Collaboration:  

Seaveus offers an online version and a self-hosted version of this software; we looked at the online version that is priced at only $4.99 per user/month for up to 99 users. In terms of collaboration in regards to cross compatibility, this program can import/export from MS Projects with Project2Project and it can export reports in Excel or PDF form. You can also import projects from MS Excel 2003/2007. In addition, contacts can be imported from Yahoo, MS Outlook 2003/2007, Gmail, Hotmail and AOL as well as from the resources listed in your space.

It has an accessory called Buzzer for Blackberry that works with Blackberry devices with an operating system of 4.3 or higher. This app is free and can be used to receive project updates and changes on your Blackberry. It can also send updates to personal pages like for iGoogle, netvibes and pageflakes. Of course you can also subscribe to an RSS feed, specifically FreeReader, FeedDemon and RSS Bandit RSS feed protocols.

Though this service does not have a forum, it does have a wiki module. Here team members can contribute and share ideas easily.
 

Resource Management:  

This project management service has bit of a weak spot in this area; it can manage basic human type resources, but not materials and only a few resource details. When you add a resource it asks for name, role, email and project, it does not ask for things like talents or skills. It will also allow you to set resources as active or inactive.

ProjectOffice.net also does not have the capacity to manage physical resources like projectors, laptops or company cars. This service has the basic necessities for handling projects with small teams who have no need to track materials or supplies, which might cover most small businesses or a team of independent consultants that manage their own resources.

Project Management:  

ProjectOffice.net can easily manage tasks and projects and has pretty good time management features. The opening screen of this service is the dashboard; from here you can easily view your projects, recent changes, to-do lists, or the calendar. You can also quickly add projects, tasks, issues or resources. From the dashboard you can also easily move between projects & tasks, time & expenses, wiki, issues, the calendar, reports and a powerful search tool.

Each main project can support an unlimited number of projects and multiple people can be assigned to each. You can easily create projects from a variety of templates including business plan, employee performance evaluation, product launch plan, annual fiscal statement, SCRUM Implementation plan, general sales, marketing and website launch. It will also allow you to save a project that you created as a template for future use.

ProjectOffice.net can track and manage milestones, issues, documents, time, events, expenses, wikis, status, team members, resources and more. It provides overviews, summaries and milestones lists as well as Gantt charts. All reports can be exported to Excel or as a PDF file. They also offer up to 2GB of storage for projects.

In terms of notification, it can be set to send out an email when tasks are assigned and as mentioned above it does have the ability to work with Blackberry phones, iGoogle, netvibes and pageflakes.

Though this service may not offer as many advanced reports as some more expensive services, it has the tools needed for most small businesses or group projects and could be really useful to a team of independent consultants, especially for the price.

Ease of Use:  

ProjectOffice.net is incredibly easy to use; it is easy to navigate through the program and complete tasks. In addition, signing up for and beginning to use the service is also extremely quick and easy. We did not have to consult help and support to know how to use this service; it is really intuitive to use. We also liked that it has a powerful search tool that can search through all projects and modules, we found this quiet useful.

Help/Support:  

This service provides an extensive list of FAQs posted online, as well as a forum and a fairly active blog. You can contact Seavus by email or via their toll-free phone number. For this type of service it would be nice to see 24-hour support and online chat.

On the whole, we found this program easy to use and a good option for companies working on smaller projects who do not have a large budget for collaboration tools. It is also extremely affordable and compatible with a variety of other useful tools. We think for the price and overall usability, it is definitely worth trying. Be sure to check out our top three product reviews @task, Daptiv PPM and Clarizen.