Travel and Leisure

A project management app is a Web-based solution for managers, allowing them and their team members to access a project via any internet connection. It's an ideal solution for projects that require team members to work in multiple locations, or those that need to access their work from home or when traveling.

While a third party provider essentially hosts an online project management app, not all of these apps are the same. When looking for the best app for your project, it's important to have a variety of options to help keep everything on track.

One of the most basic must-haves for a Web-based project management app is privacy controls. These gives you, the project lead, as well as team members the ability to mark something private when necessary. It also means that you can designate which team members, team leaders, or department managers have permission to access certain portions of the project. For example, if you can choose an assistant project manager to have access to all portions of the project, and then break down permissions by department, so one department doesn't overlap another and get confused by what the other team is doing. Since individual employee permissions are restricted, this also streamlines the project so everyone is focused and only seeing what they need to see at any given stage.

Other necessities you may want include instant search options, section controls, project timers, mass email notifications, bug tracking capabilities, page themes, whiteboards, project templates, calendars, budget tracking, file sharing, and automatic backup. One essential in particular is the ability to format tasks for printing. The best project apps will have a simple print icon that, when pressed, automatically formats the details and prints tasks on demand.

Automatic backup is also a priority because you never want to lose any project information. Since every employee has access to the project and contributes in different ways, the entire system is storing information in real-time. The best host will provide a nightly backup of all databases so restoring information in the event of an emergency takes mere hours to complete. You also want to go with a company that supports their project management app with anti-virus protection, firewalls, and added security systems that detect intrusion or misuse.

The company you choose matters just as much as the options it provides, so be selective when choosing your online project management application, and don't settle for anything less than all the options you require.