Microsoft Project Server Room for Improvement

DT
Project Manager at a computer software company with 5,001-10,000 employees

The reporting aspects can be improved, which is one of the reasons why I'm using Qlik Sense. In the older on-prem versions, reporting was lackluster, to say the least. Project Online has a better handle on that. However, we will still be using Qlik Sense as the licensing model for native PowerBI reporting is a bit restrictive and expensive for a small enterprise(under 250 users of the tool). We're also looking at an add-on app from OnePlan that adds additional functionality and thord party app connectors as Microsoft is not as clean in its approach for functions such as portfolio management and some of the trend analysis we need.

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Mahesh Seenu - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Manager - Projects at Xebia Group companies

The product's UI is not very user-friendly. From an improvement perspective, I want the tool to offer a user-friendly UI. Microsoft should attempt to match the capabilities offered by the other players in the market.

Microsoft Project Server has issues with SharePoint, providing a not-so-user-friendly experience to users. The aforementioned area can be considered for improvement in the product.

The high cost of the product is an area of concern. The product's price could be made lower.

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DV
Lead Analyst at Michelin

It would be better if the solution had some more training or resources available for a person who is new to Microsoft Project Server.

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Buyer's Guide
Microsoft Project Server
March 2024
Learn what your peers think about Microsoft Project Server. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2024.
767,847 professionals have used our research since 2012.
LM
Enterprise Architect at YASH Technologies

The deployment aspect of the product is a bit tedious. That's something I personally see of my organization. Deploying Project Server from an infrastructure perspective is not an easy thing. It takes a week sometimes to set it up. 

From a features perspective, the insights around the cost and budget could be improved. Competitor products are more robust. Project Server has a very limited feature in terms of reporting. Specifically, the features around the cost control are weak. The built-in reports and the built-in analytics for Project Server are very minimal. The competitors are way ahead than what Project Server is offering us.

The initial setup was complex.

The integration to an employee engagement platform probably would make more sense and integrations with other products like SAP would be useful.

Users of Project Server need to write some amount of custom integrations to the DLP product innovation site. If you wanted to have resource analysis, you want to create invoices based on resources working on a project, that integration is still not there. Integrating with some of those invoice management systems would make more sense now based on the way enterprises are working in terms of automation.

The solution needs multi-language support. The tool primarily supports English as a primary language. If someone wanted to make it Arabic, the Project Server does not work well. The characters sets, the dates, and other things create a lot of mess.

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LawrenceKwaghga - PeerSpot reviewer
Deputy Director, Research at NACA

We want to expand to the local level where we lack strong IT expertise, we are considering making it more user-friendly. We are looking to have a point-and-click interface so that individuals without technical knowledge can easily navigate the system. We want them to use it without the need for programming or making complex changes, simplifying the process for them. Also, the pricing for support needs to be improved.

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AA
Student at Algoma

The solution must provide Agile and AI features. It will help users benefit from the latest technologies.

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SA
Head of IT PMO at Bank Meter

Microsoft is going to integrate the Co-Pilot features into Microsoft Project. The AI feature is an additional feature. It can look at the plan and identify risks early on from any part of your project. 

Additionally, it can help us understand which issues need highlighting and propose solutions. The reporting could be enhanced and needs to be more visual. We have a summary page for the project template, which appears unorganized. We have attempted to consolidate and standardize the reporting structure, as well as the look and feel, across all projects.

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WillemDavis - PeerSpot reviewer
CEO at a pharma/biotech company with 1-10 employees

Resource management has room for improvement because it uses a lot of resources. We used to use Star BI, and everything else was an additional cost to our business. We also had to pay extra money for reports.

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Andrey Stulenkov - PeerSpot reviewer
General Manager at Projectforce

Microsoft is undergoing a shift in its approach. They're diverting their investments away from Microsoft Project Server's development and are focusing on a new solution based on Microsoft Power Apps. This new solution is exclusively cloud-based and can't be installed on-premises. While Microsoft Power Apps are technologically sophisticated, the cloud functionality is currently less sophisticated compared to the existing Microsoft Project Server solution on-premise. It appears that Microsoft's primary goal is to migrate as much functionality as possible from the legacy on-premises Microsoft Project Server to the new cloud-based Power Apps solution. 

