What needs improvement with Microsoft Project?

The online version of Microsoft Project lacks some functionality compared to the on-premises version. For example, many people need read-only access, but it's uncertain whether this functionality is available in the online version. Improvements could be made to mirror the full functionality available in the on-premises version.

I would like to see a direct integration of Microsoft Project with AutoCAD. It will make client presentations easy.

Tracking timeline, resource allocation, and monitoring are areas of concern for the tool where improvements are required. Improvement in tracking timelines, resource allocation, and monitoring can help our company check whether each and every activity related to a project is completed or not. If the company notices any issues in the timeline, then we can reassign such tasks. The product should allow our company to collaborate with Microsoft Teams so that our company can complete a project within the set timeline.

Microsoft Project should include more visualization, queries to filter out data, and more reporting structures.

It would be better if the solution is integrated with other communication platforms like Microsoft Teams. Microsoft Project has a separate license from Microsoft 365 and has not collaborated with Microsoft Teams.

The stability of the solution is an area with certain shortcomings that need improvement.

The solution's portfolio management and project management features need enhancement.

The solution's interface seems to be an outdated one. So, I would like its interface to be improved. Since everything I need is already present in the solution, I don't require any additional features to be added to the solution.

We'd like the solution to have better integration with other third-party and open-source solutions. We have trouble importing and exporting to other tools.

It can be hard to create things manually, however, once we have it up and running it's very easy. We'd like to have more resource allocation and monitoring features. This should be part of MS Project.

In a future update, the system should be more inclusive and open to everyone, not just limited to one organization. For example, there may be instances where we want to bring in a guest from outside our organization and integrate them into our project. It would be beneficial if the system was more accessible and easy to integrate with other projects. Additionally, it would be great if there was a way to receive notifications, regardless of whether they come from a Gmail domain or another domain, to keep us informed of any incoming tasks.

It would be better if there were more access to Agile implementations.

I would like to see more integrations with another software tool. The market is more collaborative now, so it is always good to be able to share information between different tools. If a client does not have Microsoft Project, they probably have another one that the solution should have an integration with.

It has a bit of a learning curve since there are a lot of features in it, and we haven't really gotten a chance to train through the whole product.

Project availability and speed could always be improved. Most of the time, we get the target from the system. If there is a chance to improve the interface, then it should be implemented. Otherwise, our end users are satisfied with using our own interface. Reports could be pushed more quickly.

Technical support needs improvement. It's hard to reach technical people to get the help you need.

Its user interface could be a little bit more intuitive. Not everybody has the luxury of going to training and understanding which button does what and the functionality. The user interface should be improved to make it a little bit more intuitive. It is not user-friendly. I've dealt with it for a number of years, so it is not hard for me to figure it out, but you would need a quick reference guide or something to say, "Here are the basics. This is how you do X."

What could have been better is the integration with Office 365 so that if you're discussing a project on Teams or there's an email related to the project, it can be tagged to the project in Microsoft Project. That functionality is currently not there. The solution is pretty expensive. However, you pay for what you get, and it is worth the cost.

With Smartsheets, we can easily integrate and allow users outside the company to access our files. We can manage their access directly inside the project plan. I can allow my customers to jump on there to see the project while limiting their access to certain sheets or views. If I want I can allow them to view, edit, or share it. Microsoft Project has similar functionality, but I can't just give them a link. We have to bring them into using a company server because that's where we have it stored. There are more steps and assigning permissions is more convoluted.

It would be better if Microsoft Project were included in the DevOps stack. That is, I'd like to see this tool integrated to a different stack of the applications that we normally use in DevOps, such as in Jira, for example, to deploy a different version related to the different tasks that are included in Microsoft Project.

Right now you can create a timeline with the major up tasks, but there's no real way to mark it. When you are planning, you usually have resources on board for a single task. Microsoft Project has no way to mark it because it is based more on agile methodology. Many times you want to take it by the resource count and that is where it becomes tricky. I would like to see an entire baseline, like in JIRA. It is like project planning in JIRA, but there's a whole story building that you can do. Microsoft Project needs to incorporate some points of story-building and epic building, which are currently missing.

You can do a lot of stuff with Microsoft Project, but the licensing is for individual computers, so it's not connected to a central platform like the one that we have in Planview. Planview FLEX licensing gives us a central repository where all the projects are stored so you can check the finances, resources, etc. It's quite useful to have everything connected. We don't have that for Microsoft Project. It's disconnected. The reporting capabilities could also be better, especially with finance and resources. Everybody complains about reports. That's why we need another tool.

Microsoft Project has much room for improvement. The solution is still stuck where it was in 2013. Not much has changed since then. There is a lot that can be changed in the enterprise segment. There hasn't been a significant addition to the enterprise part of Microsoft Project since 2013. The biggest change was the integration of Power BI reporting into Microsoft Project. Other than that, we are seeing still the same features Some of the underlying things have changed. For example, data management is quite different. It's called Dataworks, and database management is different. Data is handled differently, but there haven't been any new features on an enterprise scale. Microsoft has developed more user-friendly Project implementations beyond enterprise use cases. They're transitioning from the enterprise platform to something that everybody can use, but they are losing out on features.

