Project management has never been easy, and it will never be other than challenging. As an established and sought after web-based project management product, Celoxis help make project management efficient, intuitive and collaborative. Tackling the challenges, led it to be conferred with numerous awards which only served to affirm its position in the industry. Celoxis’ clients’ testimonials speak for itself as to the degree to which its project management software has changed the way they do business. Celoxis’ ever expanding features let its clients to focus on what they are good at and leave project management to Celoxis.

Pricing

Product: Celoxis,
Company : Celoxis,
Requirements : Modern Browser,
Options : SaaS or On-Premise,
Cost : $15 per user/month for SaaS and as low as $117 per user for a perpetual on-premise license.

New Celoxis version 6.0

The continuing innovation and acting on the valuable feedback by its clients, Celoxis have launched version 6.0 of its revered web based project management product. The latest version adds more features and functionalities that can only promise to enhance user experience.

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Highlights of the new version 6.0

Baseline

Baselining your project schedule and project cost information helps to evaluate the project’s performance by comparing quickly against planned values.

User-Interface

6.0 introduced a the use of light-weight pop-ups for adding/modifying data. This helps retain context and avoid page “jumps”, reduce clicks and improve overall performance.

Custom Fields

Now also available for users, clients and contacts and same field shareable across entities. You can mark custom fields as secure – visible only to users with financial privileges

Internationalization

Available in Chinese, French, German, Portuguese and Spanish languages.

Productivity Enhancements

  • Ability to quickly add task, documents, expense, discussions to recent or current projects and tasks
  • Convenient progress update shortcuts 25, 50, 75 and 100% for tasks
  • Progress update on tasks while filling weekly time
  • Added one-click approve option for time-sheet and expenses
  • Ability to set multiple timers on tasks.
  • Client dashboard introduced similar to user dashboard

Special Features

Celoxis has a vast feature set including those that you would expect from an advanced project management solution. Here are a few key features that separate it from the crowd :

Advanced Scheduling

Tasks are automatically scheduled based on resource work timings, time zones, holidays and work timings exceptions. It also supports inter project dependencies.

Project Portfolio Management
PPM is supported out of the box. But you can customize it further using custom fields and charts.

Resource Load Chart

This shows the standard information like resource load breakdown, utilization and conflicts. But what is really sets this tool apart is the ability to resolve the conflicts there itself. Pretty nifty.

What-if analysis during resource assignment

This is a great time saver. When I want to assign resources to a task, I often have the question whether it could cause any conflicts. And the only way to do it is to first assign and then check whether there was indeed a conflict. I often tend to go back and forth and it takes time. Celoxis solves this quite elegantly. When you want to assign resources to tasks, you are shown beforehand if your assignment would cause any resource conflict.

Workflow

This is an extremely sophisticated piece of software that allows you to create and track business process like bugs, client approvals, risks and change requests.

Custom fields including formula fields

This is an extremely critical capability that helps capture unique business specific information and Celoxis doesn’t disappoint. You can create a variety of fields from simple text to pick lists. A special formula field even allows you to do custom calculations based on built-in or other custom fields.

Going a step further you can use custom fields just like built-in fields in report columns, filters and report grouping.

Custom Reporting

If one had to pick a single strength of Celoxis, this would be it. I could write a review dedicated just to the reporting capabilities. You can create ANY kind of tabular/chart/Gantt/Resource Load reports using complex filtering, multi-column sorting and multi-level grouping. Typically, applications have limited capability views or searches (no grouping/totals etc.) and reports. In Celoxis, everything is a report so you get full control of filters, columns, sorting and grouping everywhere (including the dashboard) and you only need to learn how to create reports.

The other great things are the concepts of “Report runner”, “moving window dates” and “promptable filters”.

  • “Report runner” helps reduce reports and increase sharing. e.g you create a single “Projects I manage” report and when each manager runs it they see their projects.
  • “Moving window dates” allow you to have a single report like “Tasks due in next 7 days” and every day you run it you see the tasks for the next 7 days.
  • “Promptable filters” allow you to let users view more or less data whilst keeping the core report purpose fixed. For example, “Projects I Manage” must only show projects managed by the user but you can let the user change other filters like Client/Start Date etc.

User defined drill-down charts

This is something that executives and project managers will love. You can create your own graphical charts which automatically become ‘clickable’. You can even use your custom fields as data sets.

Supported types are pie, bar and bubble. I just wish the colors were a bit better.

Interoperability with other systems

Today systems rarely exist in isolation and getting data in and out is a key requirement. Celoxis does quite well in this aspect. The API is simple and powerful. Data can be imported and exported in CSV.

It also supports two-way synchronization with Microsoft Project. In addition you can do a number of things via email.

Mobile interface

The mobile interface works on almost any smart phone, not just iPhone. The interface is quite comprehensive and looks like a native iPhone application. You still get access to the same dashboard and reports that you would on your desktop browser.

Client Collaboration

This is a great way to increase transparency with your Clients. Depending on what you share, your clients can log on to Celoxis to view project reports, conduct online discussions, download project documents or participate in workflows.

Final Words About Celoxis

A fine product that took advantage of the SaaS infrastructure to deliver more than what it was expected and that too at a competitive price – is it too much to ask for? Celoxis have clearly made its mark in the web based project management space. Perched at the helm of the competition, what’s now left to be seen of Celoxis is the new revolutionary features the company proposes to add in the forthcoming versions. Project management can only get better from here.