At first glance, you will be able to see all incomplete tasks within a project, providing an excellent overview. Completed tasks are displayed in a separate window to make task management easier. Use filters to perform a quick search and isolate certain tasks. Several reports are available to single out tasks on the basis of specific parameters, such as dates or keywords.

Every task offers a great variety of characteristics for an efficient management:

• Task number,
• Summary and details,
• Status, priority, group, and type,
• Estimated hours to completion,
• Actual hours worked, cross-referenced with the user's timesheet,
• Percentage of completion,
• Last modification, creation, start and end dates,
• Multiple user assignations: assigned user and reviewer,
  • All assigned users and reviewers can enter comments that are kept in a comment thread, a "discussion" about that task.
• Attach files to your tasks (screen captures, plans, documents, etc.).
• A task history can be activated on a project basis. This permits knowing the date and author of all changes made to a task since its creation, putting an end to confusion.

This wealth of details equips you with the tools you need to follow up adequately on every task in your project, ensuring the smooth completion of your project. A heads-up on your success!

In most projects, certain tasks cannot begin unless another is completed. This can be difficult to manage when the project is complex and contains a high number of tasks that depend on the successful completion of others. These complex projects demand structure and Project Tracker has the perfect solution.

This is where task dependencies come in. Task dependencies let you decide when a task can be started. For example, testing on a software bundle can only start after building the application file is completed. With Project Tracker, you can specify that a certain task can only start after one or several other tasks are completed.

Moreover, you can set time intervals (lag time) between dependent tasks, to accomodate for required delays. For example, in a construction project, you may need to let the foundations set before building the walls. With Project Tracker, you can set this lag time (in hours) so that the second task can only start a set number of hours after which its predecessor is completed.

The interesting feature of task dependencies in Project Tracker is that dates are automatically adjusted. This means that if a task is completed 2 day earlier than planned, its successor task will be set to start earlier as well!

For more information on task dependencies in Project Tracker, click here.

Statistics and reports are useful for the business leader, the project manager and the team member.

• The business leader.
  Project Tracker showcases a section specially designed for administrators. It contains statistics and reports for all projects at once. Account statistics display a summary of information for all projects: workload, user activity and the global completion status of the projects. For a more in-depth look at project completion, several task reports are available to help you keep track of your projects.
• The project manager.
  Project statistics provide a summary for each project in a convenient one-page format. There are 6 task report views: completed tasks, incomplete tasks, overview, date, description, and user. Each of these reports informs the project manager on a specific aspect of the project's tasks, giving you all the details you need to follow its evolution.
• The team member.
  Each user can know what has to be done upon login. The My Task page shows all tasks assigned to the logged in user, making it easy to stay informed. Team members can open all projects they are assigned to and produce the reports.

Project Tracker's Gantt charts are sorted either weekly or monthly and illustrate the level of completion of each task, making it easy to see what remains to be done. Moreover, each user can set the number or weeks or months to display at a time. Gantt charts can be produced for one project at a time of all projects at once.

There are several ways to log a user's time, the most interesting being the IN/OUT module. The IN/OUT module is like a counter associated to a task. The user starts the counter when beginning to work and stops it when he/she is finished. When the counter is stopped, the IN/OUT module creates a work item in the user's time sheet automatically.

In Project Tracker, workload is the number of work hours assigned to each user, distributed among the days remaining to complete the work. For example, if it is estimated that 20 hours will be required to complete a task and that there are 5 days left to do it, Project Tracker will assign 4 hours of work on each day. Each task's hours are computed this way, and added to make a daily total for each user. In this way it is easy for managers to know if someone has too many tasks assigned, or if someone is underworked.

Project Tracker offers two security levels:

• Administrator and Normal.
  Administrator. An administrator has all the rights. He or she can modify company information; create, visualize, and modify any project; create, modify and delete users; visualize, modify and delete tasks from all projects. To ensure optimal security, there should be a small number of administrators per organization.
• Normal.
  A normal user's access rights may vary. The administrator assigns access rights to each user, individually. Generally, within a large organization, a project manager is a normal user with full control on a project. There are four types of access rights to a project: project manager, time approval, project access, and task edition. Click here for more information about these access rights.
  • The Limited Administrator access gives project managers access to open all projects to which they are assigned without having access to account configuration.

This feature is quite popular amongst Project Tracker users because it permits excellent communication within a team. Each user may decide to receive an email at specific times:

• When he or she is assigned to a new task.
• When one of his or her tasks are modified.
  • Email notification can be cancelled when the changes do not require an email to be sent.
• In the message center, when sending a new message to another user.
• When requesting timesheet approval.
• When his or her timesheets have been processed.

This frees the team's time for more important tasks - email notification is automatic!

Each user can specify his or her preferences, adapting Project Tracker to his or her use of the system. The user can configure several parameters:

• Password,
• Email address,
• Telephone number,
• The number of tasks per page,
• The number of projects per page,
• The default project to open upon login,
• Default sorting parameters for tasks and projects,
• The number of weeks or months to display in the Gantt chart,
• Time zone and date format,
• The activation of email notification when a new task is assigned to the user, or when an existing task is modified.

Create and manage a discussion forum in each one of your projects. Project Tracker permits creating as many topics as you need in a project. This helps teams improve communications while leaving a record of those conversations.

• Create as many topics as you want, for each project.
• Unlimited space for forum topics and messages.
• HTML-support in message body,
• Easy-to-use text search to find important messages quickly.

Send messages to a specific user or a whole project team, know when you have new messages waiting, know when others read your messages. It's like having a private mailbox just for Project Tracker. Several convenient features are available:

• Send a message to one user, several users or all members of a project team.
• Choose whether to notify the recipients by email.
• Easy filtering options.
• HTML-support in message body.
• Know when messages are read and deleted by the recipient.
• Be warned about new messages when you login to Project Tracker.