Microsoft Project Server Reviews

I am a Project Server Administrator and BI Analyst. I work extensively with Microsoft Project Server. We are currently on the 2013 on-prem version, which is currently two versions back. We are in the process of migrating to Project Online, which will in the Microsoft cloud.

We use Project Server to track enterprise-level projects and implement projects. As a financial institution or credit union service organization, we have over 1,800 member credit unions. We use Project Server to manage our enterprise projects where we're building, modifying, and maintaining products, which are then implemented by our implementations teams. They use Project Server for their checklists and for their project management during implementations. We also use it to track costs in our enterprise projects.

It brings all the information and all the data about our projects into one location. It helps us in providing holistic reporting and trends analysis across projects through the entire enterprise.

Project schedule management is very good. Basically, it sits on SharePoint. So, every time we create a project, a new project site is created within that SharePoint environment, which is a very good document repository. It allows us to create issues and risks lists and additional functionality to keep track of what's going on with projects.

The reporting aspects can be improved, which is one of the reasons why I'm using Qlik Sense. In the older on-prem versions, reporting was lackluster, to say the least. Project Online has a better handle on that. However, we will still be using Qlik Sense as the licensing model for native PowerBI reporting is a bit restrictive and expensive for a small enterprise(under 250 users of the tool). We're also looking at an add-on app from OnePlan that adds additional functionality and thord party app connectors as Microsoft is not as clean in its approach for functions such as portfolio management and some of the trend analysis we need.

At this company, I have been using it for about seven years. I've also used Project Server in different organizations previously. 

It is very stable when it is properly configured. When it is not properly configured, it can be a nightmare, just like many programs. In terms of moving to Project Online, we expect a lot better stability. That's because it is being managed by Microsoft, and it will be under their control. We'll be under their supervision. They're going to make sure that it runs properly because they'll have thousands of clients running the same software at the same time, so they've got to be stable across the board. The current on-prem is reasonably stable. It is just we've outgrown it. It is two versions behind, and we need to get into a better situation for the long term.

The older on-prem versions are not as scalable as we would like. Performance starts to suffer a bit when you get too many projects and too many resources in it, but Project Online is supposed to be much more scalable. In fact, we won't have to really manage that side of the house at all. It is going to be a matter of Microsoft keeping things running well and us just not pushing configurations that are unusual.

Currently, we have about 1,600 users. They are different aspects of the business, such as IT, project management, etc. The usage of the older versions that are on-prem is decreasing simply because Microsoft is pushing everybody to the cloud. The on-prem versions are still out there. There are still a lot of large organizations that like to stay on-prem because they like to have better control over their data. It has a pretty widely used set of applications across the entire spectrum, but the on-prem servers and such are starting to migrate more toward Project Online.

We're primarily working with our vendor, and they've been very good. We've had no real problems with them.

There was a partial implementation of Primavera, which was primarily used by our IT group for timesheets. We were probably only using 5% of the capabilities of the product, but in terms of cost-effectiveness and overall usability within our infrastructure, Project Server became a better option. Prior to that, we had standalone project plans using MS Project, a standalone client, and spreadsheets.

It was complex. It took us months, but that was primarily because we had a very stripped-down version. It was basically a quick standup for us that was not properly configured. When we went really committed to the platform, we had to undo a lot of stuff and do a lot of analysis in order to make sure that we were reconfiguring the product into a usable state for ourselves. So, a good chunk of that month was in terms of analyzing business processes and options.

In terms of maintenance of our on-prem version, our vendor handles 90% of maintenance. I don't think they end up having to do quite a lot. It is mainly keeping the servers active, and currently, that system is out of support. So, it is mainly maintaining the operating systems on the servers and just watching disk drive space, etc. In terms of maintenance within the system, we probably put in four to five hours a week for just maintaining resource profiles, answering questions, and providing general support for the user base.

We use consultants. In fact, our current on-prem solution is hosted by our consulting vendor, and they manage all of the systems on the AWS cloud. Our experience with them was good. In fact, we are using them to help us migrate to Project Online at this point.

I'm not quite sure about the licensing costs. We're probably paying somewhere in the neighborhood of about 80,000 to 90,000 a year for our current on-prem because we handle our own licensing. As far as Project Online is concerned, we're still trying to get a good handle on that. It looks like it is going to be in a neighborhood of about 120,000 to 150,000 a year, but we're getting a lot more capability out of it.

We have an enterprise agreement. We've got a pretty large enterprise using the whole suite of Microsoft products. We have probably somewhere in the neighborhood of 2,600 to 2,800 people who are using either Microsoft OS, Microsoft Office, Microsoft Exchange, or something along that line.

