ClickUp

ClickUp is probably the most powerful project management software in the world. Its main strength is its near-infinite customizability. This makes it an excellent choice for municipal project management, as its features can be easily tweaked to suit any task or project.

First and foremost, ClickUp offers multiple ways to break tasks down into manageable and trackable chunks. Set tasks, create task mindmaps to assist in ideation, and then set up task dependencies and pipelines. You can add comments and Wikis to each task, providing teams with vitally relevant information that they’ll need to complete their tasks. Tasks can be structured in Kanban boards, calendars, or Gantt views.

• Emails and Communications: ClickUp integrates with Gmail, Outlook, and other email providers. This allows teams to centralize their communications which are perfect for liaising with other departments, authorities or contractors.
• Reporting: ClickUp has numerous reporting tools that enable teams to draw up graphs of their progress towards objectives. This makes reporting progress to managers, municipal planners, or other authorities simple.
• Advanced Permissions: ClickUp has advanced permissions features, allowing project managers to prohibit access to certain information or materials.

Pricing

ClickUp offers a quite remarkable fully free version, but it includes just 100Mb of storage space. There are some limits to how many goals you can set in the free version, which could limit municipal project management teams.

The full version costs $5 per user per month when billed annually or $9 per user per month when billed monthly. This is extremely competitive amongst other project management software and it’s tough to beat given the breadth of tools on offer. There are deals available for very large enterprise-level teams.

Features

• Tons of ways to set goals and track projects
• Time tracking features for project managers
• Advanced permissions settings
• Excellent email and other third-party integrations
• Map view
• Collaborative document view with annotations

Pros

• Customization for municipal project management purposes
• Huge variety of tools
• Plenty of integrations including API
• Excellent email and communication management tools

Cons

• Steep learning curve
• Requires a lot of setup to get the most out of it

TRY CLICKUP

Monday

Monday is a much more compact and lean tool than ClickUp. Fundamentally, it’s a project management tool with a nice selection of different views for visualizing projects from ideation to completion.

Tagging users is easy and there are plenty of in-app communication options. Integrations with apps like Slack and GSuite help plug Monday into existing workflows.

Monday has a slick and simple interface that doesn’t require intense training or onboarding. Tasks can be broken down into timeline blocks, calendars, and Kanban boards. From there, it’s just a matter of tagging team members on certain tasks, tracking their progress, and reporting on KPIs.

For municipal project management, Monday is excellent for managing any linear task, such as ordering street repairs, contacting contractors, and inserting deadlines and important task information. The map view is especially useful for municipal projects, enabling team members to visualize events and projects on a local map.

• Project Templates: Monday comes with over 200 templates that suit pretty much every industry. There are bound to be some templates that suit the needs of municipal project management and urban planning teams.
• Dashboards: Team members can access a personal dashboard that breaks down their tasks and deadlines alongside key information. Project managers can access analytics and reporting tools to track task progression and employee contributions.

Pricing

Monday offers a 14-day free trial. From there, the Basic plan costs $8 per user per month when billed monthly, but it doesn’t include calendar or Gantt views. This severely limits its scope, so most will look to the Standard plan at $10 per user per month. The Pro tier is $15 per user per month and offers advanced automation and multi-board dashboards.

Features

• Kanban, Gantt, Table, and Calendar views
• In-app communications and tagging
• Analytics and reporting
• Multi-level permissions (Enterprise only)
• Map view
• User dashboards
• Team time tracking
• Private boards

Pros

• Simple and intuitive interface
• Requires little training and onboarding
• Automation potential for larger teams
• Map view is particularly useful for municipal projects
• Dashboards keep everyone on track
• Decent permissions control (Enterprise only)

Cons

• Permissions feature for Enterprise only is unfortunate
• Not cheap for larger teams

TRY MONDAY

Asana

Asana is one of the new kids on the block when it comes to project management. At its core, it’s pretty simple with just 3 main views; List, Calendar, and Boards. These are all very customizable and are easy to tweak and optimize for municipal workflows.

Project managers can create projects, organize them with objectives, goals, and deadlines, provide critical information to team members and then delegate and track tasks. Reporting on progress is easy and the in-app comms are excellent, enabling teams to discuss tasks readily even when working remotely.

With Asana, you can build product roadmaps and plan launches – applicable to construction projects and town/city events planning. Tag team members in and organize sprints – bite-size micro objectives that can be delegated to different people. For example, a city event like a fireworks celebration could be broken down into different tasks – hiring a pyrotechnics team, sound team, and security, cordoning off the street, alerting people of the plans via social media events, etc. This sort of project is really easy to organize with Asana.

