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Today we're excited to end the 'mystery' and announce Zoho Projects 2.0. What is so exciting about this launch? It will change how teams get work done.

Remember the days when teams had their documents in a share, their discussions through mail in some ancient mailing-list software, the project plan in Microsoft Project, any relevant content on the company's intranet, and chatted with people on the team using a variety of IM clients? What happened when you needed to find something? What about when someone new just joined the team and needed to 'ramp up'? And sure, 'big' announcements always found their way, but what about the stuff that happens on a daily basis - the gears that move the team - how do you keep track of those?

Well, of course you remember those days, because they are actually these days. That's how most people still collaborate today. But no more. Zoho Projects brings all of that together into a single package of teamwork nirvana.

Zoho Projects 2.0 goes beyond the traditional 'project management' space and helps people work together to achieve a common goal. It's not just about tasks, milestones and priorities (but we do that too of course). It's about how people interact and what they need while working on something - whether it's a local team or a distributed team, an internal team, or a customer-facing one. Many times when we hear 'Project' he instantly think of a PMI-certified guy with a huge Gantt chart taped in his office door. But every team is always working in some sort of project, whether that's formally defined or not. And that is where Zoho Projects helps.

So, why 'social'? Social because we realize that getting work done is less about the work or 'the plan', and more about the people that work to make that plan happen - and how they make it happen. The new Project Stream makes it easier for people to stay on top of what's going on with their team and their project. Teams can keep all their relevant documents and files neatly organized in a centralized place. And it's not just about files, but also about the discussions that are going on around the project, or the content (and in these days that means more likely than not web content). And of course also about those IM chats.

Alright, I could go on about this for days. Instead, let me jump to the juicy stuff. Here's what's to love about Zoho Projects 2.0:

Plan your projects

Keep your projects organized: Milestones, Tasks and Tasks Lists
Set-up dependencies, assign ownership, priorities and more
Import MPP files - Plan in Microsoft Project, collaborate in Zoho

Collaborate with your team

The Project Stream keeps you up-to-date about the latest activities going on around your project
Set your User Status to let your team members know what you're working on (you can think of that like a private Twitter for your Project)
Keep all your meetings, milestones and tasks organized in the shared calendar
Store your files and documents in one place, keep track of the changes with the version history
Integration with the award-winning Zoho Office - so you can create/edit/view documents using just your browser
Discussions - interactive forums make everyone a part of the conversation - and keep important topics and decisions available for everyone to see
Create team and project web pages with the integrated Wiki
My personal favorite - the always-on, embedded chat means you can chat with your entire team - or with only one person using just your browser. And it also keeps a log of what's been said so you can refer back to past conversation. And you can also setup different 'chat rooms' - one for every topic you're discussing.

Track your progress

The Project Dashboard offers a quick at-a-glance view of upcoming tasks and milestones, meetings and whatever has been happening around your projects.
Reports visually represent your team progress against your pre-defined goals
And finally, for those teams with external customers, the Timesheet makes it easy to log and track who has spent how much time doing what. But it doesn't stop there, you can automatically generate and send the invoice using Zoho Invoice (or export the data to use any other invoicing medium that suits you).

If you want to see more of Zoho Projects in action before you sign up, below is a ~3 min video with a good overview. You can also view the screenshot tour we have prepared for you.

We are sure that after trying Zoho Projects for a month you will wonder how your team ever got stuff done without it. We actually used Zoho Projects 2.0 while building Zoho Projects 2.0 and it proved invaluable - we'll have more about that later.

Rodrigo

Announcing The Social Way To Get Things Done: Zoho Projects 2.0

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