In the next release, Microsoft should include cross-project integration.

It is a traditional Waterfall-based solution, so it doesn't lend itself particularly well to Agile development. You can record Agile sprints within it, but it is not really an Agile-based product. It can store the basic information about budgets that an Agile set of work is looking to use, but that's about it.

Its price can be improved.

Its reporting and its integration with some of the other related systems should be improved. It is not very easy to integrate. Its scalability is not so good for the most part.

It should be easier to break things. Breaking up the visualization from the task is sometimes a little bit tricky to do. You can do it, but it takes a minute. It's not an easy function to do. The way you have to format it and stuff like that takes a minute.

When a project plan becomes huge, it is painful to arrange and structure the project in Microsoft Project. Currently, you require a separate product for managing agile projects, and people are using Jira and Rally to manage stories in agile. Primarily, on the software development side, people are kind of moving away from Microsoft Project.

One of the things that we struggle with is that we do a lot of smaller projects that end up using the same resources. We have difficulty managing or balancing workload across resources that are on multiple projects. For example, in project A we'll schedule Joel to do something in a certain timeframe. And then next day we have project B's schedule up, and he's scheduled to do something on that project in the same timeframe, and we don't have a way to expose those conflicts. We have to basically rely on Joe to say, "Hey, you've asked me to do different things. There's only one of me. I've got to manage my time. Either you give me twice as long to do both of those things, or you tell me which one to do first, and then move the other one." It would be ideal if the solution itself could expose such conflicts. One of the reasons that we have some projects using Jira as well as Microsoft Project is that we have to be able to access the project schedule to see, as an individual contributor, what the tasks are. It's not a great way to distribute that. In terms of Jira, where we create the Jira records, an engineer can go into the Jira database and search for his or her name, find all the tasks with the due dates on them, and anything assigned to them. If Project had a better mechanism to allow those who are not the project manager to see their own work tasks, that would be of help or of value to us.

I am not that close to it anymore, but I know that there were some cut and paste issues when we were trying to move one group of roles to another, and they used to muck up the interdependencies between the tiers, rows, and other things.

I haven't thought of what are the qualities of the features and how can they be changed or improved. It basically has everything I need. There are a few bugs that can affect the stability. This is typical of most applications. The solution does not have a mobile version at this time. The user interface and how fast you can find tools to make a schedule, to build up a team, to come up with tasks, et cetera, could be improved. The framework of accessibility is a bit complicated. It could be simplified.

Once we commit our status, changing it is hard. Sometimes, I may make a mistake about a holiday or something. I may not remember that there was a particular day that was a holiday and I may enter time on that day as if I worked. Sometimes I want to fix it. It would be ideal if the holidays were pre-installed so that we wouldn't make that mistake, that would be ideal. It should allow us to set it so that we cant enter time on holidays. I have only explored maybe 5% of Microsoft Project as we're only using it to log things. I haven't seen a lack of features.

The solution could be more flexible when it comes to integration. They added the Agile Framework also to their solution. I think Agile does not work with this kind of spreadsheet platform. Mainly for Agile, it needs something such as Kanban or Scrum board. There is also a need for a tool for brainstorming on a whiteboard online but this solution does not have this feature. If the solution wants to match the Agile Framework, it would be better to add something similar to Asana, Kanban or Scrum board. This way companies and teams can easily create a sprint and follow up. It will be easier for the Scrum Master coach to facilitate communication between groups and teams. If they let people choose their Agile methodology, such as Jira, it would be better.

Collaboration is an area that needs improvements. If we could get into the collaboration aspect of it as well, it might be helpful. In the next release, I would like to see features included to make the collaboration easier, and I would like to see the dashboard improved.

Its user experience can be improved while configuring it. Its reporting can also be better. Reporting is not very easy. Reports do not always work. I was trying to download some reports, and they didn't work. I don't know if it was related to the configuration that I was using. I didn't go too deep to check if something was missing.

The new version has made it a bit more complicated. We are trying to synchronize Project Online and Planner. In Team Planner, there is supposed to be a way that you can sync your tasks in the Project Plan with Planner so that the project team doesn't necessarily need to use Microsoft Project. They can see what tasks are assigned to them, do them and update the status. But, we haven't been able to figure that out yet. They can make it easier to streamline the product. When using Microsoft Project, the desktop and Planner don't seem to talk to each other as seamlessly as I would hope. It is possible that it is a user error and we have not configured it correctly. My IT team is new to it as well.

When you start getting into the more advanced features, it can become unstable. The more you use the advanced features, the more exposure you have to an unanticipated result. I think we need to add the Kanban Board capability to the product that would help them advance that board into the project management methodology that's being used in the industry today. Being able to depend on Scrum management is key. I actually developed a template that allows me to do that, but if they actually productized that, that would help.

