One MS Project Plan to Many SharePoint Sites

Generally speaking, it makes sense to send one MS Project plan to a single SharePoint task list within a single site. However, real-life MS Project plans can get very large, easily passing one-thousand tasks items. When this happens there are often multiple groups involved that may or may not benefit from see the entire project plan.

For this reason we are introducing the ability to share any summary task within an MS Project plan to a SharePoint task list. Furthermore, the IntelliGantt Add In for MS Project 2010 even lets you share any summary task to any SharePoint site (and one of its Task Lists).

This means you can have a single large MS Project plan and 'carve' it up up collaboratively (and metaphorically) so that your planners might see tasks within a 'Planning' SharePoint site or Task list while your engineering team might see tasks under a 'Executing' SharePoint site or Task list.

First up is sharing multiple summary tasks to multiple SharePoint task lists within the same site:




Next is sharing multiple summary tasks to multiple SharePoint sites:




Which configuration you choose is up to you. In one case it may make sense to use multiple tasks lists within the same SharePoint site if you project has well-defined phases, like a scrum for example.

For other projects, where perhaps you are working with a 3rd party vendor, you may wish to share a summary task with an external SharePoint site and other summary tasks with internal groups.

However you wish to share your project, and with whomever you choose, the IntelliGantt Add In for MS Project 2010 will be flexibile enough to meet your needs.

Collaborating on Projects in a Cloud

Are projects in a cloud a good thing?

Most definitely.

Chances are very good you have a File Server handy to work on projects with colleagues. Your organization might even be lucky enough to have SharePoint available for rich collaboration and reporting. However, there are an awful lot of folks who need to communicate outside the corporate firewall (so no Local Workgroup) and don't have SharePoint available (either as an extranet or via a hosted provider).

In this case IntelliGantt helps a project manager work with a team across the internet by using Cloud Services (in our case, Amazon Simple Storage Solutions). Perhaps the coolest thing about this option is all you need is a client computer, an email address and an Internet connection. IntelliGantt (and Amazon) takes care of the rest.

After you create a project, schedule it and assign tasks, IntelliGantt let's you invite other people by a simple email. An IntelliGantt invitation invites them to the project. If they're a member, they can join and see the exact same view as other members in the project.

It's not done by smoke and mirrors-- it's a Cloud :)

This solution represents a realized vision of Software + Services. It's really no different than pointing a browser to a web site except for one important fact: The project data you are working with is on your machine.

This means you have a copy of it local, so you don't need to be connected to the internet in order to work. But more importantly, its really easy to integrate with your other Office applications.

If you're interested in seeing how IntelliGantt can connect team members with a cloud, you can try it out with a fully functional 15 day evaluation today.

IntelliGantt SharePoint Web Parts

[21 February 2011 Update - We now have the IntelliGantt Web Part available for SharePoint 2007 and SharePoint 2010]


We've had a huge response to the release of our boffo customization of SharePoint Task Lists. Our accountant had some work to do last week! Expect to see a few TeamDirection IntelliGantt ads to start popping up here and there-- all very tasteful and informative, of course.

But we're not done yet!

We have a new product in BETA testing geared strictly for SharePoint. If you haven't noticed, business are really responding to the value proposition of SharePoint. TeamDirection has certainly noticed, and we are proud to let you know of a new set of web parts for your SharePoint server that work with IntelliGantt.

The goal? Project rollups of course.



IntelliGantt has provided the plumbing from your desktop to SharePoint, now its getting ready to fill the aqueducts and let the information across all your projects flow to your team. Here is a page introducing the GanttPoint web parts you can deploy on your SharePoint server that automatically finds IntelliGantt projects you've published and aggregates them in one view-- personalized for the current user.

The really great thing about this solution? TeamDirection worked with a great new partner to bring it to you-- a project management company also here in Seattle, Softalot LLC. With IntelliGantt on the desktop and Softalot on the server, its a natural way for both of us to bring our strengths to the table for a better comprehensive solution for you.

You can also expect another exciting announcement with another great SharePoint solution provider in the very near future.