Microsoft task management software

Microsoft software applications for office task management are used by employees of many companies. Due to leading positions on the business software market, those tools are popular enough solutions that help organize working time, manage schedules, perform daily tasks, arrange meetings, create agendas and run projects. A range of such tools and products includes the following office task management software solutions:

• Microsoft Outlook. Today many people use MS Office Outlook to achieve better results in managing tasks and emails. MS Office is based on this prime tool for communication and productivity. Such critical activities as emailing, calendaring, and scheduling are successfully managed by means of that solution. Employees and managers use it to know how to manage their schedules, projects and todos. MS Outlook uses MS Exchange Server to establish user collaboration and data sharing.

• MS Access . This solutionoffers a database management system for business use. Being a separate product within Microsoft office task management suite of applications, Access is supported by object-oriented programming (Visual Basic for applications - VBA) and many ActiveX components. VBA gives rich programming tools that can be applied to organization and management of employees, office work, and tasks.
• Microsoft Project . That solution offers a set of complex tools that provide experienced business professionals with a better understanding of how to manage attributes of projects, including time, resources and budget. MS Project lets create critical path schedules, define classes of users who have different access levels to project data, and store objects such as schedules, tables, filters and fields in a single database which is shared by all users. It uses Windows SharePoint Services to establish user collaboration and data sharing.

SharePoint
SharePoint is a collection of software products and components that includes solutions for organization of documents and collaborative work, creation of web portals, editing of HTML documents, management of enterprise resources, and analyzing of business processes. Among all components and products of SharePoint, The technologies become outstanding in the context of organization and management of company activities. Task management in SharePoint is based on the following two components:

• Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) is a free application based on Windows Server. It creates a foundation for collaborative work and managing tasks in SharePoint, including editing, managing, and storing information by a group of SharePoint task management users. WSS supports online communication and allows managing flows of documents and tasks.
• SharePoint Server (MOSS) is a commercial component for integrating functionality of Microsoft SharePoint task management platform into task management software. It extends functionality of WSS and includes tools for business analysis and office TM – Excel Services and Business Data Catalog.

There are several essential reasons that make users to choose alternatives to Microsoft task management software:

• Often users feel confused while choosing one or another MS solution.
• For many small- and mid-size companies, Microsoft SharePoint and Exchange Server are expensive solutions to organize employees, manage tasks and share data.
• Installation, administration and maintenance of Microsoft office task management software require additional time and money to be spent on qualified administration.

VIP Task Manager is a great alternative. It is task management software that offers powerful functionality to manage schedules, tasks, todos and projects and to organize your employees into a productive team. VIP Task Manager uses ‘Firebird’ client-server technology to establish user collaboration and data sharing in real time. The software is quite simple in installation, use and maintenance. Installation is almost automatic – you will need just to press ’Next’ button several times to install the software. While using it, you don’t need to set up additional applications, and users will benefit from an intuitive interface and convenient navigation tools.