LiquidPlanner 3.0

LiquidPlanner 3.0 ($29 per member per month) brings scheduling down to earth. Rather than asking users to enter soft dates, LiquidPlanner lets project managers schedule by priority. Its Web interface allows participants to contribute from just about anywhere?though for now the company only suports iOS mobile devices?while its rich feature set, impressive online file storage, advanced reporting, and unlimited projects enables participants to keep close tabs on every facet of their workflow. With the exception of a Facebook feed-inspired home screen, LiquidPlanner is stocked like a desktop application, straight down to the drag and drop ease and shortcut keys.

A desktop-level browser-based experience don't come cheaply. LiquidPlanner costs $29 per month per member ($24 per month if you commit to a year). While guests can join for free (via portal), an office of 15 can expect to spend about $450 per month or about $4,300 if they commit to a year?a tall order compared to the competition. Competitor Wrike ($49-$199 per month) is shorter on features (online storage caps at 15GB), but its unlimited project, 15-user plan retails for just $99 per month. Meanwhile, Basecamp (Free-$99 per month, 4 stars), winner of the Editors' Choice designation for its free plan, offers a comparable 30GB of storage, more than enough projects (100), and unlimited users for the same $99 per month. Certainly, LiquidPlanner bests both when it comes to features, and the company does offer volume pricing for larger teams; however, for offices larger than a handful of people but too small for a volume license, scaling LiquidPlanner may be uneconomical.

Home
There's a lot to take in when you first open LiquidPlanner?project progress bars, a feed of recent comments, upcoming tasks, and a sidebar highlighting new features. Compared to comparable services, namely Basecamp and Huddle (Free-$15 per user per month, 3.5 stars), getting started can feel a bit daunting, simply because of all of the menus and features.

For the most part, however, LiquidPlanner is sensibly organized. Along the top of the screen you can access your projects, tasks, timesheet, or workspace, from which you can manage settings for adding members, creating new workspaces, and reviewing timesheets. Along the left-hand side of the screen you can quickly see what tasks assigned to you are at risk, what items of interest have recently changed, how many hours you've put toward a project, and what tasks are up next. Finally, the rest of the screen is occupied with a Facebook-like feed, which reveals the latest back and forth relating to tasks across all your projects. In fact you can even point you commentary at (@) a particular user through the feed (LiquidPlanner autocompletes names based upon members in its database).

Projects
Most project managers will spend the bulk of their time in the Projects section of LiquidPlanner. Thankfully, the tool seems to anticipate this usage, having granted Projects the freshest interface of the site (see the slideshow). There's a large Add button for creating a new project or client or importing an existing project as a CSV or Microsoft Project file. From Edit you can reassign projects, add (and clear) dependencies, or even duplicate items.

There's a host of different ways to visualize projects through the View button. This can be taking a PDF snapshot of a schedule (not as visually gratifying as it sounds) or expanding or collapsing branches in the Web view. With the Portfolio mode, you can filter information by client rather than project. To the right of these buttons are shortcuts to other key view options, from scheduling to project progress, from project history to upcoming tasks. While Liquid Planner allows users to customize the order in which these options display, I could not, for example, hide the Date Drift view.

Most project tools ought to look familiar to a PM, though I was particularly impressed with the communication functionality tucked into the Collaborate button. Without leaving a project, it's easy to post a comment, upload supplementary files, and embed links. When it comes to file support, however, LiquidPlanner comes up short. While the service allows users to upload multiple files at a time, there's no versioning support, which could demand scrupulous attention to naming conventions from participants.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/GaGT6QB0RAQ/0,2817,2390482,00.asp

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