Alternative to project server? Or alternative to project?

[Carie]

Hi,

I work for a small web development company (only 3 team members) and we
are looking to implement project management software. We bought
Microsoft Project and Project Server however I find that project server
does not give a good dashboard overview of all the projects and tasks
and I find Project hard to work with multiple projects. I am trying to
find a solution that works for our company and I have the following
ideas/questions:

1. Is there an alternative to Project Server which integrates with
Project? That way I can still do all my planning in Project (which I
know has a large amount of function) but the team members can view
their tasks and the status of projects more easily online with another
software. So basically I would forget about Project Server completely
and use differnet online software. Any ideas?

2. Am I able to customise Project Server to initially give me a
dashboard overview of all my projects when I login? Are there any
add-ons or plug-ins that might help?

3. Alternatively, I am considering getting completely new software and
forgetting about Project completely. Would anyone have any suggestions?
We are only a small company and need something easy to use and not too
expensive but yet extensive.

I am going down a number of roads at once in order to solve our problem
so any help is most appreciated! Thanks!

 

[Rob Schneider]

Carie,

For a 3 person company, I would think that Project Server is
over-the-top in complexity and cost. Seems like Project Standard should
be good enough, and if you use master/sub projects and some settings on
Views, Groups, Tables, etc. you can probably get to where I would think
you need to be.

That being said, you ask for help with your "problem". Is the problem
simply lack of a dashboard? As a wed development company, maybe make
your own by doing queries against the Project Standard database with a
web front end?