The development of version 7 was focused on the inspirations of the more than 30,000 InLoox PM users in over 40 countries worldwide. “We selected the most innovative and practical features out of the ideas and requests of our customers all over the globe and integrated them into InLoox PM 7”, states InLoox Managing Director, Dr. Andreas Tremel.
Many innovations in the time planning
The center piece of the new version is the new time planning that adjusts flexibly to different project planning methods. New planning features make sure that even complex projects can be planned realistically in InLoox PM 7.
With the new dependencies “Simultaneous start” and “Simultaneous end”, users can define logical relations between planning elements in a very practical way. Positive and negative lags between activities and milestones allow the representation of overlaps and waiting times in the project plan. The new backward scheduling enables users to develop their project plan based on the desired due date. Slacks show exactly how far elements in the time planning can be postponed before they affect the planned duration of the project. InLoox PM 7 then calculates the optimal project plan from the users’ specification.
A number of new features support project managers in keeping the overview of large project plans. Elements in the time planning can be highlighted in individual colors, e.g. in order to mark responsibilities or priorities. Now, users can filter, sort or group the project plan to focus on important details. The new quick selection of resources offers a compact pre-selection of project resources that are used regularly. This way, resources can be found quickly without searching large address books. This might be an advantage especially to large companies.
For the first time, InLoox PM contains a skill management that allows project planners to browse the skills of their team members. Hence, they can find the suitable employees quickly and make sure they have the right people at the right place in their project. Also, shift, part-time or weekend work as well as different working times and holidays at different company sites can be modeled with individual working time calendars. InLoox PM 7 enables users to handle complex and large projects; but users can still develop simple project plans in a quick and comfortable way.
Even more ease of use
Another emphasis of the new InLoox PM version lies on the improved Microsoft Outlook 2010 user interface design. The developers of InLoox PM went at great lengths to make project management even easier. Numerous small innovations make the new version even more comfortable. They include e.g. the Undo feature, the possibility to edit planning elements directly in the line and multi-editing of several elements.
The project time tracking has also been complemented. An integrated stop watch enables users to track personal time efforts to-the-minute and to post their working time directly to the selected project.
Project documentation becomes much faster and more comfortable with InLoox PM 7. At this point, the software shows its strengths in combination with Microsoft Outlook. Project documents can be emailed directly from the central document folder without going the long way round. The folder now also offers an up-to-date overview of all documents and links in use. This enables users to navigate directly to the linked project element with only one click. The new version also offers an interactive document preview.
Furthermore, InLoox PM 7 supports the project team communication. By using the new project comments, team members can exchange notes on the project as formatted text, link or image. In the project history, the flow of information can be tracked anytime. Team members can now also complement activities, time tracking entries, budgets or documents with their own information. Notes can be individually edited with formatted text, colors, symbols, images and hyperlinks.
InLoox is now InLoox PM
The update of the project management software has not only been furnished with many new features, it also has a new name affix now. “InLoox” is now “InLoox PM”. This reflects the focus on project management. The price, however, has remained unchanged. The single user version InLoox PM Personal is still available at 390 euros. The multi-user versions InLoox PM Workgroup Server and InLoox PM Enterprise Server start at 890 and 1,390 euros.
InLoox PM 7 is now available for download: www.inloox.com/v7