MS Project can insert objects, like a drawing or an Excel worksheet, but cannot handle business rules. Also, I would like to see better integration with graphics applications such as MS Visio. The graphics are primitive and need some major work. I would like to have the ability to insert some small macros within the project for Monte Carlo risk analysis. For example, if you're unsure how much time a task may require, you can generate a reasonable guess. MS Project is very time and labor-intensive to keep current. You need to update it continually. You may find that you are spending more time maintaining the MS Project file than working on your project. I don't want to devote a person to do that. MS Project should have the capability to link it to other applications to make the program dynamic when a real-time resource or schedule changes, but it is not dynamic. It would be helpful to insert real-time input data for each project, subproject, or task. If something is going on, I want to see the impact in real-time, if possible. I want to be able to specify globally what weekend we want or what we want to call a weekend. Also, we might have a project underway seven days a week. External data sources, like third-party manufacturing processes, impact some tasks. Embedding external processes within MS Project is almost impossible because we don't have programming resources here in a practical sense. Also, the interface of Microsoft Project is proprietary. We want to link different tasks to external sources of inputs and outputs and integrate them automatically with our master project plan, e.g., specific third-party CNC machine data. The supplier's system does not interface with ours'. We have to get the outputs from their system serially and manually update the MS Project file to determine the schedule impact. That takes time. There is a risk of data entry errors at both ends. On tight projects, every minute counts. I would like to see a control system interface with Microsoft Project. Real-time system data helps predict cost and schedule variances. For example, if you had to finish a day ahead of schedule, you could "talk" to the systems' software and determine if a given machine works for another four hours, then you could meet the accelerated schedule. MS Project requires manual data entry with a risk of mistakes. Presently, there is no automated data entry capability in MS Project. It just doesn't exist. That's why I say it is only suitable for small-sized to medium-sized companies and small projects. Most companies don't have the same problems we have with MS Project. When you're working on a project that has to get done, you will spend most of the time wrestling with Microsoft Project, whereas you should be using these hours to manage the project. Thinking on a slightly bigger scale, I would like better integration with Office, Visio, and Access. If you make a change in one application, it should cascade to others and vice versa. It doesn't do that, at least not easily. It is not a dynamic program. I would like to see an active program or at least the capability to be dynamic, even if it is close to real-time where it outputs to a module, and the module then talks to real-time systems. The real-time data goes back into the module, and the module updates the project plan. Such dynamic capability would be superior to what exists now. It may not be genuinely real-time, but it is at least closer to it. I want to link directly to the data in an Excel spreadsheet so that I don't have to keep going back and forth updating it. I don't want to have to create a dynamic link library or write a macro. Whenever I change the data in an Excel file for a given project or task, it should update the corresponding Visio or PowerPoint file. If I'm doing a pie chart or any graphic, I don't want to manually update my graphics. I want to link them together, and I want them updated automatically. I know it is a wishful thing. Microsoft doesn't make significant changes every time they come out with a new version. However, they don't appear to fix the issue. Instead, they add a few features.

We need to know what third party solutions we want to integrate. Microsoft by itself is a project management tool, however, if someone says they want to integrate with something else, there may be issues. Since we work on JIRA, most of the time that can satisfy our needs, as everyone has JIRA. They just update their task there and we can have full visibility. Microsoft's solution isn't really a collaboration tool, however. If you need a collaboration tool, you can use Slack, which can be integrated with your JIRA. Any ticketing in JIRA can be integrated to Slack and you can get the messages there. I personally still need to compare the solution to other solutions. It would give me a better sense of if they are missing any features. Right now, without the comparison, it's hard to tell. They may need more security features, or better communication features. It's hard for me to say with my limited knowledge base.

I can't think of any features that are lacking. I don't know of any issues with the solution that can be updated. The technical support could be improved. They are okay, however, they could be much better.

This solution needs more customization.

I would like to have more access to templates and tools that could be used to teach project management best practices.

I would like to see the inclusion of multi-currency support.

This solution needs more templates focused on types of projects to ease setup.

I find that MS Project has limited control in comparison to other solutions in the same sphere.

I think they've begun to improve with the new cloud integration. Previously, this was an issue. Now, I don't think there are any further changes that need to be done for the cloud issue. There needs to be better integration between SharePoint and other Microsoft platforms and this solution. Furthermore, there should be a better integration with the use of the cloud and mobile devices.

Project Professional is a powerful tool with many features and functions available for an experienced scheduler with advanced scheduling knowledge and skills. One primary problem that we have is that users that are new to project management and scheduling find it a little overwhelming when they are first introduced to the tool, particularly when they are introduced to features required to enable enterprise level planning and reporting. To address this, we are creating a trial of custom views that mask some of the complexity involved to enable project cost estimates, effort records and resource assignments to be consumed at an enterprise level. Some people find having to fulfill enterprise level task and resource assignment rules a little overwhelming and frustrating when all they want to do is a simple project plan.

* The productivity of resources * The tool allows the allocation of resources to the activities, however, if I want to measure the productivity of someone in particular, it is not so simple.