For last two months (since 3rd Sept 2012, to be specific), we have been engrossed in working on new features of ZilicusPM 5.0, the upcoming version of ZilicusPM – web-based project management software. ZilicusPM 5.0 will be launched in next week. ZilicusPM 5.0 is the result of hard work we have been putting in collaboration with our customers to make their project management experience easier and better for entire team.

ZilicusPM 5.0 is going to be yet more engaging, comprehensive and intuitive for project teams. I am happy to share a quick preview of features being introduced in ZilicusPM 5.0.

Online Meeting Manager

Organizing meeting – The pain areas :  Meetings are inevitable part of project planning and delivery. Mostly critical decisions of projects are made during these meetings. Scheduling meetings is just one aspect of organizing it; conducting a meeting is another aspect however, a lot needs to be managed after meeting is conducted. You need to have agreement on what was discussed in meeting (MoM), enlist action items, track these action items, update status of action items. 

• Project managers are frustrated tracking emails, tracking meetings, keeping log of what was discussed, what were action items pointed out in a  meeting, what happened to all these action items.
• Meeting invites, MoM emails, action item list get lost in emails, spreadsheets
• Mis-communication isn’t infrequent, project managers often complain of not able to communicate latest change in meetings, agenda, MoM, action items with team members, forget about being able track all these
• There is no one central place to view all meetings, MoMs, action items.

How ZilicusPM will help you:  One place for all meetings | First of its kind in online PM tool 

ZilicusPM helps you to organize project meetings, share meeting agenda, send calendar events along with notification emails, record & share minutes of meetings, create action items, track & update action items.

1. Schedule a meeting, send a calendar invite to participants
2. Distribute meeting agenda
3. Record minutes of meeting
4. Create action items to track
5. Distribute minutes of meeting & action items to attendees
6. Now you will have a central place for all project meetings

Project Meeting Invite & Agenda

The meeting event will appear in Outlook, Google Calendar, Apple Calendar, IBM Lotus Calendar and most of the email/calendar clients that you may use.

Minutes of Meeting

Meeting organizer can create action items based on meeting discussions, he/she can set due date for all these and assign to other users.

Meeting Action Item

Everything about home page

Insanely simplest way to view, track & update your activities

We have completely redesigned ZilicusPM home page for team members. It is informative and engaging, making ZilicusPM super easy for project team members to use.

It has been our constant endeavor to make ZilicusPM insanely simple to use. The home page in ZilicusPM 5.0 makes it incredibly easier for project team members.

Project Management Software – home Page in ZilicusPM

1. Project team member when he/she will login – will be able to view task, issues, risks, meeting action items pending on his/her name on the home page;
2. Update all pending activities in the same screen without having to jump inside the project workspace
3. ZilicusPM home page is redesigned like social media sites like Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter providing useful updates – in terms of count of number of tasks, issues, risks and action items pending on your name, quick update buttons. It also shows new discussions started, comments added by team members on the tasks assigned to you.
4. The calendar at the bottom of the page will also keep you on top of the things you need to do in current week
5. Also, you can easily navigate to recently accessed projects, check your calendar, view support tickets, create To –Do list items and update your profile.

Critical Path Method (CPM)

Core project management feature

This features though may not be used very commonly, it is regarded as a core project planning practice to identify all activities which are on critical path such that a change in schedule of these activities can impact the final delivery date of the project.

Critical Path in ZilicusPM

ZilicusPM shows you activities on critical path by highlighting those in a Gantt chart

Project schedule baseline

Users can create project baseline, compare planned schedule with baseline.

Many times what you plan does not get materialize as it is. A project plan needs to change as circumstances require it to change. Most of the cases, these changes are unavoidable. At best you can compare how this change is deviating from the original plan and will impact earlier commitment. Such comparison helps in honing your planning skills, equips you to make realistic plan in future.

Project Baseline Schedule in ZilicusPM

ZilicusPM 5.0 lets you create a given schedule as a baseline and compare any subsequent changes to project schedule verses baseline. You can visually see this comparison in the Gantt chart.

Co-Branding

This feature has been requested by some of our customers. Now you have option to upload your company logo & it will appear in ZilicusPM. So every time your organization’s user will login they will be able to see, your company logo in ZilicusPM.

Enhancements

Beside above features, we have added many enhancements in ZilicusPM 5.0 like configurable email settings, out-of-the-box provision to set due-dates for project issues and risks,

The official announcement of release of ZilicusPM 5.0 will be made in the next week.

Of course, we are not going to stop here, we have already started working on ZilicusPM 5.1 & ZilicusPM 6.0. So you can expect more innovative and useful ways of managing your projects.

Do you want to be part of ZilicusPM community? – click here to sign up for ZilicusPM – online project management today.

About Zilicus

Zilicus offers the best project portfolio management tool ZilicusPM, with robust project management tools capabilities and easy ways to track project management KPI,

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