What’s the difference between tasks and to-dos?

Okay, let’s get that out of the way first.

• Tasks have start dates and end dates and dependencies. To-dos don’t. They are rather simplistic in nature, the kind of stuff you often forget.
• Both tasks and to-dos are assigned to resources.
• To-Dos by nature are simple, and we’ve kept them that way. It’s quick and easy to create them, group them and assign them.

Let me show you how easy it is to use Deskera To-Dos:

• Creating a To-Do:

  Describe the to-do and assign it to a resource. If you don’t specify a resource, it’s assigned to you by default.

  

• Creating a group:

  Just enter a name for the Group. Drag and drop to-dos into groups or to reorder them.

  

• Marking as complete:

  You check them and they are marked as complete. It is this simple.

  

Tasks are undoubtedly the focal point in Project Management. However all projects still revolve around countless meetings, briefings and other events. Today, more often than not, people rely on individual calendars to manage their time, which differ by platform and features even. Although compatibility and integration capabilities are greatly improved, we still end up shuffling between multiple desktop/web-based/mobile calendars.

Hence the inclusion of a powerful calendaring and scheduling engine in Deskera. Each project has its dedicated calendar(s), all events are shared among team members. No more sending countless invitation emails, waiting for RSVPs, etc.

Let me show you how simple and effective it is to use Deskera’s calendar:

• Creating New Calendars:

  • Multiple calendars can be created and project events can be classified by their nature for efficient organization.
  • Color coding of calendars helps you to identify the events at a glance when you overlay calendars.

  

• Creating New Events:

  • Details such as location of the event, priority and your status can also be specified along with the event date and time.
  • To create events, you can either drag or drop across time intervals or just click on the ‘New Event’ button.

  

• Multiple Views:

  You can view your events across different time-intervals such as daily, by workweek/week and monthly as well.

  Month View:

  

  Workweek view:

  

  You can drag and drop events in the workweek view as well as shown above.

• Agenda:

  • Your agenda displays a list of all your events lined up for the next two weeks.
  • The event priorities are also displayed, so you can allocate your time and attention accordingly.
  • Whenever new project events are created, team members are notified on the dashboard.
  • Project calendars help you organize all your events better in one single place while notifying all your team members of the same.

  

Let me take you through the Project Plan in Deskera

The Task Grid lists out all your project tasks along with their duration, dates, predecessors and resources. Now it not only looks like an Excel sheet, but acts like one too. We find it much easier to edit task details in the cells in the classic Excel fashion rather than having to

• Click to open a form
• Find the fields you want to change and then key in the information and finally
• Click to close the form (and some people seem to throw in a confirmation message everywhere just for kicks)

On the right, we have the Gantt chart. An interactive one, you drag and drop tasks and links much like Microsoft Project, but the coolest thing is that it’s truly collaborative, REAL-TIME. Much like Google Docs. We weren’t kidding about combining the best of both worlds.

Now let’s move on to the toolbar:

• New template:Many projects within a company tend to have a set of common tasks, hence the inclusion of templates. Templates not only make it easier to enter the same tasks across projects, but at the same time ensure consistency across projects, making it easier to compare performance. So select those common tasks in the plan and click ‘New Template’, give it a name and you are done.
• Insert Template:To insert tasks from a template into you plan, select a blank row, click ‘Insert Template’  and select the one you want.
• New Task:Adds a blank row in the grid where you can start keying in the information directly
• Indent and Outdent:Indenting a task pushes it to a lower level while outdenting it promotes the task to a higher level. So when you indent a task, it’ll become a ’sub task’ of the task above it and outdenting it would make it a ‘parent’ task of the one below it.
• Show Progress:Displays the progress(% complete) of all the tasks on the Gantt chart.
  
• Overdue Tasks:Highlights only the tasks which are overdue on the Gantt Chart.
  
• Show Priority:Displays the priority level(High/Moderate/Low) of all the tasks
• Show Resources:Displays color-coded resources for all tasks on the Gantt Chart.
• Task Information:You can update and edit task information by clicking here. Update the task’s % completion and attach notes as well.
• Import/Export Plan:Import/export your existing plans from Microsoft Project. Both .mpp and .mpx files are supported.
• Reports:Generate extensive reports on your project’s status. You can generate reports on activities, resources, milestones and you can also track your project costs.

Get your own hands-on experience at demo.deskera.com.

First off – Deskera makes a fabulous Web Based Microsoft Project Viewer. If you happen to use Microsoft Project, you would know how painful it is to use it in a collaborative (read: ease of use for teams of 2 people or more) way. Hence, Deskera. 

Besides being a fabulous Web Based Microsoft Project Viewer, Deskera also makes a good Project Management System. Today’s project management software can be broken down into two categories:

1) Project Planning Software – Microsoft Project, OpenWorkbench, etc.

No doubt, Microsoft Project is a really powerful project planning tool , but 80% of the users use only 20% of its numerous features. It also happens to be too expensive for most SMEs, and in this age, the fact that it is desktop based means it’s not really great for collaboration.

2) Project Execution Software– Basecamp, Central Desktop, Liquid Planner, Zoho Projects, etc.

Web-based project execution software works when it comes to light-weight collaboration. It facilitates quick and efficient management of tasks and to-dos.

But unfortunately, projects are not only about remembering the milk. What’s lacking is the ability to plan your projects, define dependencies and analyze project performance. No system can generate reports for data it doesn’t have.

Deskera – 100% Project Management, 0% Compromise.

With Deskera, we have tried to tightly integrate the best of Enterprise 1.0 Project Planning and Enterprise 2.0 Collaboration tools. We believe Deskera is a complete solution with powerful project planning capabilities, collaboration tools to get the work done and continuous project and resource performance appraisal.

Project planning

• Import/export existing plans from Microsoft Project
• Create tasks, define dependencies
• Allocate resources based on costs and availability
• Intuitive and interactive real-time Gantt Charts

Collaboration

• Social Networking
• Discussion Forums
• Project Calendars and To-Dos
• Messaging and Chat

Performance Reporting

• A powerful, yet intuitive, dashboard
• At a glance project ‘health’ charts
• In-depth custom Project Status reports – resource, time and cost.
• Export reports to multiple formats

We thrive on customer feedback and are offering Deskera completely FREE for a limited time. These customers can continue to use Deskera free of cost even after we introduce a paid-for version. Sign up here

Deskera goes live today. You can signup for Deskera here: signup.deskera.com

Feedback: We need your feedback. Just drop a quick note on feedback.deskera.com if you have something to say.