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MuhammadShakeel - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior System Engineer at Confiz Solutions

The solution's desktop version is not compatible with the MacBook.

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WN
Sr Consultant at Norconsult Telematics

The solution should be made more collaborative. Currently, we are using Microsoft Project Server alone, without the involvement of a team. In other words, we are not collaborating with the whole team within the solution and that is a minus. 

I would also like to see an integration with Amazon's project management solution. As of right now, there is no integration. We have a link only between the Amazon project management solution and the planner activities. This is very basic and we need some advanced cooperation options.

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AB11 - PeerSpot reviewer
Director at LimeOn Global Company

Microsoft Project Server could improve by making the solution more user-friendly.

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SS
Student at Inderprastha Engineering College

There are certain shortcomings in the documentation part where improvements are required. Microsoft should release some basic documentation on use cases to the public so that anyone who wants to learn more about the product can learn about it through the documentation available on Microsoft's websites.

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Bunthoeurn  Sin - PeerSpot reviewer
Delivery Engineer at a manufacturing company with 201-500 employees

I don't have any specific notes for improvement. I do not require any more functionality.

I've had some issues with Project Server from time to time. It is not updated in real-time. Sometimes it, therefore, is not accurate.

Technical support could be more efficient. 

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DominiqueMubanga - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Manager in Enterprise Transformation at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

The user interface needs to be improved. It looks quite old and nowhere near as good as the Jira UI. I also think they should allow the delayed monitoring of the task. For now, there's only the planification of the whole program, and it's not possible to do daily monitoring of the task layer which is a natural extension of the planification of the project. The whole solution could be more flexible. 

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SS
Chief Digitalization Executive at a energy/utilities company with 1,001-5,000 employees

The solution needs to be much more stable. 

The project support is missing. We tend to use Primavera as opposed to MS Project when we are doing engineering or large-scale projects. 

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AM
DX project manager at PFI

The initial setup is complex. 

There need to be more tutorials available to users. It's very robust software with lots of features. If you don't know the shortcuts or the application, it's more difficult. Having training and tutorials would make learning it and accessing features easier. 

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SA
Projects director at a recruiting/HR firm with 11-50 employees

Remote usage and tracking pose challenges, requiring navigation through numerous technical details and troubleshooting. This inconvenience sometimes leads to abandoning the task on the device and waiting until the next workday to resume operations. Improvements are needed in the technical support process, aiming for a better user experience. The current process, when encountering difficulties, should be more user-friendly, streamlined, and efficient. Quick and accessible customer support is crucial, especially when seeking assistance during work hours.

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Abdulkadir Ozdemir - PeerSpot reviewer
Cyber ​​Security Engineer at Oyak Cimento

The price of the product must be improved.

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MM
Technology PMO & Performance Senior Manager at Ooredoo Algerie

When we started using this solution from scratch, we got lost. Microsoft should provide some templates for configurations for certain use cases.

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OB
Manager project schedule and ressources at a pharma/biotech company with 10,001+ employees

This solution could improve by adding integration with Primavera schedules to allow the reading and management of them.

In an upcoming release, the loading of larger schedules could be faster when using the wizard and better workload assigning is needed. For example, if work is assigned to someone and they only work at the beginning and the end but not in the middle, it splits the tasks equally over the period.

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Nomfundo Zulu - PeerSpot reviewer
Junior Data Engineer at PBT Group

Stability of the solution is an area with certain shortcomings where improvements are required.

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Taha Khaleel - PeerSpot reviewer
Chief Operations Officer at PRO-VISION

The product is difficult to use for complex projects. There could be more planning tools for project management. Sometimes, we encounter issues with paper size while printing the project plan.

