Announcing the Release of SharePoint Task Master - A Project Scheduling and Control Tool in SharePoint

If you read the Bamboo Product Roadmap for the remainder of ’08 by Wes Bryan back in early November and my blog in September, you would have seen the highlight pertaining to SharePoint Task Master. Whoo hoo, it is here and available on our storefront for purchase.

Before you run out and give us your credit card or PO info to purchase this product, SharePoint Task Master, you probably want to know more. What does it do? How’s it different than the Microsoft Project Server or the Microsoft Project? How does it fit into your collaborative world?

As project managers, you know that there’s more to a project plan than just a project schedule even though people call the Microsoft Project the “Project Plan”. However, as part of the project plan you do need to share your up-to-date project schedule with your stakeholders. If Microsoft Project Server does not suit your company's needs or budget and you don’t want to have to email a copy of your MS Project .mpp file to others, this product is for you.

SharePoint Task Master allows you to use your SharePoint Tasks or Project Task List. The advantage here is we add some additional fields implemented in your task item to bring your List into our Web Part to allow you to create a relationship between tasks (parent and child or predecessor and successor). We also provide you other features like:

• Summary Task Bar in the Gantt View
• Legends for color coding
• Change your Start Date, Due Date and Duration by using your mouse in the Gantt View and dragging/expanding the task bar horizontally to the left or to the right
• Provide you the ability to move tasks via “Drag and Drop”

 “Drag and Drop” is the coolest feature in my book. I can’t do that in Microsoft Project.  Also, as with any other SharePoint Tasks you can set up security trimming where only certain people can view and make changes via the web. Couple this with our Project Portfolio Dashboard and you have the essential project management tools for your schedule and status reporting. You can set up Alerts as well. But I don’t recommend you turn that on until you have a baseline of your project schedule since you don’t want to spam people with alert emails.

So check it out. You can download the 15 days trial on our storefront. We are listening so if you have any questions, please post your questions on our SharePoint Task Master forum.

Here are some of the steps to show the main features of SharePoint Task Master:

Overview:
The Gantt view for the Project Task List out of the box looks like the screenshot below where the duration for Project X is not automatically calculated based on the sub tasks. The Gantt view does not show dependencies between tasks:

With the same SharePoint list, using Bamboo Task Master the overall duration of the project is automatically calculated based on the sub tasks. Bamboo Task Master also generates the WBS numbers. The Gantt View shows links between the tasks based on the dependencies between tasks. Users can also color code to call out for visual indicators such as priority high or low, progress of the tasks and milestones.

Legends:
You can color code.

Dependencies (Parent-Child Relationship and Predecessor –Successor):
You can create the dependencies between tasks

Drag and Drop to move Tasks:
You can use the “drag and drop” function to move tasks around.
From the Gantt area by using the mouse and placing the cursor on the task you want to move in the Gantt area, you can drag the task “Proof of Concept” up to form the new parent-child relationship with Design & Architecture Phase.

Using the “Recalculate WBS”, now “Proof of Concept” WBS changes from 1.3.1 to 1.2.4:

Our Overview of SharePoint Task Master featurecast from our gallery has more detailed information.