With tons of integrations, Asana is easily integrated into existing project management workflows. Excellent GSuite integration makes document sharing and email syncing easy.

• Team Management Features: Asana is very team-focussed and they’ve put a lot of effort into team networking and management. For project managers, tracking team contribution is simple, allowing tasks to be redirected if necessary, say if a task is proving too difficult for a single person to handle.

Prices

Asana has a solid free version that includes unlimited access to a good deal of its features, but there are some important ones missing, particularly when it comes to the team management side of things. The paid versions start at a reasonable $11.99 per user per month when billed monthly. The Business Plan is $23.99 per user per month when billed monthly and provides all team management features and automation.

Features

• List, Calendar, and Board views
• Team management features including workload analysis
• Personal dashboards display key information
• Integration with Gmail and GSuite apps
• Plenty of in-app communication options like Zoom
• Project analytics and reporting features to track progress

Pros

• Simple UI requires little onboarding
• Team-focussed
• Ideal for event planning and launches
• Class-leading team management tools and time tracking
• Advanced integrations with Adobe Creative Cloud and many other apps

Cons

• Doesn’t scale up well to very large teams
• Not quite as customizable as other contenders

TRY ASANA

Fieldwire

Fieldwire differs slightly from the aforementioned software in the list. Whilst other software is focused on project management in a more general sense, providing strength in flexibility, Fieldwire is specifically oriented towards construction and job management.

For the construction wing of a municipal department, Fieldwire is an excellent tool for managing public construction projects, repairs, and maintenance. Its project view is designed specifically for these sorts of projects, allowing project managers to tag in team members, contractors, and other key project stakeholders.

There are some familiar tools here, like Kanban, Gantt, and calendar views that break tasks down into manageable logical chunks. Inspection, reporting, and compliance tools are all perfectly suited for municipal construction projects where reporting progress to regulators is necessary. The building inspector tool is particularly useful for logging inspections and site visits.

• BIM Viewer: Specific features include the BIM Viewer, which enables teams to access technical information; measurements, metadata, and other project specifications. 3D building plans can be integrated into the app, allowing users to digitally assess worksites.

Pricing

Fieldwire offers conventional pricing per user per month. There is a free version with a 5 user limit and limited functionality. The Pro tier is $29 per user per month when billed annually, rising to $49 for the Business tier that adds the BIM Viewer and some other features, and then $89 for Premier. Premier contains everything including a dedicated account manager. As you’d expect, it’s more expensive than the aforementioned three more commercial software (ClickUp, Monday, and Asana).

Features

• Project management views like Kanban boards, Gantt, and calendar view
• Task delegation and tracking tools
• Building inspection tool
• Upload architectural drawings, photos, and reports to visualize project progression
• Robust reporting features for regulation and compliance purposes
• Environment, health, and safety tools (e.g. incident/accident tracking)

Pros

• Robust feature set for construction projects
• Also contains plenty of modern project management features
• Built for US building regulations and compliance
• Superb reporting features
• 3D drawing upload is innovative

Cons

• Oriented firmly towards construction
• Perhaps undeveloped for remote working

TRY FIELDWIRE

Projectmates

Projectmates has been in use by US institutions for some 20+ years, including across the States of Idaho, Texas, New Mexico, and Nevada. At its core, it’s a construction planning software aimed towards high-level construction projects.

Therefore, it’s strictly limited to this niche area, and doesn’t quite include the breadth of project management tools that other contenders offer.

The upshot is, it’s specifically tailored for the US construction industry and contains many native functions for organizing construction bidding and granted management, escalation scenarios, and regulated financial reporting.

Projectmates is a pre-approved vendor for TIPS, which makes it an easy swap for legacy systems. It’s worth mentioning that Projectmates isn’t solely designed for governmental institutions, it’s trusted by some 55,000 retailers, real-estate developers and pretty much anyone else that requires construction management solutions in the public or private sector.

The software itself does offer solid project management that allows project managers to tab in various team members, stakeholders, and contractors. The permissions tiering here is particularly in-depth, preventing unwanted access to sensitive or sanctioned information.

• RFI Management: RFIs, requests for information, are an intrinsic feature of construction project management. Projectmates has an excellent RFI center that eliminates the need for paper documents. Document management is one of Projectmates’ strong suits.

Pricing

There is no pricing information available on the site – all pricing is customized to the institution purchasing.