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KirtiMishra - PeerSpot reviewer
Mechanical Design & Analysis Engineer at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees

The solution could improve the ease of access could improve. It can be time-consuming.

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RS
IT Project Manager at a media company with 10,001+ employees

The solution could have more compact dashboards, such as one finds with Planview. 

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RS
Team Lead , Enterprise Computing Platforms at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees

Microsoft Project Server's user interface is pretty average, and sometimes it can have bugs.

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EB
Director, Project Management Office at a wholesaler/distributor with 10,001+ employees

Collaboration within the tool is lacking when you compare it to online or cloud-based tools.

We should be able to notify assignees about the tasks that have been assigned to them. This is something that we don't have, and it could be because of the way it was deployed for us.

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LS
Agile PMO Chief at Claro

The reports need to be improved. It's complicated. The default views are good. However, we need more. We need to be able to compare milestones, calls, and other variables regarding the projects we are working on. I have to contract developers to make reports, which is where things get complicated. They need to develop personal and custom fields for us. We also need to use Power BI, which needs to connect with Project Server, in order to generate reports.

The scalability capabilities could be improved upon.

There should be an interaction between Microsoft's Planner app and this solution. Their Planner is a good solution. I would like them both to connect directly, with the Planner tasks in the Project plans. It would also be helpful if the solution integrated with Microsoft Teams. My company uses Office 365, and therefore it would be great if everything was integrated.

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CP
Technology Governance Manager at a computer software company with 1,001-5,000 employees

The solution's synchronization with Jira Projects should be improved.

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HK
Information Technology Consultant at Kaid

When it comes to integration with other systems Project Server falls short. There used to be out-of-box integration with TFS for example but with Project Server 2016 and forward that integration is deprecated. There is room for improvement here.

When it comes to project management itself, I'd like to see some hybrid solutions right now across the on-premises deployments especially. On-premise only has waterfall style project management. On the other hand Project Online has a lot better integration and hybrid (agile-waterfall) project management abilities. This should also be the case for On-premise customers.

The check-in, check-out feature, makes Microsoft Project Server pretty slow or cumbersome to use. Users mostly forget when to check-in. We have problems with that. If it's a bit faster to use, or easier to use, like your Planner or other programs, it would be better. You should just be able to type in something and it's updated. The ease of use could be improved.

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DT
Project Manager at a computer software company with 5,001-10,000 employees

OOB reporting is not very robust. We have utilized SSRS, Excel Services and Qlik Sense to expand the OOB reporting capabilities. We use a hosted on-premise version so that we can have better direct access to the SQL server data. 

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it_user438309 - PeerSpot reviewer
Project Management Analyst at a manufacturing company with 201-500 employees

Risk Management: Risk and issues are stored in the project SharePoint but there is no real auto communication of assignments (unless the end user sets it up); there is no mechanism for automatic escalation (much needed).

Issues are visible within the application (My issues area) so individuals can log in and see issues assigned to them.

Project Managers can set up email communications when issues change. (Admin can’t do it across the board but individual PMs can set up.)

We flag issues that need to be escalated and use SSRS reports that are emailed out at regular intervals.

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RubenCarrillo - PeerSpot reviewer
PMO Leader Fusion at Corporación Financiera Nacional S.A.

The price of the solution could be reduced.

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Erkan Cengiz - PeerSpot reviewer
Manager, Program Management Office at a manufacturing company with 51-200 employees

Project Server could be improved by simplifying how tasks are assigned and reviewed on a daily basis. This solutions integrations could be made more user friendly.

The reporting and visualizations could also be improved. 

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MR
Senior Manager at a comms service provider with 501-1,000 employees

We are on the on-prem version. The cloud, however, gives more regular updates that we can take advantage of. On-premises needs more regular updates. 

The Project Server reporting is not very powerful unless you have another tool or other thing integrated with it.

Collaboration potential can be increased. 

It's very expensive to scale out.

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OC
IT at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

It has to be more user-friendly. For instance, there should be some assistance, like when you go to certain sites, people pop up and say, "Can we help you? What are you looking for?" It's not interactive enough.

