Zoho releases Zoho projects 2.0

PLEASANTON, USA: Zoho has announced the immediate availability of Zoho Projects 2.0, the latest version of the company’s online project management and team collaboration solution.

With Zoho Projects 2.0, users gain a host of collaborative features designed to help teams get projects done.

“Planning and reporting is just one facet of working on a project,” said Rodrigo Vaca, director of marketing at Zoho.

“More than anything, teams need a tool that supports the collaboration needed to successfully execute their projects. We designed Zoho Projects 2.0 to be a project utility where users across the office and around the world can work together on their projects, providing a place to keep all their files, chat, wiki, forums, and other materials," he added.

Profile of Zoho Projects 2.0

Zoho Projects 2.0 offers users standard project management features such as tasks and milestones, reports, time sheets, and online calendars. However, the strength of Zoho Projects 2.0 is its ability to take users beyond project planning to project completion. To that end, Zoho has integrated multiple Zoho services that greatly enhance team collaboration under the Zoho Projects umbrella and added several other new features.

These are the most important Zoho Projects 2.0 features:

Project Planning

* Manage Projects by creating milestones, tasks, task lists, priorities, completion, dependencies and ownership.
* Import from Microsoft Project gives users the option of planning a project in Microsoft Project and then easily tracking and executing that project in Zoho Projects 2.0.

Project Collaboration

* Project Stream is a visual representation that lets users see the latest activities pertaining to their project.
* User Status provides a Twitter-like interface where users can securely publish their latest update to their entire team.
* Shared Project Calendar keeps everyone apprised of upcoming deadlines and meetings.
* Centralized File Sharing with multiple folders, tags, search and versioning.
* Integration with the award-winning Zoho Office allows users to create/edit/view documents using just their browser.
* Discussions through interactive forums provide a space where everyone can be part of a long-term conversation.
* Project Wiki lets users maintain all the project-related content in a centralized place where other project members can contribute easily.
* Group Chat and "always on" Chat Room give users a single place where they can go to quickly discuss issues. Multiple chat rooms can be opened to discuss different issues.

Project Tracking

* The Project Dashboard offers a quick at-a-glance view of the upcoming tasks, milestones, meetings and anything else happening around the project.
* Multiple Reports allows the project manager and the team to visually evaluate the progress against the plan.
* Timesheet makes it easy for teams with external customers to log and track time spent by individuals on specific tasks. In addition, integration with Zoho Invoice makes it easy to create, send and track invoices.