Planview, ChangePoint, Monday.com

The biggest item of advice would be to really understand your business and what your real needs are and then compare Microsoft Project Server or Project Online to some of the other offerings out there. If you are going to be in a more robust and complicated set of project processes, Project Server is probably a very good fit for you. If you're only into lightweight project management, it may be a little bit overkill.

I'm still trying to get a feel of the overall functionality of Project Online. We are going to be putting an add-on product on top of it to kind of fill in some of the gaps. 

Currently, I'm going to rate it an eight out of 10. 

We primarily use the solution based on its mobility. I can use it online or via mobile phones or anywhere I can get internet access.

I'm able to curate the SPI (Schedule Performance Index) and the CPI (Cost Performance Index) that helps us measure the performance in regards to costs and even taxes that projects have.

I can create metrics about costs either project by project or phase by phase.

The permissions are the most valuable aspect of the solution. I can configure groups to access different information. The solution allows us to manage the project baseline very well. I can control the baselines in specific user groups, which is very useful for me.

The solution offers very good availability in that we can access it from anywhere, whenever we need to.

The usability is excellent.

We've found the user experience to be quite simple. The views and filters in particular are very good.

The reports need to be improved. It's complicated. The default views are good. However, we need more. We need to be able to compare milestones, calls, and other variables regarding the projects we are working on. I have to contract developers to make reports, which is where things get complicated. They need to develop personal and custom fields for us. We also need to use Power BI, which needs to connect with Project Server, in order to generate reports.

The scalability capabilities could be improved upon.

There should be an interaction between Microsoft's Planner app and this solution. Their Planner is a good solution. I would like them both to connect directly, with the Planner tasks in the Project plans. It would also be helpful if the solution integrated with Microsoft Teams. My company uses Office 365, and therefore it would be great if everything was integrated.

I've been using the solution for a long time. It's been longer than a decade. I'd say it's around 15 years at this point.

The solution's stability is good. Of course, it depends on the cloud provider. This is important. When you have a good cloud provider or infrastructure provider, stability is good. You have to play with the servers and processors and memory about the solution. When you have a good provider, it's no problem. When you have a bad provider, you have problems.

The scalability could be improved upon. Sometimes I want to create some instance or other Project Servers to create, for example, test environments. We need to create a test to do a pilot to sell the idea. However, it's complicated to establish what is the best instance to manage the project. 

We have about 2,000 users online, however, it depends on the cloud environment. How many users we have depends on the infrastructure provider. They ensure the scalability and stability of the environment.

We do plan to increase usage. We still have to configure new project types in the project server to gain more users. We want to achieve 1,000 users this year. Right now, I have 300 active users. The plan for this year is to include more project types in the project server throughout the environment and at the end to achieve 1,000 users, at a minimum.

I haven't really dealt with technical support. The relationship with Microsoft is in the IT area. I am not personally part of that group. I am the portfolio manager, therefore I don't have a direct relationship with Microsoft. That said, I'd say it's good, as I don't have any problems. When we have made a request to IT they answer it quickly. Therefore, I'd say we're pretty satisfied with the level of support on offer.

I used to use Clarity for our Agile projects, however, this solution is less expensive.

Clarity is good, however, it is complicated to use as it makes it more challenging for the final users to understand the project plans. Also, the templates to manage the project plans are complicated. I like Microsoft Project better than Clarity. 

At the moment, the initial setup is not overly complex. It's pretty straightforward. that's due to the fact that I know the solution very well. I've worked with the 2010 version as well and have ten years of experience and have used it in my everyday work for so long, the setup is not hard for me.

The deployment depends on the company and its culture. I have implemented Project Server in two months, which is pretty fast. However, it depends on the organization's needs. 

The reports, for example, are a viable gain for executive teams. When the executive teams watch good reports to manage the portfolio projects, it's easier to deploy the solution. 

My strategy is to do a pilot. Over two months, I may do ten projects. I'll generate reports and deliver good information and the executive team of the steering committee can easily see the value for the company. Once the pilot shows the value to the steering committee, I usually have the go-ahead to continue the deployment in our organization. 

We had five people for deployment and maintenance. It's a good number. You need one person, that knows the information in regards to users and other people training the other people. There should be another person working on the cost measures such as the reports. 

I handle the implementation myself. I have a good amount of experience and therefore don't need further experience. I don't need the help of integrators, resellers, or consultants.

While the solution is less expensive than Broadcomm's Clarity, it more expensive than Planview.

That said, I'm unsure of the exact pricing or how often we pay licensing.

We've also looked at Planview and Jira. We found that the solution has better technical support on offer than other options. That said, I like Planview as it's even less expensive than Project Server.