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JP
Project Manager at a government with 10,001+ employees

The new versions appear to address the current UX and an ability to better represent the application of agile management methodologies.

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MR
Senior Manager at a comms service provider with 501-1,000 employees

Reporting is an area that needs to be worked on. It needs improvement.

It should be more agile and more flexible when it comes to customization.

The deployment could be easier.

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NP
IT PMO Manager at a mining and metals company with 5,001-10,000 employees

It needs to be more collaborative from inside the application. It only does project scheduling for me. It would be good if it could do other things and be more collaborative, such as sharing tasks for users. 

It is not really incorporated into MS Office, so you can't copy-paste stuff. It is on its own, doing its own thing. It is only used for scheduling, and it doesn't work well with anything else.

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it_user229761 - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Consultant | Architect at DHL

There is definitely room for improvement with the algorithms that are used for resource allocation. There should be options for using generic algorithms or multi-objective generic algorithms with more inputs from the resource and the HR department. This should really improve the way resources are allocated to separate project tasks. At the moment, there are parameters such as resource allocation, personal calendar and availability of resource. Also the role or added primary skill of resource, but nothing else.

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PK
SAP FI Consultant; Project Management Consultant at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees

I'd like it if we could divide out the project calendars. On one project server, we might follow five projects or more at one time, and we'd like to see all of the items at once so that it becomes a long loop, but one where we can identify different projects in tandem and then focus on which we need to at the time. While I only have visibility into one, I'd like to see several at a time.

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it_user565827 - PeerSpot reviewer
Assistant Consultant - Project Manager at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees

Permission management needs improvement.

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TL
Manager for Middleware at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees

This is a good product but we have struggled with stability from time to time. The service has stopped intermittently and it has been difficult to find a reason why. Rebooting the system has often solved these issues. 

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HA
Vice President of Sales at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

The cost could be lower.

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it_user846750 - PeerSpot reviewer
Hardware Development Manager with 51-200 employees

I think they need more flexibility with licensing, because there are preconceived ideas that don't allow as much flexibility with the various licenses.

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it_user528354 - PeerSpot reviewer
PMO Professional at a energy/utilities company with 1,001-5,000 employees

I think that "earned value calculation" could be improved, and also the relationship between time and cost, that sometimes does not allow adjustments during execution.

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AP
IT Project Manager at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

We noticed that there are some problems or issues working with it. We are finding some workarounds to avoid them. We are not totally satisfied with that solution.

It is related to the calculation of project duration, working hours, and so on. We think that calculations are not working correctly, and there is a need to enter data a couple of times in order to give the correct calculations.

I'm not sure if there are any missing features. I can't recall feeling as if something is lacking.

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FD
Solutions Architect at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

For the way we use the solution, it's fine. I can't think of anything specifically that I'd like to have improved now.

It would be useful if the solution allowed us to share files or project schedules. You may get that with the cloud version. However, it's not available on the on-premises versions.

It would be nice if there was a low cost version of the enterprise version, so something in between what we have now and enterprise. It would be perfect for those that don't want to go enterprise but still want to have the sharing project files capabilities.

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it_user574122 - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr Technical Consultant at a tech company with 501-1,000 employees

The stability and performance in enterprise-grade farm implementations needs to be improved.

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MW
Vice President at MVProject
  • Resource reservation workflow
  • Financial management
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it_user374520 - PeerSpot reviewer
Analytics & Technologies Consultant at a consultancy with 51-200 employees

There are formatting issues that haven't been resolved. This needs improvement as it's annoying.

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it_user309312 - PeerSpot reviewer
ERP Project Manager at a tech company with 51-200 employees

Make transitions easier to implement, e.g. if a new portfolio comes along, it should be easy to integrate to the existing portfolios.

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Buyer's Guide
Microsoft Project Server
March 2024
Learn what your peers think about Microsoft Project Server. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: March 2024.
767,847 professionals have used our research since 2012.