Announcing the Release of PM Central 3.0 for SharePoint 2010

[Updated on 12/22/2011] PM Central 3.0 is now available for both SharePoint 2010 and SharePoint 2007.

I'm pleased to announce the release today of PM Central™ 3.0. As always, we have been keenly paying attention to our customers' feedback—since you are the most active users with the most in-depth use cases—and have been working hard to apply your feature requests in order to deliver the best SharePoint-based project management application on the market.

What are some of the new features in PM Central 3.0?

Schedule Management

• Allow project managers to baseline the schedule multiple times
• Timeline Gantt - Shows timeline of the project and its milestones on a Gantt chart
• Microsoft Project Add-in:
  • Export tasks from a PM Central tasks list to Microsoft Project and sync data between Microsoft Project and SharePoint lists.
  • Validate data to ensure when importing data from Microsoft Project to a SharePoint tasks list to not duplicate data:

• Project Schedule powered by Task Master:
  • Allow users to insert a new task between existing tasks:

• Multiple Predecessors
• Use relative path for tasks list
• Show Critical Path and total slack:

 

• Additional color-coding for:
  • Milestone column
  • Schedule Status per task
• Added an option in the tool pane so that users can turn on or off:
  • Go To List menu
  • Gantt or Grid
  • Legends
• Seamless integration with Custom Identifier Column

Usability/User Experience

• Change skin on the fly:

• Create new items (tasks, issues, risks) from the Central Actions.
• Allow users to add resources to the Enterprise Resource Pool (ERP) from the User Profiles list (SharePoint 2010 Server) or from the User Information list (SharePoint 2010 Foundation).
• Localization (support for translation in the resources files to other languages).
• Provide the option for users to get to a List, Library, and/or Document from the "Quick Launch" shortcut.
• Provide the option for users to add links within the site to My Favorites in the SharePoint Ribbon (under Page) for easier navigation.

Additional Reports

• Status Update
• Project Status Report
• Budget Cost
• Budget Work
• Resource Availability and Capacity by Department
• Resource Availability and Capacity by Manager

Process Management

• Change Request - including the option to apply a SharePoint workflow or Worfklow Conductor for an approval workflow.

Time/Workforce Management

• Seamless integration with Time Tracking & Management (Note: This feature will be available with the release of Time Tracking & Management in a few weeks.)

We will continue to work with you to innovate and improve PM Central as the platform for collaboration and project management on SharePoint. As always, we welcome your feedback. If you're unfamiliar with PM Central, we offer a free 30-day trial. Alternatively, you can bypass the installation process by signing up for a sandbox and taking PM Central out for a test drive right away.