Case study: SharePoint products - creating a project planning tool for Office 365

1. CASE STUDY
Cloud4Gantt
Business context
The needs and requirements of today’s business world tend to become more complex than ever. Quality, budget control and time to market
goals take on increased significance in any business sector. As a consequence, project management has emerged as a powerful tool for ensuring
the success of a company.
Project management software makes team collaboration easier and helps to efficiently manage a wide array of projects. Organizations that tap
into the power of project management software are often able to gain a distinct competitive advantage in a highly interconnected world.
MindBusiness Germany, a consultancy company specializing in Microsoft SharePoint technologies, was in need to develop a software
application used in project management to schedule and track projects. Cloud4Gantt, the planning tool developed together with accesa,
helps control and manage resources and tasks.
Project Overview
Cloud4Gantt is a product from a suite of products to be used as planning tools and offered as SharePoint sandbox solutions suitable for usage
within Microsoft Office365 Cloud solution and being MSOCAF compliant. Its specific design enables the planning and controlling of resources
and schedules in order to easily meet the objectives of a project.
In today’s fast paced environment, managing a business project is not always an easy task. However, keeping track of everything is often the
hardest part. Cloud4Gantt can help project plan achieve optimal performance as it provides data for calculating timeframes, as well as
monitoring tasks between departments or teams. It can be used as a quick and easy self-service tool for initiating, organizing, communicating
and updating project plans. The application is simply inserted as a Web Part to a SharePoint site or page and can be set up via the Web Part
Properties toolbox. The Gantt Web Part binds to any custom task lists or default SharePoint project or task lists. It also binds to Calendar lists from
SharePoint.
Offering a rich and interactive user interface, the Gantt Chart can be used as a guide towards the direction of the project plan. Users can see
whether the project is ahead or behind of the schedule, as it shows how the project is planned. Actively involved in all aspects of the product
development, Accesa team ensured the functional scope of the software was met: to enable full control over one company’s valuable assets,
which are people and time.
Partner: MindBusiness
MindBusiness GmbH offers consultancy services and information technology training. As of September 1, 2011, Mindbusiness GmbH operates as a subsidiary
of pmOne AG.
Headquarters: Siemensstraße 30,
D - 63755 Alzenau, Germany Webpage: www.mindbusiness.de
Industry: IT consulting
Partner Profile

2. In the current business context, when technology changes happen so fast, accesa
offers Microsoft technology consulting services and customized software solutions
designed to reach business performance and to drive lasting added-value
ACCESA
Addressing specific customer challenges, accesa’s experience spans various markets like Germany, Switzerland and Scandinavia, where it acts as a trusted
technology partner that supports delivering performance and solves the challenges brought up by the newest technology trends. Our services outline a unique
delivery portfolio that address IT companies, start-ups and large-scale organizations while encompassing architecture and design, development and
implementation, project management and process strategy. Our main contribution as preferred technology partner deployed into our partnerships is represented
by our strong technical competencies. Founded in 2004, accesa is a value-based technology consulting company with local offices in Germany (München) and
Romania (Cluj-Napoca, Oradea) having a business approach that fully confirms its company identity: managing technological change.
For more information, please visit: www.accesa.eu
© Copyright 2004 - 2013, accesa. All rights reserved. No part of this document may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written permission from accesa.
Cloud4Gantt enables to plan the allocation of resources needed to complete project tasks. It also makes it easy to establish dependencies
between tasks. An access control procedure was put in place, which allows the application’s administrator to set up a hierarchy of users.
Methodology
While offering architecture design and software development, our team’s support and collaboration emerged towards a simplified approach:
to enable those involved in managing projects to achieve their objectives. Agile methodology was used.
Technology
SharePoint 2010 & 2013, Silverlight, Office365 (+ 3rd party Gantt
control from DLH)
Time Frame
Project duration: 5 months
Results
The application makes it easier for businesses to communicate with
clients, suppliers and track the status of various projects and
assignments. It allows running the projects with improved cost and
time outcomes, while offering easy and efficient outlining of tasks and
resource management. Cloud4Gantt can be integrated as a building
block for complex project management tasks.
Challenges
When a check-in/check-out mechanism is in place, the editing operation may take longer than expected. Moreover, requiring check-out
prevents multiple users from making content changes at the same time. This situation can create conflicts over changes and leads to confusion.
accesa team overcame this challenge and implemented a new “merge mechanism” that allows multi-user operations over same content. The
feature is designed and implemented in Silverlight.
Being fully aware that project management software can be a critical tool for some businesses, our team has built the application in a way to
easily manage company projects. Its main characteristics are defined by a clearly and easy to understand structure.
Cloud4Gantt is composed from 3 modules:
► Project Management module, where the
tasks are manually inserted by users; the
project is broke down into a tree of tasks and
milestones can be defined
► Resource Planning module, where
resource allocation can be seen
► Configuration module, where the
application administrator sets-up the tasks
hierarchy, defines the tasks legend, designs the
Gantt graphs and what they should represent