Microsoft Project as collaboration tool

Question

I want to create a project management and collaboration tool for a small company. I need a strong integration with Exchange, Active Directory, and to be prepared for a future integration with Dynamics and Sharepoint.

We already own all the Office 2016 suite, so my first choice would naturally be Microsoft Project, attached to a MS Project Server. NOT Office 365.

Is Ms Project a collaboration tool that allows to manage a complete workflow of a project in a modern way (assign tasks, schedule them, attach files to a project, chat with users, comment tasks, and so on)? Would it give full access to the project tools also via web browsers, for Mac users?

Thank you

Answer 1

MS Project is a project management tool with a high focus on Project Management, so i don't see it matching your requirements.

To my knowledge there is no great solution for work management in the Microsoft environment. Microsoft Team Foundation Server could meet some requirements, but it is heavily focused on software development processes. You could use the new Microsoft Teams which is all about collaboration in terms of chatting, but is only available in O365 for the moment.

By reading your requirements, I would recommend looking into Atlassian's Jira Core. It allows you to work with tasks and workflows and offers a wide range of functionality in order to make the tool mirror your business processes. You can integrate with Active Directory, and I'm sure there are plugins to connect to Sharepoint and Dynamics. Next to that, Atlassian offers some other products which could cover some of your requirements. Most of them are focused on developers, but for example HipChat could meet your needs for chat functionality.