Features

• Project management views and scheduling
• RFI and document management
• Advanced analytics and financial reporting
• Asset planning and management
• Bid management
• Inspection and regulatory reporting

Pros

• Optimized for US governmental construction projects
• Lots of niche features for construction
• Hasn’t left behind standard project management tools
• Developed in partnership with US institutions
• Equipped for dealing with State and Federal regulation

Cons

• Niche in its scope
• Likely expensive

TRY PROJECTMATES

Summary: Best Municipal Project Management Software

It’s a tough call.

ClickUp, Monday, and Asana clearly differ from Fieldwire and Projectmates, but they’re all capable of similar results.

For construction projects, Fieldwire and Projectmates are the likely choices. They offer plenty of niche features like building planning, inspection management, bidding management, compliance, and EHS.

ClickUp bridges the gap between more commercial (and cheaper) project management software and these more niche offerings. Asana and Monday are leaner and more streamlined to smaller teams and are more than worthy of their place in this lineup.

The post Best Municipal Project Management Software appeared first on Software For Projects.

Client portals can be used to provide customer support, collaborate on projects, discuss contact terms, agree on a sale price, communicate with your team, and much more. They provide a secure environment where you can collaborate with clients in a variety of ways.

This guide will share the 4 best project management tools that include client portal functionality. These applications are all feature-rich, simple-to-use, and affordable.

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Suite Dash

Suite Dash is a powerful all-in-one project management tool. It has been designed to achieve all of the tasks which small to medium businesses perform regularly, including project and task management, invoice creation, time tracking, appointment making, email marketing, and customer support.

One of the highlights of Suite Dash is its powerful dashboard system, called ONE Dashboard®. This customisable dashboard makes it easy for managers and employees to accomplish day-to-day tasks.

The client portal is highly flexible and highly customisable. Key features include:

• Pre-built dashboards and pages so you can get started quickly
• Access control lists and ability to set client/employee/management roles
• Website-like page presentation of information for client’s ease of use
• Drag and drop page builder which can incorporate many content types
• File and document sharing
• Messaging systems
• Announcements and email notifications
• Invoice payment integration
• Can embed many types of data including social media and videos
• Complete control over what clients are allowed to see
• Dynamic data placeholders which are populated with user data

Suite Dash is fully compatible with mobile devices, which makes it a convenient for clients and businesses with remote employees. Suite Dash is available for as little as $15 per month.

TRY SUITEDASH

Ravetree

Ravetree has created one of the most innovative project management tools to reach the market in the past decade. It provides an intuitive interface that makes it simple to perform common tasks like managing projects, sharing files, tracking time, communicating with clients, managing digital assets, tracking budgets, and receiving sign-offs.

This software is mostly targeted at project driven organisations, like design agencies, engineering companies, accounting firms, and software companies. However, most businesses will find the functionality very useful.

Rave Tree’s client portal component has many excellent features, including:

• Realtime client updates on projects
• Client request submissions
• Realtime chat and emails
• Notifications system
• Sophisticated file sharing
• File approval systems

Pricing starts at $29 per month for a single user.

TRY RAVETREE

Accelo Project Management Software

Accelo has been designed to help businesses in the services industry manage their clients, improve productivity levels, and provide outstanding customer support. It is an all-in-one solution with all of the functionality your business requires to maintain full control over projects and keep clients satisfied.

The company has clearly focussed on ease-of-use with Accelo having a simple user interface which makes it simple to achieve core business objectives. Automation features heavily, with many tasks like creating time sheets and reporting task completion being taken care of by the app.

Key features include:

• Sophisticated project tracking including project profitability estimates
• A single dashboard to bring together all client assets
• Retainer and contract tools
• Time management tools
• Customer support dashboard
• Automated workflows for your employees to follow
• Flexible invoicing
• Automated support ticket assignments
• Sales and quotation tools
• Integration with a wide variety of tools including Jira, Slack, PayPal, Office 365, Mailchimp, Hubspot and more.

Prices start at $39 per user per month.

Check out Accelo: https://www.accelo.com/products/projects

TRY ACCELO

OneDesk Project Management Client Portal

OneDesk combines the functionality of a sophisticated help desk app with a world class project management tool. It provides all of the features that most small to mid-sized businesses require.

