Workzone Software

Higher productivity and a greater ability to communicate where we stand at any given moment on a project

Pros

Ease-of-use and ability to have a good snapshot of projects and their current state. Automated notifications of due dates and past tasks is invaluable

Cons

Getting C-Class subcontractors to participate in it. There is little else that is a detractor from a great platform such as this

It helps us manage a busy university marketing and communications office.

Pros

Our favorite thing about Workzone is the notes feature. We have a number of student designers with inconsistent schedules, so projects often have many hands touching them. The notes feature allows us to leave detailed information about each task, so that anyone can step in and pick up the ball to keep a project moving forward.

Cons

We would like it if we could see both the original/ideal schedule and the real schedule. The software does not change dates automatically to reflect when a task was actually completed and the subsequent change to dependent tasks.

Pros

I like the WZ team is working to make improvements and looks for feedback from their users (this eval is a perfect example).

Cons

The reporting need some improvements. Can't export large file to do analysis. Need more option to export all project including archived.

We are much more organized and able to meet project deadlines. Everyone can go to a central place to see where we're at on every aspect of the work.

Pros

WZ has a ton of features and helps us keep track of everything going on. I can look at the workload for each person on my team to know the status of their projects and where new work should be assigned.

Cons

The learning curve is steep, but that's probably true with most PM software. Sounds weird, but there can sometimes be too much granularity so that particular information can get buried in a random spot. Would love a better in-app notification system.

My remote team and I are a lot more organized.

Pros

I think the best thing I like about Workzone is the project and task tracker dashboard. I rely on it to manage my day to day tasks. I also like their customer success team. They really coach you to be successful on the tool which is something that many of the other tools lack.

Cons

Nothing major. I wish it was a little cheaper. I didn't like the interface before but they recently launched a new interface which I like a lot.

Workzone was a great project management tool for our small team. You can see varying levels of detail depending on your role in the project.

Pros

Easy to use. Simple interface. Full list of features

We purchased WorkZone as a new startup business. Due to the number of projects and tasked involved in implementing systems, processes and work flow, we needed a program to collectively work on, track and manage progress.

We found the software to be relatively simple to use, extremely reliable and met the needs that we had during our first year in business.

Work Zone is perfect for managing all of our quick moving internal projects. It's easy for our group to manage and our users to submit and follow along as to where a project is during the process. The custom fields help tremendously so we can tailor to exactly what we need. The customer service is outstanding too, the reps are easy to get a hold of answer questions and resolve issues in a timely manner. We would like to see more improvements in the way of reporting, but because of your newsletter, we know that you're working on it.

We are using WorkZone as a workflow system only. We don't use the time tracking and use only a couple of the reports, so for how we're using it. . . .

Pros
Very easy to use and set-up, although the time to set-up any system like this should not be underestimated.
Auto-notification sent to the person responsible for the next task once one is done.
Support is excellent -- responds quickly and is very knowledgeable.
Can easily drag-and-drop literature for review.
Easy to make comments and document job specs / direction.
Later dates auto adjust when additional time is added to a task.


Cons
Tasks "fall-off" to-do lists once they're 30 days old. I spend a time adding days to tasks so that they will remain visible in people's to-do lists.
Initial training was less than optimal, but I heard that person is no longer at WorkZone.
Reporting is not customizable. (However, we do very little of that now.)
To-do list lists every task. Would be nice if it showed only your next task in a specific project -- one task per project at a time.
Would like to CANCEL items, so they can be permanently cancelled, but not deleted or inactive.
Time tracking was cumbersome. We no longer use it, but not for that reason.
No time stamp for when someone checked off their task.

WorkZone is by far the best online project management tool I've found for creative teams. Its robust features track everything and are easy to use. The customer service and training are superb. WorkZone is responsive to its users and constantly works to improve the system with new features as a result of customer feedback. I wouldn't want to run a team without WorkZone.

overall I like the software it has helped solve the problem of managing multiple project requests along with all info that is shared back and forth within a team environment¿¿all info is kept within one place rather then multiple emails¿..I wish it was a little more intuitive¿¿.as a very busy traffic manager I don't always have the time to finesse the software capabilities to better meet our team needs¿..but we use it and find it very helpful

Pros: Easy to navigate, populate, and report out. User-friendly.

