Introducing Zoho Projects 8.0: Bridging the divide between functionality and user experience

It's a bright, lazy Sunday morning. You roll out of bed, and drag your weary self towards the kitchen, heading straight towards your coffee maker.  But in place of your old, simple machine, there's a shinier contraption laden with varied brewing options - a meaningful birthday gift from your colleagues. At first, all of the new options look enticing; but, navigating the poorly labeled, illogically placed buttons just to make your coffee the way you like it leaves you frustrated.

The same goes for the athlete using a fitness tracker with unintelligible reports, or the photographer using a camera with advanced functions yet convoluted controls. The functionalities are there, but user experience is significantly compromised, leaving behind a throng of disgruntled end users.

At Zoho Projects, this is exactly what we aim to eliminate. The newest version of Zoho Projects is built with a mission to tighten the gaps between functionality and user experience, for a platform that's a joy to work on. And we firmly believe that Zoho Projects 8.0 can do just that!

Numerous brain storming sessions, meticulous implementation of your collective feedback, and hours of fine-tuning later, Zoho Projects 8.0 is up and running, boasting a brand new UI that illustrates convenience and familiarity. With an editable worksheet view, industry-specific templates, an upgraded mobile app, and more, the 8th version has something for everyone—old users and new, from diverse industries, and working from the office or remotely. Let's dive into the plethora of benefits that Zoho Projects 8.0 has to offer.

Navigation made breezy

No more dragging your mouse and hovering your cursor to navigate or edit information; the arrow keys on your keyboard get the job done in no time. Whether you're adding milestones or tasks, creating a full-blown project from the ground up, or customizing project details, a few taps over your keyboard is all it takes. This means you don't have to open the details page every time. You can also move your tasks across tasklists and milestones, your subtasks across tasks, and add predecessor and successor tasks for dependencies from the task detail page, enabling you to work less while achieving so much more.

You Gantt go wrong

We've switched up the placement of the Gantt chart. You can now access it directly on the list view, and also bulk update work items right from the chart itself. Daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly project timeline views are supported, allowing you to visualize work through the right perspective so you're always on track. In addition to the regular Gantt reports for tasks, you can also generate Gantt reports specific to milestones and projects, and export this data whenever you want.

Customize to your taste

The customize icon on the top right corner of the screen allows you to add custom fields easily. We're also offering more than 20 project templates tailored to suit the needs of various industries, saving you the hassle of creating projects from scratch. Plus, you can create and customize private layouts for certain projects while leaving other projects untouched. Make every project a winner, with much greater ease.

Automate it whenever, however

We've brought automation to the list view as well. No more heading to the Setup page every time you wish to create workflow rules for projects or tasks. Automate tasks like performance reviews, quality assurance testing, or inventory audits and save precious time. Get your automation game on and make routine tasks work your way.

Enhanced UI for an elevated user experience

You can now make changes, edit project details, bulk update work items, or include comments and attachments right from the Kanban board view. On right clicking modules like List, Kanban, or Gantt view, a contextual menu is revealed that lets you perform relevant actions, like pulling up project details, cloning tasks, or customizing colors of Gantt bars. A dedicated project detail page opens up if you're in need of project-specific information, or wish to make any edits to your project.

Uniform user experience on mobile

We're also bringing the List view experience to mobile devices and tablets (List view is now available in both Android and iOS stores), so you can enjoy a seamless, standardized user experience across platforms. Additionally, you now have access to project dashboards and the Calendar module on both Android and iOS platforms. And there's still more on the way!

An AI-driven future for Projects

Witness Zia and OpenAI interwoven, and experience the weaving of captivating content for project titles and descriptions, announcements, and posts. You can also creatively regenerate, summarize or enhance your existing content in the blink of an eye. 

In the future, embedded with human language understanding capabilities, Zia will soon let you string any combination of words on the search panel, and instantly get you contextual, intuitive search results.

Creating projects and delivering them shouldn't feel like a drag; it should feel like bringing home the trophy everyday. Turn every project into a success with Zoho Projects 8.0. Your projects are in the very best hands!

Please note that Zoho Projects 7.0 will no longer be accessible after March 31, 2024, so we strongly recommend switching to the latest version at your earliest convenience. We can't wait for you to try it! Let us know what your favorite features are in the new version—we look forward to your comments and feedback.

It's simpler, it's convenient, it's Zoho Projects 8.0!

Comments

29 Replies to Introducing Zoho Projects 8.0: Bridging the divide between functionality and user experience

  1. Hi team. I congratulate you for constantly improving the platform. A question, is it possible to mark the registration of hours in tasks as mandatory? thank you

    1. Hey Felipe! Thank you so much :) If the field is default, I'm afraid you cannot mark it as mandatory; you can however always add an additional field from the task layout section and make the field mandatory. Hope this helps!

  2. The new version is wonderful. I have some suggestions: - Allow the automation should start periodically (period of the day, week, month, or year) instead of based on events. - Allow the customized status should be translated for specifically languages. Today, only the default status is translated automatically.