We are Microsoft Partners.

Currently, I am using Project Online and Project Server. The 2015 versions.

At the moment, I am in the process of deploying, the solution in more areas. I start with IT projects and telecom projects. Currently, I am working to introduce regular projects, marketing projects, product projects, etc. I am working to introduce more areas in the Project Server environment.

On a scale from one to ten, I would rate it at an eight.

My organization handles IT consulting and services. That's primarily how the organization is managed. The use case for this solution was to set up the resource development unit and manage the investment cost, scheduling, budgeting, and some of those new initiatives that were supposed to happen in the R&D division. That was why we were looking for a portfolio management product. We found that Project Server could be a way to visualize and govern the entire program for the client.

The solution has improved the organization primarily due to the transparency between each individual team. There is a productivity benefit. I've likely seen a 20% to 28% increase in productivity benefit over a year's time. From a cost perspective, I'm less sure of how to comment. That said, productivity and transparency are definitely the two benefits I've witnessed so far.

The most relevant feature is its collaboration capabilities. Users can easily collaborate, for example, on Sharepoint or Microsoft Teams. If there is a lot of heavy usage of Microsoft tools, it's easy to share and collaborate across apps.

The Excel interface is very good. 

The stability of the 2019 version is quite good.

The deployment aspect of the product is a bit tedious. That's something I personally see of my organization. Deploying Project Server from an infrastructure perspective is not an easy thing. It takes a week sometimes to set it up. 

From a features perspective, the insights around the cost and budget could be improved. Competitor products are more robust. Project Server has a very limited feature in terms of reporting. Specifically, the features around the cost control are weak. The built-in reports and the built-in analytics for Project Server are very minimal. The competitors are way ahead than what Project Server is offering us.

The initial setup was complex.

The integration to an employee engagement platform probably would make more sense and integrations with other products like SAP would be useful.

Users of Project Server need to write some amount of custom integrations to the DLP product innovation site. If you wanted to have resource analysis, you want to create invoices based on resources working on a project, that integration is still not there. Integrating with some of those invoice management systems would make more sense now based on the way enterprises are working in terms of automation.

The solution needs multi-language support. The tool primarily supports English as a primary language. If someone wanted to make it Arabic, the Project Server does not work well. The characters sets, the dates, and other things create a lot of mess.

We've been using the solution for around six years or so. We started using it in 2016.

When I was using the Project Server 2016, that was creating a lot of problems in terms of performance, in terms of export, input, the content. However, when we moved to Project Server 2019 three years ago, I would say it was an improved version. It's quite stable now. There have been a lot of technical advancements, and feature announcements. 2019 is a much more stable version.

Primarily the solution has been handled by the PMO team which is comprised of 20 users. They are mostly portfolio managers, program managers, and solution architects as well as an executive who usually uses it from a governance perspective.

Since this has been used by the portfolio managers, so it's basically bread and butter for the PMO team. It's used day in, day out and it's tracking a single source of truth from a program management perspective. In terms of expanding the portfolio, likely, the business will grow, and that's when we may add more users. By 2022, we might add five more users. That is what I foresee.

We go through a CSP partner for Microsoft due to the online nature of the deployment. Our CSP partner is quite helpful. We are pleased with the support quality they provide. I would rate them four out of five stars. 

The initial setup was complex. Any type of guidance or user training or helpful documentation and materials were not available.

The deployment took around seven to ten days. Deployment took really a long time. 

I will not be able to properly quantify what went wrong. I'm not sure if it was the infrastructure or the capacity planning or if the partner just wasn't quite capable. There could have been multiple issues. The general perception was that was supposed to happen within a day, maximum. It took around seven to nine all working days to just set up the environment.

We used partners. They were a Microsoft partner.

Since I was not managing the process, I can't give feedback in terms of how the partner was to work with, or their capabilities. 

The solution offers a subscription-based pay-as-you-go model.

Now that everyone has moved to the online version, it is my understanding that the approximate cost comes to around $350 to $400 USD per month. I see or close to $4,000 to $5,000 USD per annum.

We are simply a customer and an end-user.

Although we began with the on-premises version, we've recently started using the online version of the solution. That is primarily how we access it now.

From an advice perspective, for any enterprise that has an existing investment around Microsoft, it makes more sense in terms of moving to a Project Server to manage in a more structured way. However, if you do not use SharePoint, if you do not use Microsoft Teams or any sort of solution that is the real value of Project Server it's not necessary to use Project Server. This solution is best for those companies planning to have a commitment to Microsoft technology. It brings more value. 

