Easy Projects: It made our projects easier.
March 06, 2015
Easy Projects: It made our projects easier.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Software Version
Enterprise
Overall Satisfaction with Easy Projects
We are using Easy Projects in our marketing office for project management purposes. We use it to track progress of jobs requiring graphic design work, and it serves as an archive for previous jobs.
We open a job in Easy Projects and fill out customized fields to describe the job (size, envelope needed for mailing, design suggestions, delivery location) and upload any needed files (word document of text for the publication, photos/logos, etc.). We then assign users (graphic designers, print production coordinator, etc.) to the job and assign them tasks with end dates to complete.
Day to day, we perform most of our work via the dashboard screen in Easy Projects, which gives you an overview of all the open tasks and who they are assigned to and the end dates.
When jobs are completed, we then "close" them in the system. The great thing is that we can go back and search "closed" jobs. Since we've been using it for several years, we have a lot of history on repeat jobs.
We open a job in Easy Projects and fill out customized fields to describe the job (size, envelope needed for mailing, design suggestions, delivery location) and upload any needed files (word document of text for the publication, photos/logos, etc.). We then assign users (graphic designers, print production coordinator, etc.) to the job and assign them tasks with end dates to complete.
Day to day, we perform most of our work via the dashboard screen in Easy Projects, which gives you an overview of all the open tasks and who they are assigned to and the end dates.
When jobs are completed, we then "close" them in the system. The great thing is that we can go back and search "closed" jobs. Since we've been using it for several years, we have a lot of history on repeat jobs.
- Easy Projects is great for project management. It allows you to assign users, set tasks and end dates, and keep it all together in one working file/job. It's a project manager's dream -- you can look inside and see exactly what is going on and any missed deadlines.
- Easy Projects allows good customization of the fields. We have worked it so that in a job file, we can enter info about things specific to publication design -- size, file format, delivery location, etc. And we've been able to change these further over time as our needs change.
- Easy Projects allows for archiving of completed jobs. You don't have to see them every time you log in, but it's great to be able to go back and search through completed jobs (even several years back) to see what was done last time, who was assigning, costs, etc.
- Easy Projects allows you to pull reports and export them. This has proved helpful when we needed an overall log of jobs for a client or to pull a large number of costs.
- Easy Projects has some problems when it comes to accessing the site via different methods/browsers. It is either very slow or never works on a tablet. It is not smart-phone friendly. And it stopped working for us in Firefox -- all we could use is Safari or Chrome (we are a Mac-based office).
- Easy Projects' email notifications are overwhelming. I turned them off completely since I was getting messages every time one little detail was added or changed.
- While the reports are great, they are somewhat hard to pull. It takes a lot of trial and error -- I would not say the reports are an "intuitive area."
- The biggest by far is what we fondly call "the screen of death." When you mark the last open task associated with a job as complete, a screen pops up that asks if you want to close the overall job, as well. The "yes" field is pre-selected, so if you are overzealous and click through quickly, it automatically closes the job. I don't know why they think this feature is helpful. We have so many staffers that complain they suddenly can't find their open job -- well, it's been marked completed and goes into the archive.
- Better project coordination -- everything is all in one place and all team members can see/work off the same file.
- Better job archiving -- we can look back on recurring jobs and see what was done months (or even years) previously
- Helps us collect more info up front -- due to the fields project managers need to fill out, it steps us through the process of asking our clients all the right questions to make sure we have the info the design team needs
- Negative impact is that because it is so integral to our work processes, there is a "learning curve" for new employees when they start. So we do have to spend more time training them and ensuring they are doing things correctly in the system.
- Negative impact is that because of its lack of mobile and table-friendliness, if team members are out of the office, we can't use Easy Projects. We have to rely on email and sometimes, things can get missed that way.
- Hyperoffice
I have used Hyperoffice, and honestly, I think Easy Projects is way easier to navigate. It's a lot more organized and intuitive than what I experienced with Hyperoffice.During the version that I saw, you had to organize files via a folder system in Hyperoffice -- similar to a computer system. I like how Easy Projects lays out jobs -- all open jobs are on one screen together and you don't have to step through a file system to find what you are looking for. Easy Projects also had a better search feature.