We had a demonstration of the software a month or so ago and were very impressed with your software's capabilities.  One item we did not think we fully developed was the project management section.  Our two project leaders want the ability to quickly see what tasks are currently assigned to each worker and what they are scheduled to work on today, this week, next week, etc.  Additionally, we may need to re-prioritize the tasks based on new market demands.  The worker needs to provide feedback as to what tasks are complete and what percentage is complete or left to do.  Did we miss something in the demonstration?  Is this possible with your software?

I have recently been tasked with setting up project management, and your product seems to be more of a ticketing system on steroids.  I have the same need above plus:

Critical path items (depends on task #)  If the depending item changes it due date, then this item needs to be rescheduled automatically.

Change Management (With Agile, you may need to move back one step in your work flow).  If you can do it, then do a video please.

MS project style view of the tasks for managing the time line, LOEs, assignments.

Managing User work week hours (picking how many hours per week a programmer can be productive i.e. 22 hours)

With the items above and my list, you have a sale.  Otherwise I need to look at your product as a great ticketing system and compare it with products like Jira.

Hope you respond soon!!!!
 

 

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Tom Miller

Mark, you didn't miss anything.  What you're asking for is exactly what the User Dashboard was designed to do.  Run the User Dashboard and you can quickly filter items by assignee, status, priority, due date, etc.  Date fields have the ability to do this week, next week and so on.

For easily re-prioritizing a collection of items, from the Defects/Features/Tasks or Incidents tabs, select the items that you want to reprioritize, then use the multi-item edit from the toolbar menu to change the selected items' priority or any other field.

Each user can also provide information about the percent complete for each item they are working on.  You can do this a couple of ways.  Users can edit the item to say an item is X% complete or you can automatically fill the percent complete field based on the workflow of an item.  For example, when an item is put into "Ready for Testing" it might be considered 80% complete.  You can have the workflow do this for you automatically.

Hope that helps.

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Hamid Shojaee
Read the Ship Software OnTime Blog
Axosoft, LLC

Tom, OnTime doesn't try to provide the same functionality that a Microsoft Project provides in the way of Gant charts, resource management and leveling.  Instead, it's intended to be a team-collaboration tool to help organize items and move them from inception to completion.

You can definitely move items back and forth on the workflow - the same way you change an items workflow, you can change it both forwards and backwards (you can also restrict it to not allow that, but the default behavior allows items to go from any workflow step to any other).

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Hamid Shojaee
Read the Ship Software OnTime Blog
Axosoft, LLC

I am a new user but I have to agree with the previous posters. Please consider extending the project management features because I really think it will pay off. At this moment we are reviewing whether we should go for OnTime and the main objection is the fact that subtasks are missing and it is impossible to generate timelines (and shifting all dates easily). You might want to take a peep at Teamdirection's Intelligantt (desktop view) because if you could integrate little of that functionality you would have one hell of a product! There are a lot of project management types that will vote against your product just because of the fact so little project management/reporting features are not available and that does not imply you need to mimic all of the MS Project functionality!

I just want to comment regarding Ontime's Project Management usefulness.  For context let me say I'm an MBA, certified PMP and owner of a small software company. And I'm familiar with MS Project.

There are several project management systems that offer more, or at least alternative, features specifically targeted at project management.  As projects get larger, longer, and more complex, these become more important.  And they provide features on two fronts: one is managing information, the other is reporting information. One or the other may be more important to some organizations.

However, I find Ontime to be a great advantage over these systems for the great majority of companies working on more moderate-sized projects. More users can be involved and understand this application and what it means for their work. There are features to control this, and assist this where desired. In my organization I try to keep the management of projects from becoming the biggest project. We push responsibility and authority down, rather than concentrating it in a staff of project managers, and it is Ontime that gives our staff the tool they need.  We try to operate quickly using Agile methodologies, so big projects and long-term plans are not a requirement.  Instead we define smaller projects with shorter deliveries instead of large projects with multiple features.

When I do feel the need for "more tool", I believe the solution would be in more and better printed reports, although we've put this off so far. But that would probably satisfy the larger company requirements to a point as well.

 

Hello Patrick,

Thank you for your kind words about OnTime, and for sharing your personal experience with the product.

We love to hear from our customers about their experience with the product, because that's precisely the feedback we need when deciding the direction to take future versions of OnTime. We're always looking for ways to make OnTime a better tool for our customers, and this community forum is one way we accomplish that by allowing users like yourself the opportunity to express ideas and give us the feedback we need.

If you ever have any specific ideas or suggestions about ways to improve OnTime, please feel free to send them to our development team through our Customer Portal.

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Thank you,

Tom Harder
Axosoft Support
support@axosoft.com
1.800.653.0024 option 3
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