I'd rate the solution at a seven out of ten. It's lacking some features around budget cost and portfolio management. There are a few areas that could use improvement still. 

We primarily use the solution to manage the project lifecycle. Generally the lifestyle starts at demand phase. We design a workflow according to customer's needs. The workflow starts with project ideation and project selection, if the project fits company criteria it will move onto the project management phase.  

Let's say you have 10 projects and you don't know which ones to move into actual project management phase. Customers use the portfolio and analysis feature of Project Server, and decide which project to do according to capacity planning(if they have the resources) and budget. If the company has enough resources then its the projects with most benefit that gets selected. For the selected projects lifecycle will continue. As it moves forward, you will get more project detail pages, more things to work with. This will also produce some reports as well.

The solution is very good at helping you pick which project to move forward with.

The stability has been pretty good.

We've found that the solution can scale if we need it to.

The installation is fairly straightforward.

The documentation on offer is excellent.

Technical support is very responsive - particularly on critical tickets.

When it comes to integration with other systems Project Server falls short. There used to be out-of-box integration with TFS for example but with Project Server 2016 and forward that integration is deprecated. There is room for improvement here.

When it comes to project management itself, I'd like to see some hybrid solutions right now across the on-premises deployments especially. On-premise only has waterfall style project management. On the other hand Project Online has a lot better integration and hybrid (agile-waterfall) project management abilities. This should also be the case for On-premise customers.

The check-in, check-out feature, makes Microsoft Project Server pretty slow or cumbersome to use. Users mostly forget when to check-in. We have problems with that. If it's a bit faster to use, or easier to use, like your Planner or other programs, it would be better. You should just be able to type in something and it's updated. The ease of use could be improved.

I've been using the solution for three years at this point.

The stability is okay. There aren't bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's reliable.

The scalability is okay. We don't really have any technical performance problems. If we have it, it's because of infrastructure, not because of Project Server mostly.

We mostly work with governmental agencies. On current projects, there are about 300 people working on the solution. We have ten project managers and five profile managers on our end.

Technical support is pretty good. We have seen problems due to the infrastructure and management on the customer's side, which affected some services on Project Server. One ticket I opened as normal severity which took two weeks to resolve. That said, when I opened a ticket with critical severity that is blocking some services, somebody contacted me in less than an hour. We were able to fix the problem in three hours total. I'd say overall, the support side is good. 

There's also excellent documentation, which I would rate at a nine out of ten.

The installation is very easy with MinRole helping you along the way. You can do high availability of the SharePoint services fairly easy except for the DB part. For that you have to rely on your DB Admins to give you a listener for a High Availability cluster. 

I'm not just a user, I implement solutions. We are Microsoft partners. I develop the solution from infrastructure to power bi reports. User experience, customization, and reporting.

In Turkey, especially governmental agencies, they don't want to be on the cloud. So all the environments I manage, they're on-prem.

Overall, I would rate the solution at an eight out of ten. We're mostly happy with the product.

We primarily use the solution purely for project management.

Basically, we use it to do project plans or schedules for our smaller or medium-sized projects.

The solution's ease of use is its most valuable aspect.

The initial setup is straightforward.

The solution is very affordable.

For the way we use the solution, it's fine. I can't think of anything specifically that I'd like to have improved now.

It would be useful if the solution allowed us to share files or project schedules. You may get that with the cloud version. However, it's not available on the on-premises versions.

It would be nice if there was a low cost version of the enterprise version, so something in between what we have now and enterprise. It would be perfect for those that don't want to go enterprise but still want to have the sharing project files capabilities.

I've been using the solution for quite a number of years. It's been about ten years at this point, in my estimation.

I believe the scalability is limited. A company wouldn't be able to expand it easily. You need to go to the next version, which is enterprise or cloud-based.

At our organization, we have five to seven people using the solution. It's mostly to do project schedules, so they are all consultants.

It's not that widely used. We probably will not look at using the current version much wider than it is. We'll probably go with a cloud-based version or enterprise version the next time we need to upgrade.

The technical support is okay. We've been satisfied with their level of service.

We didn't previously use a different solution.

The initial setup is not complex. The implementation itself is straightforward.

For us, our setup isn't that fancy. It is just a single laptop deployment and we just deployed the solution to a couple of laptops. There was no complexity whatsoever. The enterprise version may be more complex to set up.

You only need one person to manage the deployment process. In order to maintain it, you would only need one person who wouldn't need to even be on it full time.

We handled the implementation ourselves. We didn't need a consultant or integrator to assist us.

We're Microsoft customers. We don't have a business relationship with the company.

