Author: Author: Andrew Mikhaliuk, CEO of CoreWin
Microsoft Project Online has been one of the primary platforms for corporate project and resource management for many years. However, with the end of the Project Online lifecycle, companies continuing to use the platform need to define their future project management strategy.
One of the possible alternatives is WiseTeam – a comprehensive system for managing projects, resources, working time, finances, and customer relationships.
WiseTeam and Microsoft Project Online share many common features, although their approach to organizing work differs somewhat. Project Online is historically focused primarily on corporate portfolio management and complex project planning. WiseTeam offers a broader operational approach, combining project management with CRM, finance, time tracking, and the daily work of teams.
Let us consider the key areas important for companies evaluating the possibility of transitioning.
Project Management and Planning
The main features of Microsoft Project Online for project planning have corresponding tools in WiseTeam. The system allows creating structured project plans, forming a hierarchy of work, defining timelines, dependencies, and milestones, as well as displaying the plan as a Gantt chart.
WiseTeam supports:
- project structure and WBS (decomposition);
- Gantt charts;
- dependencies between work items;
- project milestones;
- critical path;
- automatic and manual scheduling;
- baselines;
- resource assignment.
This allows using WiseTeam as a centralized platform for planning and controlling most corporate projects.
At the same time, WiseTeam combines classic calendar planning with task management, so project managers can work with a top-level plan, and teams with specific operational tasks.
Resource Management
Resource Management is an important part of both platforms.
Microsoft Project Online traditionally has strong enterprise resource planning capabilities. WiseTeam also allows managing resources, controlling their availability, planned workload, and participation in various projects.
Managers can see:
- resource allocation across projects;
- planned work;
- actual workload;
- available resource and team capacity;
- potential employee overload.
For organizations where the main task is the effective allocation of the team between current and future projects, WiseTeam offers the necessary set of tools.
At the same time, WiseTeam’s approach to resource planning is more focused on the practical management of the team’s work, whereas Project Online historically pays more attention to complex enterprise resource modeling.
Project Portfolio Management
WiseTeam allows obtaining a centralized view of the project portfolio and monitoring their status at the organizational level.
Managers can see key information about projects, timelines, progress, resources, and other metrics in a single environment.
For most PMOs, this helps answer key questions:
- Which projects are currently active?
- What is their status?
- Are timelines being met?
- How are resources being used?
- Which projects require attention?
- What is the overall health of the portfolio?
Microsoft Project Online has additional tools for strategic Portfolio Analysis and modeling different portfolio scenarios.
WiseTeam uses a more practical approach, focusing on portfolio transparency, execution control, and the availability of up-to-date information for management.
For many companies, this exact approach may be easier to use and closer to the daily needs of managers.
Time Tracking and Timesheets
Working time tracking is one of the strong functional areas of WiseTeam.
The system allows employees to log the time spent on projects and work items, and managers to control and approve these records.
Timesheets can be used both for internal time cost control and for working with client projects.
This allows linking:
work plan → actual time → costs → financial result of the project.
For service and project-based companies, such a connection can be especially useful.
Budgets and Financial Management
One of the key differences of WiseTeam is the deeper integration of project management with financial processes.
In addition to budget planning and controlling actual metrics, WiseTeam contains tools for working with financial documents and operations.
Within a single platform, you can link:
- projects;
- budgets;
- costs;
- working time;
- invoices;
- payments;
- purchases;
- financial results.
As a result, management can get not only information about whether the project is executing according to plan but also see its financial efficiency.
For companies working with a large number of client projects, this can become one of the main advantages of transitioning to WiseTeam.
CRM and the Full Customer Lifecycle
Another important feature of WiseTeam is the presence of CRM and Sales functions in the same platform.
The system supports working with:
- clients;
- contacts;
- leads;
- opportunities;
- sales pipeline;
- commercial proposals (quotes).
Thanks to this, the company can build an end-to-end business process:
Lead → Opportunity → Project → Work → Invoice → Payment.
In the case of Microsoft Project Online, CRM functions are usually implemented using other systems.
WiseTeam allows combining these processes in a single information environment and reducing the number of separate tools between which data needs to be synchronized.
Risk Management and Ticket System
WiseTeam supports working with risks, issues, incidents, and change requests.
This allows PMOs and project managers to not only control the schedule but also maintain a full management context around the project.
Separate management of Change Requests can be useful for organizations where changes in the scope of work, budget, or timelines must undergo a controlled approval process.
Thus, a significant part of the information that in the Microsoft ecosystem might be distributed between Project Online and additional SharePoint tools, can be stored directly in the project management system in WiseTeam.
Task Management and Kanban
WiseTeam combines traditional Project Management with modern tools for organizing daily work.
