​ Features

Time and task management

Easily manage all your time and task obligations—enter hours, add to-do items, and assign tasks to other team members—all in one intuitive form.

Issue and risk mitigation

Easily add issues and risks to specific project tasks to quickly identify and mitigate problems.

Intuitive collaboration

Team members can store project documents on a central site, view project updates, and more—so everyone can stay on the same page.

Virtually anywhere access

Use your favorite browser—Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Chrome, and more—to access Project Online Essentials on your PC, tablet, or phone.

Cost-effective solution

Together with Project Online Premium or Project Server, Project Online Essentials gives you just the right number of tools to do your job at an affordable price.

Easily and efficiently plan projects, track status and collaborate with others from virtually anywhere.

Schedule efficiently

Familiar automated scheduling tools help reduce inefficiencies and training time. Multiple timelines make it easier to visualize complex schedules.

Make smart decisions

Built-in reports help project stakeholders visualize data to gain insights across projects and make more informed decisions.

Boost collaboration

Seamless integration with collaboration tools like Skype for Business and Yammer encourages teamwork and ultimately produces better project results.

Manage resources with ease

Resource management tools help you build project teams, request needed resources, and create more efficient schedules.

​ Smart setup

Fast startup

The Getting Started screen walks you through basic capabilities, like linking tasks and creating a timeline, to help you get up to speed fast.

Best-in-class templates

Use one of the many pre-built templates from within Project client and on Office.com to get access to best-in-class project plans.

Intuitive search

Use the Tell Me search bar—standard across most Office products—to quickly find useful features in Project so you can work more efficiently.

 Powerful scheduling

Familiar charts

Built for professional project managers, Project client offers familiar tools, like Gantt charts, to help you easily create schedules and reduce training time.

Smart automation

Reduce inefficiencies with automated features. Auto-populate start and end dates based on dependencies and use the Task Inspector to identify more efficient task and resource arrangements.

Multiple timelines

Built-in multiple timelines help you visually represent complex schedules and understand all aspects of a project. Easily share timelines using familiar Office tools like PowerPoint.

Intuitive baselines

You can use baselines to help decision makers track and compare actual progress to the original project plan.

Optimized task management

Visualized relationships

Task path highlighting in Gantt charts helps you understand the relationship among tasks and identify which are most critical to the project’s success.

What-if planning

Set tasks to “inactive” and run what-if scenarios to determine the best-fit assignments without re-creating your entire project plan.

Synchronized task lists

With task list synchronization, team members can update their assignments in SharePoint, and the data will appear in Project client.

Resource management

Optimized resources

The Resource Engagement feature lets project managers formally request specific resources. The Team Planner helps you identify and fix potential resourcing issues that could impact the schedule.

​ Integrated collaboration

Skype for Business

Integrated communication tools like Skype for Business make it easy to collaborate using voice, video, or chat within Project, eliminating the need to switch between apps.

Connected apps

Easily copy information from Project and paste it into familiar Office applications like PowerPoint and Word. And OneDrive for Business provides handy storage for project artifacts.

Collaborative workspaces

Create a dedicated project site to share information—status updates, conversations, and project timelines—so team members stay informed.

​ Better decision-making

Project reports

Powerful built-in reports, like Burndown and Resource Overview, can help you gain insights, communicate information to stakeholders, and achieve results.

​ Simplified IT

Click-to-run

Streaming technology lets you quickly install Project client over the Internet, on internal networks, through local file systems, or from offline media.

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Always up to date

Like other Office 365 solutions, Project client provides automatic updates. So you’re always current with the latest tools and features, reducing the burden on IT.

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Multiple installations

Team members can install Project client on up to five PCs, so they can access project plans from wherever they’re working.

Multi-tenancy support

Run isolated instances of the service independent of each other. Separate IT and PMO settings and allow each side to manage its own settings.

Reliable service

Microsoft Project & Portfolio Management comes with a 99.9% uptime guarantee, as well as best-in-class data back-up, best-in-class disaster recovery and globally redundant data centers.

World-class compliance

Microsoft Project & Portfolio Management complies with various industry-specific standards, including ISO 27001, EU Model Clauses, HIPAA Business Associate Agreement (BAA) and FISMA.

Active Directory sync

Add resources quickly and reliably with enhanced Active Directory synchronization, reducing the time spent on administrative tasks.

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24/7 support

With 24/7 IT support from Microsoft, Project helps keep your business up and running and frees up IT to work on more strategic initiatives.

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Custom programmability

Your IT team can tap into robust application architecture and create custom functionality with a readily available software development kit (SDK).