By Laura Bamberg – Global Sales Administrator

Recently one of our salespeople was talking to project managers on the trade show floor at a conference and discovered that many of them still print their project plans to pdf documents and distribute to their team and stakeholders.

If you prefer to use a program like Excel, it’s important to note that this is not helpful for delivering project plans over the long term any more than printing to a pdf. What if the team members need to add information to your project plan? This is not at all feasible for them. This reminds us that Steelray Project Viewer saves project managers time and prevents the hassle of trying to print plans to a pdf or strictly using Excel.

It would be simpler and faster to send an e-mail to your team, telling them where the mpp file is located so they can see it. The team can open it with our Microsoft Project viewer, and there will be no problem trying to get it to print correctly to a pdf or making sure everything exports to Excel perfectly. It is almost the same as if you had created it in Microsoft Project.

What are some of the other ways that our Viewer can help?

• There is no need to update to a third-party server – instead, store it on your server, and there is no need to create a new pdf.
• A pdf gives you one view – our Viewer gives you a sight-line to overdue tasks, incomplete, and tasks beginning this week, as well as tasks assigned to a person and more.
• Filter and navigate your view. Drill down to all parts of critical project information.
• A pdf file limits your zoom levels because you only have two options – bigger or smaller. Our Viewer allows multiple zoom levels with different timescales.
• The Viewer is also a navigator – it allows you to search in the same way you would use a search engine on the web.
• A team member can send a status update to the project manager’s email inbox.
• If you like using Excel and feel comfortable with it, you can use one of our Excel templates that’s included with our Viewer. You can also export tasks to Excel, as well as html.

What holds you back from using a better tool? Could it be that there are many products that cost a great deal of money out there, each vying for your attention and budget? Some companies charge a monthly fee, which actually costs you much more than the cost of our viewer.

We love to hear your feedback, so keep it coming! We’ve enjoyed our conversations with you on Twitter and LinkedIn.