OneDesk is particularly good at assigning tasks, which makes it the preferred choice of many IT companies and customer service providers. The app has been designed to be easy-to-use and is highly configurable. A few of the standout features include:

• Collaboration tools which allow clients to leave feedback on key deliverables
• Secure file sharing and file properties
• Support desk functionality
• Knowledge base articles
• Task management tools including task risk management
• Time tracking
• Live chat
• Project portal
• Customisable colours and images
• Secure client login
• Customisable customer viewable items
• Third party app integration, including accounting and invoicing tools, team collaboration tools, 3^rd party form apps, and social media tools

OneDesk Project Management starts at $30 per month for 5 users.

Check out OneDesk: https://www.onedesk.com/customer-apps/project-management-client-portal/

TRY ONEDESK

The post Best Project Management Software With Client Portal appeared first on Software For Projects.

Not keen on using hosted project management software?

Themes

There are not a huge amount of specific project management themes available, I have listed two below, but I would recommend using a fast and quality theme such as Hello Elementor, Astra, Generate Press or Oxygen. Then combining them with a page builder such as Elementor or Thrive Themes and using one of the below plugins to get the Project Management functionality.

Or, if you’re looking for specific WordPress project management themes, give these two a try:

Segments – CRM & Project Management Theme

One of the only dedicated project management themes on the market. This is well designed with great features and has both project management features and a CRM built-in.

Live preview: preview.themeforest.net/item/segments-crm-project-management-wordpress-theme/full_screen_preview/19343172

WOffice – Intranet/Extranet WordPress Theme (with Projects Manager)

This is a highly feature0-rich theme with a project management extension. The team behind it are also constantly updating so you can benefit from regular updates.

Live preview: https://preview.themeforest.net/item/woffice-intranetextranet-wordpress-theme/full_screen_preview/11671924

Plugins

Try out these WordPress project management plugins (tested by the Software For Projects team) to run your projects through your WordPress website:

• WP Project Manager
• TaskBreaker
• UpStream
• Panorama
• SP Project & Document Manager
• Kanban Boards for WordPress
• WP ERP – HRM, CRM & Accounting Solution

The post WordPress Project Management Plugins & Themes appeared first on Software For Projects.

Think of this list like the Youtube artist with 20,000 views after 5 years who has comments like:

“Why does x artist get all the attention when you have real talent?”.

Let’s dive into the most under-rated project management software systems:

1. Glip

If you’re looking for a simple task management software that includes team chat, file storage and calendar, this free tool is epic.

2. Team Gantt

Hands-down, the most beautiful Gantt chart software available (it’s so sad that I’ve come to a point in my life where I’ve used that line)

3. Trigger

Does an excellent job at being an all-in-one project planning and management software system, includes invoicing that links to Xero = making friends with your accountant.

4. Roll

Is like the older cousin of Trigger, the all-in-one where you’ll make friends with your accountant, your board of directors and any other person in your company who is addicted to charts and squiggly lines that move towards the top-right corner.

5. Epic Flow

Is for the planner in your company. They’re the chart-lovers but actually know what’s behind the charts. They love to tweak the machine to squeeze every last bit of productivity out of it…oh, we’re talking about people, aren’t we?

6. Paymo

Another all-in-one project management tool that does a solid job of managing the client relationship from go to whoa. You can time-track, use recurring checklists (I love that feature…can’t believe I said that as well), store files and invite clients over for an in-software chat.

7. Sunsama

Such beautiful software that you might just sign up for because you want less spreadsheets and more gradient colours in your life. The unique approach of slotting tasks between appointments in this calendar-bias project management software, will melt the heart of GCal lovers.

8. Flow

Ah, another design-lovers dream. Flat design, simple navigation and Kanban-style goodness come out of this Asana alternative. Using it is like being gently led into becoming a trendy project manager sans the post-it notes.

9. Cushion

For the solo freelancers out there looking for an all-in-one project management buddy, check out the coloured-block design of Cushion so you can see if you’re on track to sleep under paper money or newspapers this month.

10. Forecast

If you’re the type of person who would love a flight-dashboard style display of how your team is performing, Forecast is your A380. Dials, lists, scope creep…amazing that it doesn’t have in-flight announcements.

11. Tallyfy

You’re a checklist person and you want everyone to be checklist people. Check out Tallyfy if you love repeatable processes and ensuring that everything gets done near-perfectly. Get work done perfectly 100% of time, some of the time.

12. Roadmap

Going longer-term? Check out Roadmap for a visually-beautiful way to plan your year, your important tasks, your milestones, your events and see the status of the project. If Mathilde from Front likes it, we like it

The post 12 Best & Most Underrated Project Management Software Systems appeared first on Software For Projects.