In addition to the Gantt chart and the project plan, the system supports tasks, a backlog of planned work, Kanban, and recurring tasks.
Thanks to this, different levels of the organization can work with the same projects in a format convenient for them.
The Project Manager can control the overall plan and project milestones, while the team works with their tasks via Kanban or task lists.
This makes the platform convenient for organizations where classic Project Management is used together with agile or hybrid approaches.
Customization and Corporate Processes
Both platforms allow adapting the system to the organization’s internal processes.
WiseTeam supports custom fields, roles, access rights, processes, and action automation.
Thanks to this, when migrating from Project Online, you can not just transfer the current working model, but review and simplify some of the processes that have been forming for many years.
This is especially relevant for companies where the Project Online configuration has gradually become complex due to a large number of fields, rules, and auxiliary processes.
Transitioning to a new platform can be an opportunity to standardize the structure of projects and form a more transparent management model.
Reporting and Analytics
Project Online has advanced integration with the Microsoft ecosystem, particularly Power BI, so for companies with a complex management analytics system, this area requires special attention during migration.
WiseTeam has its own dashboards, reports, and data export mechanisms.
From a migration perspective, the key question will not be so much the availability of a specific report, but determining which management metrics the company uses today and how best to present them in the new environment.
This is also a good moment to review analytics: often, a significant part of previously created data views is no longer used, while managers need a more compact set of relevant KPIs.
Migration from Microsoft Project Online
Transitioning from Project Online to WiseTeam should be considered not just as a technical data transfer, but as a comprehensive change in the approach to project management.
The main objects have clear equivalents:
| Microsoft Project Online | WiseTeam |
| Projects | Projects |
| Project plan | Activities / project structure |
| Tasks | Activities / Tasks |
| Milestones | Milestones |
| Resources | Resources |
| Assignments | Resource assignments |
| Timesheets | Time Records / Timesheets |
| Risks | Risks |
| Issues | Issues |
| Custom information | Custom Fields |
| Portfolio | Project Portfolio |
At the same time, there is no need to mechanically reproduce every feature of the old system.
A more effective approach may be transferring actual business processes and data while simultaneously optimizing the structure of the new system.
Do we need to migrate the entire history?
When transitioning to a new platform, companies should separately determine which data is necessary for daily work, and which only needs to be saved for history or reporting.
A practical approach can be:
active and future projects → WiseTeam
and
completed historical projects → corporate archive.
This allows starting work in the new system with a cleaner and more up-to-date data structure.
Comparison of Key Areas
At a high level, the two platforms can be compared as follows:
| Area | Microsoft Project Online | WiseTeam |
| Project planning | Strong | Strong |
| Gantt charts / Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) | Strong | Strong |
| Resource management | Advanced enterprise approach | Practical planning and capacity |
| Time tracking | Supported | Advanced |
| Project portfolio management | Strategic PPM | Operational project portfolio management |
| Budget management | Supported | Deeply integrated with finances |
| CRM | Requires a separate system | Built-in |
| Sales Pipeline | Requires a separate system | Built-in |
| Invoicing and payments | Requires separate solutions | Built-in |
| Risk management and ticket system | Supported | Supported |
| Kanban board and task management | Limited | Built-in |
| Company financial management | Mostly PPM level | Strong point |
| Project profitability | Requires additional analytics | Part of the platform |
Who is WiseTeam best suited for?
WiseTeam looks especially interesting for companies that need not just a calendar planning system, but a unified platform to manage the entire project lifecycle.
For example:
Sales → Project Planning → Resource Management → Execution of Work → Time Tracking → Budget Management → Invoicing → Receiving Payments → Profitability Analysis
Such an approach can be useful for:
- IT companies;
- system integrators;
- consulting companies;
- professional services companies;
- engineering companies;
- service organizations;
- companies with a large number of internal and client projects.
Conclusion
WiseTeam can be considered a full-fledged candidate to replace Microsoft Project Online for a wide range of project management scenarios.
The platform provides core capabilities for project planning, Gantt charts, WBS, resource management, time, budget, risk, and project portfolio control. At the same time, WiseTeam goes beyond traditional PPM and integrates Project Management with CRM, sales, finance, billing, and the daily work of teams.
That is why the transition from Project Online to WiseTeam should be evaluated not only as replacing one tool with another, but as an opportunity to build a more integrated business process management system around projects.
For companies currently using Microsoft Project Online, the optimal next step would be a high-level assessment of current processes and a small pilot testing on a few typical projects. This will allow verifying WiseTeam’s compliance with the organization’s real needs and simultaneously determining which current processes can be simplified or improved during the transition to the new platform.