Cons: None

Overall it's been a great experience utilizing WorkZone as our project management tracking tool over the past 18 months. I highly recommend it to any organization with an abundance of projects going through the pipeline, many simultaneously. We were able to more effectively manage 230+ marketing projects in 2014 and we're well on our way to that many or more in 2015. I wouldn't want to do it without WorkZone. It made our old software, which was clunky and not so user-friendly, seem like a dinosaur. Get organized with this software. You'll be happy you did.

Pros: Eliminates the need for manual project tracking and status reports (spreadsheets), eliminates manual project number generation, allows for MS Project schedules to be imported, allows for easy-to-use project templates to be saved
Cons: Those who don't understand the need for all of the features don't like it and complain about it. Those who are not project managers or don't like doing project management of any kind don't like it.
There are so many features that WorkZone provides that we're finally getting around to utilizing more of them. WorkZone has allowed for us to make many positive changes in our project processes.

We had a custom built PMS for a long time, so finding something that would work for the way we work was a little bit of a challenge. Once I found WZ I knew it would take just a bit of training my team, but it would make everything better. I found out that the multi-tasked level with different deadlines was a bit too much for us. We are a communications and marketing team in a university setting and our projects are usually here one second and gone the next. So being able to use the product in different ways has helped us out. I stripped it down to were we add a project, add everyone to that project, add one task that would be the "first proof" deadline (set it for one day in order to easily extend it), and set the project end date as the "delivered" date or "in hand" date. This is much closer to the way our custom built system worked and it has been working wonderfully for us. I truly believe that WZ could work for the smallest of project management to the largest project management. And one other thing, I love it b/c I can make it work as more of a project-based system and not as heavy of a task-based system (even though it's not intended for that). ;)

Pros: Easy to use and administer. The different dashboards, views, and filters are really handy. Automated emails are nice. Customer service is great - very responsive. Good documentation.

Cons: As the administrator, I absolutely HATE getting one email for EVERY late task on a project. I know the users hate this as well. Isn't there some way to consolidate all of them into just ONE email? Also, not being able to assign due dates on weekends at the project or workspace level (versus across all) really stinks.

Pros:
Flexible, easy for new users to learn.
Love the dependencies.
File sharing works well.
Responsive, helpful customer service.
Data manager is very practical and useful, with a good amount of file space available.

Cons:
It doesn't really integrate with Quickbooks.
The site licenses can only be purchased in increments, and our next increment is a big increase over the current one.
It would be helpful if the time tracking and reporting were more detailed.

Pros- keeps my team accountable, disciplined and organized; user friendly, simple to understand. Overall I love this product and have implemented it in two organizations to be our lead project management system for the marketing team

Cons- Should allow for more associate seats as my team uses it for agency model but other teams use it as their dept work production w/in the teams; Should be able to adjust what a user can access individually, not by "Role"; document markup tool not the most user friendly. Project Request tool should allow owner/admin to add additional fields for data collection upon Project Request to eliminate back and forth; Would love to see a mobile version - app.

Easy to use with simple interface.

Con would be not having a function that gives late items per day as well as a summary of jobs due each date as a total and not just per person.

Pro - intuitive to use; workflow consulting with Alex - homerun; project request and the ability to add what we need - great; document manager huge potential

Con - reporting kludge; no API culls limits scale; markup tool only works for small page counts

This tool is accepted internally. However, clients are not willing to interact with it.

WorkZone doesn't share your feature enhancements ahead of time, so it is a negative event. Meaning, your releases cause more problems because we have to quickly figure out a plan on what to do with live work. Would be better if you hosted a webinar a week before your release so we could plan and not be reactive. Our usual approach is to ignore the feature rather than to figure out how to use it. Not the best approach - just being honest.

Markup tool would be better if it tapped into the Acrobat comment/markup tools and have the ability to save and move the file along the workflow path.

Love the ease of use, however the ability to export reports or neat joblists still lacks complete satisfaction for me. Would prefer to send proofs through the job management system and keep all remarks with job, rather than send for approval from a documents folder. The project request should auto fill notes into converting it into a project. Sometimes if notes are added to the project request from the client, the email does not reach PageAnn.

Overall though it is doing a great job for us and we plan to continue with Workzone for quite some time.