PM Central now features Two-Way Integration between Microsoft SharePoint and Microsoft Office Project, Resource Management Capabilities

November 16, 2009, 9:44 AM Eastern Daylight Time

Bamboo Solutions, the leading provider of technologies that enhance Microsoft SharePoint, has released the latest version of Project Management Central (“PM Central”). The newly enhanced SharePoint Project Management application includes robust resource management capabilities and bidirectional integration with Microsoft Office Project. PM Central enables project managers to design and manage project schedules with Microsoft Project but publish and share this data with team members in SharePoint. PM Central integrates and maintains critical project data such as tasks and dependencies between the two applications. Simple yet powerful Resource Management tools in the new product further enhance user’s ability to manage projects across the organization.

PM Central provides dynamic, interactive workspaces to project teams, enhancing the rich native collaborative capabilities of the SharePoint platform. As the latest addition to Bamboo’s comprehensive portfolio of products for SharePoint, PM Central is a full-featured yet simple-to-deploy application that works on Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) and Windows SharePoint Services (WSS), bringing essential Project Management capabilities to the broadest spectrum of SharePoint users.

Key features of the new release include:

• Schedule by Resource – Allow users to display resource or resources’ schedules.
• Integration with Microsoft Project – Import and export tasks to/from Microsoft Project.
• Enhanced Status Indicators – Provide additional indicators for individual task’s status related to budget and schedule.
• Enhanced Reporting – Resource Task Timeline, Resource Availability, Resource Work by Project.
• Allocation & Capacity Planning – View resource capacities and allocate resources to projects from an enterprise resource pool.

“As with all Bamboo’s products, customer feedback has driven the development of this latest release,” says Wes Bryan, Product Manager for Bamboo Solutions. “Users want to design with MS Project, but leverage SharePoint for team collaboration. Our latest version of PM Central enables both.”

PM Central version 1.5 is available for immediate download via Bamboo’s online store. Licensing is per server, supporting an unlimited number of users. Existing customers, who have procured PM Central as part of Bamboo’s Project Management Suite, are entitled to a free upgrade to the new release. A wealth of information is available, ensuring a smooth upgrade through the PM Central product forums on Bamboo Nation, Bamboo’s community site. For more information, visit http://www.sharepointpmcentral.com.