Most recently accessed projects are displayed on the top bar, letting you switch easily.
New project customization tab shows up on the right panel, providing context as you make changes.
Gantt charts and other reports are now grouped together.
There’s more here for you to explore and discover!
2. Better Resource Utilization: An 8-day task may engage a resource for entire days, or for just an hour a day. The duration is the same, but the resource consumption is entirely different. How do you plan them differently? Projects 5 introduces Work Hours for tasks. You can now set the number of hours for a resource—independent of duration—and specify this in multiple ways (eg, work hours per day, the percentage of hours per day, or leave it at total work hours and let Projects 5 do the rest). This gives you better insights into resource utilization. For each person (resource) on your team, you can see if the work allotted is below, approaching, or in excess of total available hours. We’ve also amused you with a cute see-saw representation, seating allotted time and free time at either end. Make the see-saw swing up and down through drag-and-drop changes!
Now plan your projects with greater precision and have fun doing it!
3. SLA Automation: Most contracts today come with SLAs—Service Level Agreements—that define specific obligations by the suppliers. Many pertain to escalation procedures and timely issue resolution. Non-compliance often results in automatic penalties. Zoho Projects 5 ensures contractual compliance to your customers by setting up automated escalations, based on defined criteria. For instance, a critical issue not fixed within 24 hours could trigger an escalation message to a particular manager. Specific actions can also be automatically triggered. For example, in a software project, an escalated bug could automatically get assigned to a particular developer with specialized experience. Projects 5 supports four levels of escalations, each with up to ten automated actions.
4. Additional Integration with Finance Apps: In Projects 4, we let you generate invoices, right from within timesheets. Users loved this and wanted more, so we’ve done just that in Zoho Projects 5. You can now connect your portal with Zoho Books, our full-fledged accounting app. In addition to creating invoices, you can allocate a budget for your projects, record expenses, edit them, and view expense reports—without ever leaving Projects.
5. Enhanced Chrome Extension: The Google Chrome extension now gives you quick access to your projects, from any tab. You can see the latest project updates, and take action. You can also post feeds, create and manage tasks, view and update timesheets, and log bugs. We’ve also added a screen-grabber that lets you take a screenshot and edit it with an inbuilt drawing tool to highlight important areas, while blacking out confidential information. On a software project, for example, this could give a developer a much clearer picture of an underlying bug.
Do explore the five fabulous features. If you feel something needs to be improved, you have our attention, let us know. And if you liked what you saw, give us a high five!
Hi, " Resource Utilization and work hours are available in premium and enterprise plans." We have currently have the premium plan and when we go into the reports tab to access , it says we have to upgrade to Enterprise to access Reports. How does one access Resource Utilization and work hours in premium?
Hi Guy, In the premium plan you can go to any project and click the tasks and milestones module in the left margin. In the menu that appears below, select 'Reports and Gantt charts'. All charts including resource utilization appear as tabs here. To see resource utilization for all projects in one place you need to upgrade to enterprise plan.
Hey Zoho, This looks good. I've been hoping for the resource utilization piece, so I'm anxious to start with it. Do you have an estimated time for the 5 release yet (are we talking days or months)? Thanks, Jim
Hi Jim, We have already launched Zoho Projects 5. If you are still in version 4 please click the red 'Try New Version' button on the top right.
Hi, We recently subscribed to Zoho Projects. So, will we be getting all these new features upgrade? If no, what is the procedure to avail it? Regards Mukesh
Hi Mukesh, Here is the breakup: UI and Chrome extension are available in all editions (including the free plan). Invoice and expenses are available in all the paid editions. Resource Utilization and work hours are available in premium and enterprise plans. SLA is available only in enterprise plan. You can chose your plan based on your requirements.
Hi guys, nice update! Thanks! 2 Questions: 1) Could you update User Roles doc related to Invoices&Expense ? https://www.zoho.com/projects/project-access-privileges.html 2) Does Zoho Projects->Reports Connection plugin supports new data structure? (Project entities and project budget)
Hi Yury, thanks for the feedback! 1) Yes, we will update it soon 2) Right now the new features are not connected to Zoho Analytics but we will explore this and get back to you when we have something.
I subscribed to Zoho Project, how could I log in the real project! Everytime I log in, I come to this marketing page!
Hi Renjun, Sorry for the trouble! If you are going to the product webpage (zoho.com/projects) click the 'Access Zoho Projects' button on the top right. If you mean our Zoho Projects 5 announcement banner, click the close button (X) on the top right of this popup. We realise this is a bit hard to find and will update an improved version soon.