While the SharePoint Project Site template and Task List Gantt Chart view is a nice tool for team collaboration on projects, it has not been very helpful in managing larger projects that require administration from within Microsoft Project. This usually results in additional work or cutting and pasting of tasks from project into the Datasheet view in SharePoint. Well, while researching functionality for a client project, I came across a wonderful plug-in for Microsoft Project that performs the synchronization with a SharePoint list from Team Direction called IntelliGantt Microsoft Project Add In. My experience with this tool has been very positive and I believe this tool would provide a significant return on investment over time for companies that want to collaborate on projects within SharePoint. In addition, the plug in is deployed on the client workstation or laptop and does not require any components to be deployed to SharePoint.
The IntelliGantt plug in requires a little configuration up front to setup the field mappings for any custom fields that might exist in the Project Plan and to identify the SharePoint site and list to synchronize with. Once complete, the synchronization is easy and performs updates in both directions (from Project to SharePoint and SharePoint to Project). NOTE: the synchronization direction is configurable.
In addition, there are other features of IntelliGantt that are beneficial including:
§ Send targeted email invites to users on your SharePoint portal from within the IntelliGantt Add In
§ Connect to an existing list or create a new list to synchronize with from within the IntelliGantt Add In
§ Create any custom columns that exist in the plan in SharePoint “on the fly”
§ Create project plans from existing SharePoint lists, so if you already have a list with tasks in it, there is no need to recreate those tasks in a project plan.
For more information on the TeamDirection IntelliGantt tools, go to TeamDirection’s web site at http://www.teamdirection.com .