The solution is only a single cost per seat. There isn't a monthly or yearly subscription. It's only a few hundred dollars. It's pretty inexpensive.

There aren't any costs in addition to the standard fees.

We're using the latest version of the solution.

It's such a good product for running the modules.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten due to the fact that it does have some limitations. Otherwise, it's perfect.

We primarily use the solution to track milestones on our project.

The user interface is very good. 

The product is very stable.

The solution is scalable and easy to expand.

We noticed that there are some problems or issues working with it. We are finding some workarounds to avoid them. We are not totally satisfied with that solution.

It is related to the calculation of project duration, working hours, and so on. We think that calculations are not working correctly, and there is a need to enter data a couple of times in order to give the correct calculations.

I'm not sure if there are any missing features. I can't recall feeling as if something is lacking.

We've been working with the solution for about one year now.

The solution runs smoothly. It's quite stable and reliable. We don't really see bugs or glitches. There aren't crashes and it doesn't freeze. We have been able to operate it without issues. It's been good in that sense.

The scalability of the product is quite good. If you need to scale it, you can do so. It shouldn't be a problem.

It is not my responsibility to contact technical support. I don't have experience with them. We have internal IT and their responsibility is to support the solution and to maintain everything. If there were issues, it would fall to them to contact technical support for the most part. Therefore, I can't directly speak to the solution's technical support response or capabilities.

I didn't do the installation by myself. My colleague from our company did it instead of me. I'm not sure if the process is straightforward or difficult and I cannot speak to how long deployment took.

I don't have any experience with the pricing or licensing of the solution. I'm not sure what the costs are. It's not a part of my job to worry about the licensing.

I don't have experience with other project management tools. Maybe there are some better solutions, however, I'm not sure what those solutions are. 

I would recommend Microsoft Project to other organizations.

In general, I would rate the solution at an eight out of ten. We've been largely happy with the product.

We primarily use the solution to plan our projects.

It gives us good visibility into the amount of work needed for each person and how to delegate it appropriately.

The working blocks within the solution are excellent. I can follow four or five projects and see the dealine of items in the calendar. We can understand the amount of work - if it's full or not - and we can plan a team member's activities based on that.

The initial setup is not complex.

The solution, overall, is excellent for project planning.

I'd like it if we could divide out the project calendars. On one project server, we might follow five projects or more at one time, and we'd like to see all of the items at once so that it becomes a long loop, but one where we can identify different projects in tandem and then focus on which we need to at the time. While I only have visibility into one, I'd like to see several at a time.

I've been using the solution for seven years.

The solution is reliable. There aren't glitches. There are no bugs. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's very stable.

The solution is very scalable. If a company needs to expand the product they can do so quite easily.

We use it in our company and have about 1,000 users on it currently.

We did previously use a different solution, however, it was only for about a month.

We find the implementation to be straightforward. It's not too complex of a process.

Deployment typically takes about six months or so.

We have about 40 people that handle maintenance on the solution.

The pricing of the solution is reasonable. It's not outrageously expensive.

Our finance department handles the billing, therefore, I'm unsure as to if we pay monthly or yearly and what the overall costs are.

I'm a consultant.

I'm not sure which version of the solution we're currently using.

I use the solution to follow my company's projects.

I'd recommend this solution. It's excellent for planning.

I'd rate the solution seven out of ten.

We use it for master project scheduling, that is, the first schedule of each project.

I like the way you can build the schedule by the Don't Start Before or Don't Start After values. You can use it to build your schedule based on how you change your dates. This is how it actually builds the schedule.

It needs to be more collaborative from inside the application. It only does project scheduling for me. It would be good if it could do other things and be more collaborative, such as sharing tasks for users. 

It is not really incorporated into MS Office, so you can't copy-paste stuff. It is on its own, doing its own thing. It is only used for scheduling, and it doesn't work well with anything else.

I have been using Project Server since it came out almost 20 years ago. In my current company, I have been using it for two years.

It is stable.

It is scalable. It appears that you can scale it as much as you want. 

We have 70 or 80 licenses, but in reality, there are no more than 10 people actually using it.

The initial setup was complex.

It is on the expensive side.

It seems to me that it is the standard for doing project scheduling, which is a shame. It should be used for more. You should be able to do more things with it because now it is not enough for people to just build a schedule and then use something else to do your daily planning. I used to work for Microsoft, so I know how these things were built. I know some of the issues they have. It seems to me that it is a product that was built on its own. It is very standalone, and it hasn't been incorporated into the Office suite or other things that Microsoft products do. For example, we work a lot with Microsoft Teams. Microsoft Teams would be a nice front end to an MS Project.

I would rate Microsoft Project Server an eight out of ten.