    1. Hello Marco, thanks for the suggestion. We assure you that we will be accommodating this feature in the future. However, we do not have a definite timeline in place.

    1. Hi Harshal, thank you for the question. Yes, you can update the dates of the tasks, and can view the original dates using Baseline, but only for specific points of time in the project. However, you won't be able to see planned and actual dates each time you update the tasks. Hope this helps.

  3. FORMER ASANA USER WITH A SUGGESTION. It would be extremely impactful if you could add a task to multiple projects. Often times we have a project running that has multiple tasks and a task might apply to a different project being run by a different team member. For efficiency this allows the appropriate tasks to be front and center within a different project run by a different team member. This feature is used OFTEN when we would flow through ASANA. Also, adding the ability to give reactions to comments such as “like/Thumbs up” would be nice as it provides an option for a quicker response to close the loop on communications.

    1. Hello, Brent! Thanks for the suggestion. We'll run this by our PM team. Until then, please feel free to explore the product and tell us what you like!

    1. Hey there! Thank you for your question. Zoho Projects 8.0 now allows you to add custom fields even to the Kanban view! Scroll all the way to the right, and click on "Create" under "Add Status". You will then be directed to the Custom Fields page, from where you can start adding fields of your choice. Hope this helps!

  4. The newest version is very impressive, just wanted to highlight few things which if you will introduce would be of better use and will add to the functionality of zoho projects :- - You should add field dependency feature, it will allow many companies like us to customize the timesheet fields according to the system that we follow. - Automation functionality related to milestone, subtask, issues and timesheets should be introduced in order to promote platform adoption. - Projects should also have validation functionalities so that the user can be restricted while putting wrong data as without this we cannot restrict the user while putting the wrong info and by default the changes gets saved in the project details or tasks.

  5. Thank you for sharing these updates. The new UI enhancements have made Projects much better and sleeker to use. Here is my wish list for some functional enhancements: - Project Users should have a planned start and end date, which would be helpful to manage resource utilisation and validate task validity. - Project Users should have FTE Allocation. Often, we assign people to more than 1 project, so if we could identify that's the %age weekly or hours weekly for a given project, it would be great. - All places where numbers are shown, if both costs (budgets) and revenue are shown together and access control is based on who can see what, that would be amazing. - Planned vs Actuals report - if we can make that for revenue, as currently it is only for Budgets, that would help. - In Global Reports, if a report could be provided that shows - project group -client name - project name - project budget (cost and revenue) - project forecast (cost and revenue) - project actual (cost and revenue) - project margin (budget, forecast and actual) - and drill down to each resource - and expandable by month, quarter, year That would be amazing.

    1. Hey Kuldeep, thanks for taking the time to share your feedback! Unfortunately, these features aren't available currently, and we're not sure when we'll be adding them to our roadmap. We'll relay this information to our Product Team.

    1. Hey Andrea, thanks for your suggestion. Currently, creating a new project via email isn't possible. However, we will relay this to our Product Team.

  6. Seria bueno en futuras actualizaciones regresar la informacion que tenia el pdf tras ser exportado el GANNT, ya que ahora se ve muy sencillo y solo muestra las tareas y la linea de tiempo, ademas que no se puede editar que es lo que se necesita visualizar en ese pdf y tampoco se ajusta al tamaño del archivo.

  7. Projects 8.0 has some nice new features. I'd love to have the ability to rearrange Custom Views. Currently they only stay in the order they were created, so when you create a new one it automatically added to the bottom of the list. If I want the newly created one at the top, you have to delete and recreate them all over again.

    1. Hey Elizabeth, thanks for the feedback! Currently, I'm afraid we cannot rearrange Custom Views, but what we can suggest is for you to add your recently created View as a favorite, which would pin it to the top of the list. If you're talking about Custom Field, you'll be able to rearrange them as per your preference. Hope this helps! For any further assistance, please feel free to contact support@zohoprojects.com.

  8. Is Zoho Projects updating the current mobile app on Google Play - or will a new Zoho Projects 8.0 mobile app be available before March 31,2024?

    1. Hey Darin! Thank you for the question. Zoho Projects' mobile apps are updated with the newest Task List view feature for both Android and iOS, and are available for immediate use in respective stores.

  9. Please consider the following requirements also in the upcoming update 1. Option to mark the working hours as Over Time - Option to set Over time payment scale also for each employee (Hourly Cost) 2. Option to add existing portal users to the project while creating the project (in new project page) and while creating tasks (while adding task owners- if the user is missing in the list since he's not added to the project yet.)

  10. Love the changes that have been made for Projects 8.0. One suggestion: It would be great if Group Headings could be color coded like what is available for Status. It would help to visualize the seperation of groups.

    1. Hello there! Glad to hear that you like the updates. Currently, color coding for Group headings is not possible. However, we will be sure to include your suggestion in our roadmap. For any further assistance, please contact support@zohoprojects.com. Thank you!

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