Project Managers have to have a good understanding of the status of multiple sub-projects in order to ensure that an overall project is completed within budget, on time, and with quality results. Below are just some ways that our Project Management Suite can help.

Scheduling. Separate teams maintain their own group calendars, which works well for team collaboration, but does not help project managers manage tasks across teams very easily. To view an overview of all team events for the day, or the plans for the month, multiple calendars can be aggregated using List Rollup and displayed in a color-coded view using Calendar Plus. Mini-Calendar links to the same list to offer a quick overview of the month's activities on a top site without taking up valuable screen real estate. Use Mini-Calendar as a tool to filter Calendar Plus data or other SharePoint lists. To organize group calendars, Team Calendar works with Exchange to arrange and update meetings and appointments for your team members through an Outlook style resource scheduling assistant. To track when your project team members are in or out of the office, the SharePoint In/Out Schedule Board gives you a central, online area to track out of office and location status.

Communication. Miscommunication results in wasted time and resources, so it's key to ensure that everybody on a task is aware of its status. E-mail updates to groups with Group Email. Clarify and enhance data in lists by giving columns added functionality, such as additional security, progress bars, or enhanced text editing with quick image insertion without having to populate a Pictures library first, with the SharePoint Custom Column Pack. Use Alert Plus to send customized, conditional e-mail alerts and reminders to users or a group of users. Centralize Alert management across sites and site collections with Alerts Administrator, and help your users become more efficient at maintaining their own alerts by using My Alerts Organizer.

Assessment. Visualizing the big picture is just as important as focusing on the details for both clear communication and interpretation. With Chart Plus, you can graphically display data in bar, line, and area charts using SharePoint, legacy or rolled up list data. Gantt charts from Calendar Plus make it easy to see whether a project is on time or not. And the SharePoint Project Portfolio Dashboard allows you to easily view the health and risk levels of your entire project portfolio at a glance.

Analysis. Having data is one thing, but being able to efficiently use it and interpret it is quite another. Bringing lists from across site collections together with List Rollup or creating a lookup column for lists in a parent-child relationship with Cross List allows you to view related data in one place instead of navigating to multiple sites and views. Data-Viewer allows you to dynamically group, filter and sort items in your entire list, and when you're done, print just the list and not your browser with List Print for a hard copy you can actually present.