The new Microsoft Project

Ludovic Hauduc, General Manager of Microsoft Project

Last week Microsoft announced availability of the Office Customer Preview for public download. And right alongside it, we released a preview of the new Microsoft Project with two options to try out the latest release for yourself:

1. Sign up for the Project Online Preview with Project Pro for Office 365
2. Download Project Professional 2013 Preview & Project Server 2013 Preview

I'm proud of the work the team has put into this release and today, I'm also excited to finally share the new Project with all of you.

Project Online: In the cloud with Office 365!

Now you can quickly get a portfolio view of all your projects and resources, prioritize initiatives, and deliver on them by leveraging the familiarity of SharePoint. Project Online makes it easy and fast to get up and running on a full range of project portfolio management (PPM) capabilities including portfolio selection, workflow, resource capacity planning, dashboards, and more.

Project Web App (PWA)

We wanted to make it easy for users to start managing projects with Project Online. The new PWA comes equipped with visual tiles to guide you through important steps in managing your projects and get started quickly to make the most of the flexible PPM capabilities in Project.

Collaborate using familiar tools

Collaboration starts with SharePoint and with this release, integration between Project and SharePoint is even better. The ease of use of SharePoint allows team members to jump right in and update their task status via team sites. These team sites centralize your unique project management needs storing relevant documents and a dedicated OneNote notebook to capture critical project details. With improved social capabilities in SharePoint, working together has never been easier.

All of your tasks, across multiple projects, surface up under My Tasks in the SharePoint Newsfeed hub. More and more users rely on their mobile devices, and with improved Exchange integration, you can now see these project related tasks on your Windows Phone or iOS device.

Best of all, Project Online allows your team to connect to a web-based mobile team site to stay up-to-date from virtually anywhere.

Industry-leading PPM for any organization

We believe any organization should be able to take advantage of the benefits of PPM. In both Project Online and the new Project Server 2013, we make it easy to build and customize workflows tailored to the processes of your organization by leveraging the simplicity of both SharePoint Designer and Visio. Unlock the rich project and resource data to create dashboards for real-time. Any user familiar with Excel can easily connect to Project Online to build custom reports and dashboards that can be published to PWA in the new Business Intelligence Center, which comes equipped with several popular reports right out of the box. 

Project Professional 2013: A new look

Microsoft Project helps you easily collaborate with others to quickly start delivering winning projects. It's the only project management system designed to work seamlessly with other Microsoft applications and cloud services.

Get started quickly

We designed the new start experience with our users in mind. When you first launch Project, a simple "Getting Started" template walks you through the key features you need to start planning your project. Once you've got that down, tap into a variety of Project templates on Office.com from within Project to help you get started quickly. Even if you're working with someone else's project plan for the first time, Task Path highlighting in the Gantt Chart helps you understand how the tasks come together and identify which are the most critical to the project's success.

Communicate your plans like a pro

The new Project now brings reporting to the client with rich, out-of-the-box reporting tools within a familiar Office-like experience. These reports help you quickly and easily measure progress and resource allocation with just a click.

Project's timeline view helps you visualize your project to deliver stellar presentations to your team, executives, and stakeholders with easy sharing across Office applications like PowerPoint or Outlook. Do the same with the built in reports for a truly powerful presentation.

And did we mention the new Office Store? Apps for Office extend the functionality of Project to solve unique problems to meet your needs and the needs of your business.

Connect with your team

Once you've created the perfect project plan, share it with your team! Sync your project to any SharePoint site. We store your project file on site and create a Tasks List along with the timeline on the site. Your team can view and update project status in the same location where they can stay up-to-date with the site feed, store project documents, notes and more. Open any project plan from SharePoint in Project with one click.

Project integration with Office 365 enables you to send instant messages and kick off real-time conversations right from your project with Lync Online.

The experience of using Project alongside Office and Office 365 is better than ever, giving you a complete collaborative project management system.

Access the power of Project anywhere with Project Pro for Office 365

By trying Project Online, you'll also have the opportunity to run Project Pro for Office 365. Get your users up and running quickly with application streaming technology. Simplify your deployments by having the latest patches and updates installed automatically and benefit from integration with other Office 365 services, such as presence and IM integration through Lync or sharing to SharePoint.

Sometimes changes come up unexpectedly. Everyday demands including travel can keep you out of the office and away from your PC. In the past, you had few options when large changes had to be made and deadlines loomed over you. And sometimes, making a trip back to the office could actually hurt productivity. Project on Demand changes all that. With Project on Demand you have the option to install Project on multiple PCs including your home. Quickly resolve outstanding issues and focus on delivering your project...or better yet, enjoying that summer vacation.

Next Steps

Thanks for reading our first post on the new release. We hope you:

1. Try the new Project Online Preview. We welcome your comments and feedback.
2. Register and attend SharePoint Conference 2012 (November 12 - 15) in Las Vegas, Nevada.
3. Connect with Project.  Subscribe to the Project blog where we will post more details in the coming weeks with a deeper dive into the new release. Join the conversation on Facebook or ask questions on the Project forum. And finally, you can follow us on Twitter.

Ludo