Comindware Tracker is a web-based solution for work management. It’s a pity it doesn’t offer cloud instances yet, but I hope it’s a matter of time for the developers, and I really wish this time was short. Anyways, I think they are worth to take a look at right now.
Quick start
The time you spend to deploy the system is really drastically short. Install it on a server, add your employees from MS Exchange – and here we are, any of them can enter the system with their current corporate credentials.
The Menu bar offers a comprehensive product tour available to all users at any time.
Your admin enters the solution and unpacks templates from admin panel – you’re one button click away from getting workflow templates for the specific solution sets Comindware Tracker offers. You can modify and change workflows or use them as they are.
Set users who will take part in them, and organize the structure of any business process. No, I didn’t make a mistake here when I said “any”. True that most part of process automation systems offer specific interface and solution for only one kind of working process, sometimes a couple.
Comindware Tracker’s interface was initially designed to support any kind of working activity, and this is definitely a great advantage: the least benefit you can get out of it is not being constraint to purchase several solutions for different departments, and they all are expensive. Second advantage is single data that all of your working departments will be able to use: tasks, workflows, files and collaborative treads will be kept in a single interface.
Graphical workflow builder
I have designed a couple of workflows directly in browser window with simple drag&drop technique. Unlike competitors who offer this kind of work in form of tables or demand programming, here I felt like I was just drawing a scheme.
I add employees who will be responsible for the working process at each state of the workflow, make other settings, and I’m done: after I hit ‘save’ the process is ready to run: I can create my first item. Item fields are available and can be searchable across the application (you can allow or deny search by specific fields).
Outlook integration
The menu bar offers to get MS Outlook plugin. I definitely recommend you to hit the button, it won’t take you long.
After this you will have the ‘magic wand’ also called ‘Comindware-enriched MS Outlook tasks’. Now when you get an email and drop it to the tasks, the task you create will be a little different:
- It will synchronize with Comindware Tracker and appear there as well, available online
- It will have discussion tread and other collaborative features Comindware Tracker offers inside its interface.
Like this, your Outlook is now a collaborative tool. Of course, when you create this task, select the working group for it: if you create a ‘Personal task’, you’re going to discuss it with yourself. This is something Mac users won’t be able to appreciate, sorry for them. All other features of the product are available to you no matter what OS you use, for desktop and mobile devices.
Whether you have the plug-in or not, you will receive email notifications from Comindware Tracker about the state of the items and tasks you follow. The follow\unfollow thing is like in Facebook. It’s great when you’re tired of not knowing who’s doing what and what is going on, because you get notification upon any project change that is valuable to you right now.
Task and Item creation by email
This is the feature I personally liked a lot: you can customize your Comindware Tracker in a way, that any user can create a task or an item without entering the system. You take an outside email and set is as default email for task or item creation. It works the same way you connect MS Outlook with external email services: your admin won’t need any incredible skills to make it, and it’s really quick.
Now that you want to create a task for a specific team player, send an email to the pre-set address and put the assignee in CC. Comindware Tracker will do the rest, and the employee will see the new task in her list of tasks. A great article upon settings was found here.
Comindware Trial
I have spoken just about a number of Comindware Tracker features. To see full list visit their website, and I suggest you should try the product yourself. The fully-functional 30-day trial supports an unlimited number of users, so that anyone in your company can try the solution. My verdict, it’s a new generation of work management software and they definitely should start cloud. For now enterprise-scale business will appreciate the on-premise version, SMB is looking forward for the SaaS.
