When you are researching your best project management software, the most important thing to consider is the features. The features that are most relevant to your team depend on how large they are, the complexity of your projects, and what use cases you'll use the software for.

Task Management

Project team members can create, update, manage, and track the progress of tasks over the course of a project's life. This feature allows members of the team to:

  • Set dependencies for a task
  • Manage subtasks created from larger tasks
  • You can assign a task that will repeat at a specific time or date.
  • Give tasks to one or two people
  • Import task list from an external file

Management software must include task management. Visual task management is essential in project management software. This software offers Kanban boards, top gantt chart software, waterfall dependencies, and burndown charts. These tools provide a visual representation that makes it easier to see the progress of a project than just a list or items in a spreadsheet.

Team Collaboration

Collaboration tools can help you solve complicated problems. These features allow everyone to see the task or part of the project. They can comment on it, add assets, and make changes within the same interface that stores all project information. Collaboration features include visual task representations, messaging, and task descriptions, as well as notation features, and asset upload capabilities. Tags, email integrations, calendar tools, tag support, and tags. Collaboration tools allow project teams and stakeholders:

  • Information exchange
  • Have discussions
  • Comment or approve
  • Project files should be contextualized
  • Directly message each other

In order to ensure that work is completed on time, creative teams can run multiple smaller projects simultaneously. They can use Gantt charts or cross-team approvals to help keep the project moving. Collaboration tools are important for large teams to keep the project current, notify team members of major and minor changes, and centralize resources.

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Support documentation

Software support documentation assists new and experienced team members to troubleshoot problems within project software and to quickly learn how to use it. Support tools and documentation that reduce the learning curve include:

  • Help desk articles
  • Support videos
  • Periodic educational webinars
  • Tooltips in-software
  • Chatbots
  • Support by phone or email

While some tools only offer phone and email support to paid subscribers, others only offer online documentation or customer forums. Look for tools that have high support ratings if you believe your team will require personalized support.

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Email Integration

The best project management software includes email features.

  • Notify team members about the status of projects
  • Notify individuals and the entire team about due dates, keywords or status changes.
  • Email to update or create new tasks
  • Comment, file, or add custom labels to an existing task

This feature greatly increases productivity because the user can access their inbox and manage tasks and update without having to log in. Each member should be able to limit the number and type of emails they receive.

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Document Management

Project management apps provide a place for teams to store and manage their files either directly within the app or through an integrated third-party application. These document management features are essential in PM software:

  • Central document storage
  • Ability to attach documents to tasks
  • You can attach notes and comments to your uploaded documents
  • Drag and drop functionality allows multiple document uploads
  • Document organization in folders, projects or custom settings
  • Version control
  • You can limit document sharing to a specific team, to an entire project or to outside parties with security features

An online PM app can also provide cloud storage space, or integrate with third-party services that offer it. Basecamp, a project management software, is built around a central project document. It also offers some asset upload capabilities.

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