Project management tool Zoho has given its software a complete overhaul for 2021.
Zoho is one of our favorite project management software tools and these new changes look set to make it even better. The bulk of the changes are designed to help facilitate remote working, as well as bringing in some neat visual changes. Plus, some extra features can help make work more efficient – find out more about them in our detailed review.
Let’s take a look into the new features.
UI Changes
Zoho Projects 7 gets some big visual changes. For example, it now has a dark-mode which can help reduce eye strain.
It also has a new single-page layout which allows users to access any module with a single click which will make finding projects easier than ever.
What’s more, Zoho Projects has been given a big injection of color. It sounds simple but the new themes make the software look far less drab.
Efficiency Improvements
Efficiency is everything when it comes to project management and Zoho has developed a new way to help you catch and kill any holdups in your schedule.
The new status timeline feature gives you a pipeline view of how long it takes tasks to go through their various stages. This means that you can identify bottlenecks easily and intervene to get your projects running smoothly again.
Similarly, Zoho has introduced a discuss module to simplify team communications.
This new module displays all your chatrooms in one place as well as tools for scheduling and checking when your next meeting is. It fully integrates with Zoho Cliq and Zoho Meeting for extra easy setup. Finally, you can also integrate it with Zoho People to check-in-and-out from within your Projects portal.
Finding Exactly What You’re Looking For
Project management tools are supposed to make finding things simpler and, to that end, Zoho has made some more improvements in this area.
For a start, it’s made the Resource Utilization chart’s UI uniform for all date ranges. This means that regardless of whether you’re looking at a day, week, or month view, everything will look the same with horizontal bars representing how free or how occupied you are across a certain date range. A new calendar option also lets you select custom date ranges in these reports.
Zoho has added more advanced filters and a global search to all modules. This means that you can filter tasks with predefined and custom fields, as well as comparing them side-by-side. The new global search option supports full-text searching, making everything feel more natural and intuitive.
Zoho Project now also integrates with Zoho WorkDrive.
Users are able to create and organize team folders with documents and other information to make collaboration easier. Documents can also be given different access privileges to help keep more confidential information secure.
Finally, the Zoho Projects Global Home now supports two types of dashboards: Portfolio and Personal. The Portfolio dashboard gives you a compact view of all the work that’s been happening across projects while the Personal dashboard tells you everything about your specific tasks.
To migrate to Zoho Projects 7, you should be given a pop-up prompt when you sign in. There’s also a new “Try 7.0” button in the top bar in your portal.
Zoho Projects 6, meanwhile, will reach its end-of-life by March 31.
Want to know more about Zoho and other project management software? Check out our guide to the best project management software tools, this article on Zoho Projects’ best alternatives or head over to Zoho’s website for more information.
