DeskAway – Enterprise Collaboration tool review
Posted on 04. Dec, 2009 by Abha in Reviews
Synage is an Indian web company founded in 2007 that delivers software as a service (SaaS) solutions to the global market. DeskAway, a web-based on-demand project management and collaboration tool is their flagship product.
DeskAway offers varied pricing and plan options ranging from a free version (3 Projects and 5 users) to a fully packed version at $99 per month (unlimited projects and users, 25 GM storage, detailed reports, SSL security, backup, E-mail integration and more). All plans offer user rights options – you can see only what you are authorized to see.
We found the interface easy to use, clean and inviting. It was easy to get started without really digging deep into the How To tutorial /video and it was nice to see how tips and tutorials were generously placed on various pages but with the option of closing them all in one go in case you felt confident of finding your way around independently.
Always feel that a tabbed view makes an app largely clutter free and easy to navigate and at the same time allows a lot of features to be packaged in well. DeskAway scores high marks on this account and makes good use of a tabbed UI and frames.
Here’s a list of some of the interesting features:
- Dashboard – Overall view of activity on all your projects. List of past and current tasks and also a list of tasks shared via E-mail. The right frame prominently displays the overdue tasks and milestones
- Projects – Listing of projects and also a project calendar view. Tasks can be quickly added and updated from this view itself. All resources related to the task like milestones, files , timesheets etc. are directly accessible. Quickies and personal notes can also be added to any project. One can also view Work Reports that gives an overview on the state of completion of all projects and associated tasks/milestones. This report can be generated for specified time periods and projects as well.
- Calendar – A monthly view on activities/tasks/milestones scheduled for each day of the month. This view however is rather basic and not very appealing. Tasks and personal notes can directly be added from the view as well.
- Blogs – New blog posts can be created and shared with teams using this tool. One can also subscribe to RSS feeds here.
- Search – one of the most useful features. Searches through all or selected sections. We however found the search to be rather slow! Also the search successfully located a file only when words used in the description tag were used and not when the actual filename (these were not specified in the description tag)… found that disappointing.
- Reports – give a graphic view of the status on all projects. Interesting and useful feature
- Status – Just like in Facebook you can update your current status on DeskAway. This helps your colleagues to know what you are working on
One suggestion for future roll outs of the product would be to incorporate wikis and truly make teams collaborative.
All in all we’d say these are a great set of well laid out project management tools. Great functionality and very useful reporting formats. DeskAway has come up with a good basket of offerings within 2 years of its inception at an enticing price point and is poised to take on established players like Basecamp, Zoho and others.
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Nagesh
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DeskAway
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