Celoxis

Avantages

Celoxis checks all the boxes for engineering project management for me. Prior to Celoxis, we used Microsoft Project: Celoxis incorporates the advanced features of Project in cloud-based tool that provides team collaboration and scheduling that we could not get with Project or most other cloud-based scheduling tools.

Inconvénients

With great options can come a great (big) learning curve: there are so many features in Celoxis, setting up individuals, teams, groups, and roles is critical for a successful launch, and this can be a bit daunting at first glance. However, the Celoxis team did a great job pre-sales of walking us through the tool and it's features, as well as scheduling training for our team post-sales to get up and running in the tool.

Avantages

The standout feature is the flexibility of Celoxis which allows for a great deal of optional customisation.
For example, custom formula fields let us do basic and complex math that can be displayed in reports and on projects.

When comparing it to other solutions it does sport a few unique features not found in competitor products. Chiefly among them would be the semi intelligent schedule and budget prediction feature which gives a quick way to assess project status.

Inconvénients

The biggest issue is the UX/UI which has a bit of a learning curve and needs a strict process to utilize all areas effectively. The system seems to have some legacy features that make functionality redundant.
An example would be 4 different ways to enter time into time-sheets in the UI, or 2 separate comment features that are nested into each other for no reason.

Some very simple and common features, like checklists in tasks, seem to also be absent.

While not difficult to work with, the usage-paths for all the functions have not been thoroughly tested it seems.

Avantages

The most valuable feature in Celoxis for our PMO is its API. We've been able to do intensive integration work on less than 4 months. This has helped us to use a very user friendly adoption path, since people are not seeing disruptive changes in the way they work. What they see is a very gradual transition between their traditional tools and processes to the new ones on Celoxis. For example, for reporting time logs, we used the API to integrate Celoxis with the same GUI our consultants have used for a long time. They saw little differences in that we integrated the time codes catalog into the GUI, but as a PMO we've been able to use the time information in a very productive way in Celoxis. Now, we are gradually moving some users to entre their timesheets using the powerful Celoxis GUI.
Another very powerful feature is the workflow engine. We are also using that one a lot. Be it for managing risks, change requests, issues and project requests (the built-in original apps) or our custom made apps for agreements, business goals, stakeholder management and deliverables acceptance. And we can use all of them using Celoxis GUI, e-mail or the API.
In terms of common project management features, like the Gantt, and the way tasks are added, managed, updated, related, scheduled, etc. Celoxis performs as expected.

Inconvénients

The web GUI has some limitations in terms of there not being a way to zoom, so you get an standard sized view. Personally, I like smaller text and a better use of the visible space, but there's no way to do that on Celoxis.
Another thing we don't like is that a lot of the web views are shared among all users. For instance, I set my dashboards the way I like them, but at the same time I am modifying the for all users. Also, you can create different dashboards but they share some of the widgets configuration. I currently have 3 dashboards. One for those projects I am accountable for their performance and success (my projects), a second one for projects in which I act as a PMO mentor for the project managers, and a third one for all the other projects. Since my involvement is different, I need different information on the Project List widget in the dashboards. But, if you change the column list on the widget on one dashboard it is modified for all of them. I don't like that at all.

Avantages

Celoxis meets expectations for project management in the software delivery industry. We are able to leverage Celoxis globally to track our implementation projects. We track our financials, resource assignments, and % complete in this tool. Celoxis has a great reporting structure and flexibility in creating your own custom fields. When the tool does not have the exact feature I need, I have been able to work with Celoxis training to find an out of the box solution or submit a feature request with surprising success in having them delivered. Celoxis often has more functionality than my teams are ready to adopt and I find that the operational issues have more to do with people and process (not tool). I especially like the flexibility of the client log in feature and the customization of what each person can see in their own dashboards. I really love that it can serve as the one central repository for project updates. We have been using Celoxis for a little over three years and are quite happy with it. Within a few months it will be our global standard.

Inconvénients

Celoxis is a standalone software that needs to be integrated with our Salesforce environment, therefore, it has taken some additional investment on our part to automatically trigger projects at closed/won state and feed the data into our financial systems. Celoxis is also real time data so there is no back button if you delete something or the ability to restore a previous version. Since I am using this tool globally I would like to see more workspace segmented admin features to control what is seen by each region throughout all reports and tasks. Additionally, we have had to perform a few workarounds to get full billable and non-billable resource load charts in the tool. Since many people go to outlook to see if a resource is available, the current Celoxis Outlook integration (a separate calendar) is not sufficient for blocking off the resource from being scheduled for other things. I suggest the following improvements
- Direct Outlook Calendar integration that blocks off scheduled time so people in the business can see that the resource is not available and actively working on a project. (currently we book time in Celoxis and Outlook - double entry)
- Non-Project Time viewed exactly the same as billable time from projects in the resource load charts including the time code and % allocation
- Administration features for further segmentation or archiving of the data
- Data restoring options including restoration of deleted objects restoring to a previous day

Avantages

- ease of use
- feature rich for project management
- external users and client login option for client view
- integrations with salesforce and rest api for other apps if required
- integrated time entry and approval
- single-sign-on capability with various IDP's

Inconvénients

- mobility options are limited
- client cannot be assigned tasks in the Project