02 Oct Microsoft Project 2016 Highlights
What’s New in Microsoft Project Online 2016?
For those of you on Project Online, you can take advantage of all of the new & improved capabilities of Project 2016. This release includes significant updates to Project Professional, Project Pro for Office 365 and Project Online – delivering on some of the most requested capabilities: Resource Management and Resource Capacity Planning. Here are a few of the new features that will get Resource Managers excited:
Resource Engagement Through Workflow:
If your organization has struggled with process and structure for requesting resources, Project Online 2016 may be the answer. Now, Project Managers can make resource engagement requests systematically.
Once submitted, the request will trigger a workflow and will be sent to the Resource Manager for approval. The RM can then approve or reject the request. The Project Manager can view status of the request at any time ensuring that they will always have a real-time update on the request. This feature takes a big leap towards efficiency and smooths out the process for making requests, eliminating manual processes and hallway conversations.
Resource Manager Approvals:
Resource Managers and Project Managers have different needs and therefore may require a different user experience. Resource Managers typically have one goal, optimizing resource assignments to get the right people on the right work to deliver maximum value to the organization. Now, they can easily approve and reject resource engagement requests from one location while also understanding capacity utilization of their resources.
Make Better Resource Management Decisions with Heat Maps:
Making good resource management decisions is absolutely critical to the business. To ensure resources are fully utilized without being over allocated and that they are working on the tasks that best suit their skillets for maximum productivity, Project Online 2016 offers improved visualization tools including heat maps and reports that will give management the tools they need to make the right resource management decisions.
New and Improved Timelines:
Every Project Manager has to communicate status of their projects. In the past, using Project Manager tools such as Gantt Charts might not have been the best answer for some. Now Project Managers can use Timelines to communicate status to the team or management. In addition, they can have multiple Timelines representing user defined milestones and tasks. You can even drag and drop between Timelines. Microsoft has also made it easy to deliver these Timelines in PPT by creating an easy Save to PPT option that accommodates editable objects.
An All New Way to Search for Help:
Wouldn’t it be great if you could ask for help and not only get the answer, but be able to perform the function needed right then and there? Well, now you can. Project Online’s new Tell Me feature allows you to search for help AND once you find the answer you need, you can perform the action immediately, right from the feature itself!
Office Add-ins Just Got Easier:
If you haven’t taken advantage of the Office Add-ins you might be missing out on functionality that may be helpful to you and your team. One of the reasons Project Online is so great, is that it is scalable, flexible and customizable to meet your teams’ needs. Now you can leverage Office Add-ins to add additional functionality and the add-ins will have full Read/Write access to the Project you are working on.
So as you can see, Project Online 2016 has a lot to offer and it’s available now for Office 365 users. When you are ready to leverage all of the new features, you can activate the features when you see fit.
Learn more:
Microsoft Project 2016 now available online as part of office 365
