Zoho Projects Update : Multiple Admins, Task - Documents/Forums Mapping etc
Arvind July 22, 2008 05: 41 am
Zoho Projects underwent an update just now and the below features are now available.
Multiple Admins : Till now, Zoho Projects followed the single admin concept. But from now on, there can be multiple admins. The one who created the Zoho Projects account is assigned the super-admin / portal owner role. And he/she can designate other members as Administrators. These administrators have all the privileges as the portal owner except upgrading/downgrading the Zoho Projects account & changing the credit card details.
Task-Documents and Task-Forums Mapping : Along with adding Notes to a task (which is useful for knowing a task’s status etc), documents uploaded to Zoho Projects and discussion forums created for a project can now be associated with tasks. Multiple documents/forums can be associated with a task and a forum/document can be associated with any number of tasks.
Managers can add Clients : Project members in Manager role can now add (external) client members to the projects they manage. This gives a Manager fuller control over the project(s) he/she manages.
Separate iCal link for Google Calendar : Google Calendar follows the VEVENT component versus the VTODO component that needs to be followed for tasks/tasklists/milestones. To support GCal, Zoho Projects now has a separate GCal link. Clicking on the links, you can download an .ics file which you can import into your iCalendar / Google Calendar.
Test drive the new features in Zoho Projects and we would be glad hearing your comments.
Popularity: 14% [?]
Automatically syncing to Google Calendar would be even nicer!
Tim : Thanks for the nice suggestion! We will try having this in a future update.
Would love to try associating docs with tasks- but I’m not seeing how to do it?
Dusty : Click on the ‘Task Actions’ icon that’s to the right of any task. You will get a pop-up with three tabs - ‘Add Notes’, ‘Associate Forums’ & ‘Associate Documents’. Choose the appropriate tab & associate tasks or forums to a task.
Great additions, i’m just in a process of transforming a small design firm to work with web based tools and zoho is one of my first choices.
several things though :
1. I’ve used the gcal like and for some reason it put a whole day event titled “busy” on my gcal - is it a bug? or this is the new feature?
2. Using the documents in tasks etc. is very useful, but they have several issues which I would love to know how to overcome:
a. a design company which works with very large files, simply can’t handle a web based file storage for daily use
b. they are little bit concerned re. having the documents stored outside of the company
c. many of their outside/outsourcing partners use gdocs, so the documents actually reside on another web based file system
is there a way where instead of uploading the files into Zoho projects, to create a link to the local file store, or to gdocs document? i know they can always craft the url by hand (file://.. or cut&paste the gdocs url) but i really would love to have in the upload file dialog the ability to just “create a link” or to put a URL there for external docs, while keeping all the rest of the functionality (task->docs assignment etc.) in place.
(yes, they know that in this way, they will not have external access to the files, but that’s ok with them)
thnx,
Naor
I do not think the current task management in projects is up to snuff usability wise, in fact to be honest it is not good and is a far cry from the good task management in Zoho CRM. For so many reasons. Intuitively, one wants to click on a task to drill down into it. Not possible. When you create a task you want to add notes to is. Not possible. Instead I have to create and save the task. Only THEN can I click on an obscure little icon that allows me to add documents or notes. Many users won’t even realize there are notes or documents associated with the task. All a user should have to do is click on a task and they should then see notes, documents etc.
I could go on, but I hope to see huge improvements in Zoho Projects usability, to bring it in line with the usability of Zoho CRM.
Thank You
Naor : Thanks for the feedback. We’ll check the GCal issue here & find out if something’s wrong on our side. Regarding documents in tasks, nice suggestions which we’ll try to implement. We’ll have a new category ‘Other Documents’ where you can associate documents outside your Zoho Projects account. For now, you can use the ‘Notes’ area for giving the external document details.
David : Each task has an ‘Advanced Options’ area which should ideally have the Notes, Documents & Discussions. We tried this first but couldn’t get the UI to our satisfaction as there were already so many options listed there (Start/End Dates, Duration, Priority, % Completed, Send Email Notification). However, we will try once again in having all the details shown in the task drill down. Thanks for your suggestion!
Arvind,
I agree with David that the option of entering comments on a task should be automatic - you shouldn’t have to save then go back to enter comments. Usually, the tasker cannot express a task completely with only a title. You almost always have to give extra detail to the taskee. I’m very glad you at least added the capability - I almost considered finding another product because of the lack of the ability to attach notes.
I think the current implementation of having to mouseover the “doc” icon to see the note is good, but I also agree that it’s not very clear when there is a note attached.
I suggest the following:
On the left you already have a list of icons that appear when the task is moused over - one to edit the task, one to move it, and one to delete it. You could move the “doc” icon here too.
If a task has a note attached to it, you could display a note-like icon on the right of the task. If there is a document attached, show the usual paper clip icon. If a forum is associated, show a unique icon for that. These icons would be always visible - not only when moused over. The note would display when mousing over the note icon, the title of the document would display when mousing over the document icon (and a link to download) and the title of the forum and a link to it would display when mousing over the forum icon.
Alternatively, you could combine the “doc” icon into the pencil icon. When the user clicks the pencil icon to edit the task, they’re shown the main tab which has the task name, task comment, and the advanced options below. There would be separate tabs to attach a document or a forum.
I’d be happy to discuss the improvements over the phone if you’d like. I’m building a very visual product myself and find it fun to think through UI. I’ve just started to use Zoho projects - I’m sure I’ll have more comments
But, by and large, you have a great product at a great price. Thanks!
Tim
Tim : Thanks a lot for your suggestions and appreciation! We’ll sure have your points in mind when we rework on the Tasks module.
I would like the site to send an email to the task owner each time a comment is left on a task (similar to the option I have in Forums). Often a note is the missing piece of information they need to finish the task.
Steve : Nice requirement. We will have this in one of our updates soon. For now, you can try using the RSS feature. Subscribe to the RSS feed in your email client and you will get an email whenever a Note gets added.
We use Basecamp now but I’m not thrilled with it. I’m evaluating Zoho along with some other pm tools. I’m leaning toward Zoho but one thing I like about Basecamp and a couple of the others is the ability to limit what clients can see. There are certain discussions, tasks, etc. that should be for internal users only. As far as I can tell Zoho does not allow company users to limit what they can see. Am I missing something?