General Information
Name: Celoxis V9.1
Vendor: Celoxis Technologies Pvt. Ltd
Hosting options: Web ($25 per month per user) or on-premise ($450 per person).
Languages: English, Spanish, German, Portuguese, French, Simplified Chinese
Currency: Any, add your symbol
Basic features: Getting your project started
Celoxis is a basic product. It was last reviewed in 2012.
It is a fully-featured software system that can manage the most complex enterprise projects. It is complex and will take some time to set up.
Although it’s easy to set up your projects, you still need to include a deadline. Even though you haven’t yet planned your project, you won’t know when the project will be completed.
Celoxis’ risk register view makes it easy to add tasks, but when I wanted one task to become a dependency of another it didn’t automatically shift the dates. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Dependencies don’t always indicate that tasks occur in chronological order. Then I made it work. I moved the date of my first task forward and the dependent task did not shift.
I didn’t know the settings, but I do know there is an option to make it auto-schedule. It was not there, so I searched the help (“From grid select the manually scheduled columns – I couldn’t find the grid view let alone the right one) and couldn’t find it again. Is there an Options tab?
If you used it often, you’d know how to figure it out. This is not a criticism, but a comment about the level of training required. Although it’s not intuitive, you get a free administrator course once you sign up. This will allow someone in your department to have the skills needed to answer these questions. The ‘Recent’ menu was helpful towards the end of my trial. It allows you to quickly navigate to the sections of the tool you’ve used in the past.
The risk register is very useful. It calculates your risk score and allows for you to drill down into each risk detail. It provides a clear summary and is an integral part of my system.
I thought it could be easier to create risks. You can add a risk to the project’s main menu. Once you have entered the details in this pop-up, the risk will appear on the screen. There is no way to add another risk from this page. You will need to return to the main project homepage, then go through the entire process again. It’s not a big deal and I don’t think it would bother me after a while, but the flow of users through highly-trafficked parts of a system is something that is always worth looking at.
It has a calendar view which I love. You can add events to the calendar directly and choose who can see them. This is great for team meetings and upcoming presentations, as well as launching day. You can also switch to displaying tasks or projects so that you can see all the work in the future on your calendar. This is a great way to discuss the work for the month with your colleagues or for those who are less confident with Gantt charts.
You can also export to iCal format, so you can sync your Celoxis calendar with Outlook and other apps.
Usability
It looks great. It’s clean and professional. It’s also easy to use, despite the steep learning curve.
The dashboard view shows upcoming tasks for team members. There are no apps available for smartphones or tablets, but you can access it through a browser. Email integration is a great way to keep track of everything while away from work.
Teamwork
You can attach discussions to your current project or to another project. You have the option of sharing them with clients or keeping them internal. Additionally, you can add documents.
You can create workspaces to allow teams to separate who can see what. You can share information with others by setting up granular security permissions.
