Genuine Curiosity

Author Dwayne Melancon is always on the lookout for new things to learn. An ecclectic collection of postings on personal productivity, travel, good books, gadgets, leadership & management, and many other things.

 

[Updated] Projects: Getting everyone on the same page at a lower cost

In my line of work, we often deal with project plans, and we use Microsoft Project to create them.  Project plans are a great way to keep everyone on the same page.  However, it can be challenging to share project plans because Microsoft Project costs several hundred dollars per license, and that's expensive just to let someone view a project plan from time to time.  Project offers the ability to export projects to HTML, but the view is very limited and kind of a pain to deal with.

I recently discovered an excellent - and much more cost effective - solution.  It's the Steelray Project Viewer.  The viewer provides a very robust means to view and print project plans by reading and displaying native Microsoft Project files.  It also provides far more capability than the HTML exports provided by Microsoft Project, in that it allows you to browse resource sheets and usage information, a task calendar, and other useful views of the project.

For a unit of 1, the cost is about $35 US and it goes down in quantities. There's a free trial available, as well. 

If you work with Microsoft Project plans and want to share information more effectively without the cost of a full license of Project, why not give it a whirl?



Update: I've been using this a bit longer and have found another very useful feature: Steelray makes it very easy to search within projects. If you're looking for a particular task, resource, etc. this tool makes it a snap to find it without having to navigate through the various views.