Float

Pros

Float's user interface and logic are inspirational. They have made the activity of coordinating multiple resources on multiple projects about as easy as it can be. They have paid a lot of attention to usability, efficient use of screen real estate and simple navigation. However the killer feature is the intuitive yet clever way that searching and data navigation work. All searching and filtering is done using a single search field, which offers indexed word search on pretty much everything including tags. There is also a well-worked out protocol for handling union and intersect searches.

Cons

The only real bugbear is that any user that can enter data into the system can define new values for any field. It isn't possible to centrally control lists such as task names, clients, job descriptions etc. This means that if you have more than one person using the system, very quickly you get different versions of the same thing being defined (e.g. job roles being slightly different) which makes it difficult to analyse across records. Not a dealbreaker, but I do think it should be possible to lock down lists of values. Also it would be good if you could zoom out the view a little more - if you're dealing with more than a dozen resources/projects.

Pros

The software is easy to use and has many features that support resource planning in flexible ways.

Cons

There could be some work on the global settings where we can convert from a local currency (i.e. Euros, Pounds, Aussie dollars) into a default currency to see how projects compare with each other when normalised.

Pros

I like the ability to see and control the schedules of my consultants at a glance. It's simple to use and create new entries for others. I can see where my resources are scheduled and their availability to be scheduled for additional tasks and projects. I like that I can move tasks around easily.

Cons

I don't like that I have to create a new project and task for each entry. Mostly they are the same types of tasks, but one offs can be irksome at times. It's a small inconvenience since the application meets all of my other needs.

Pros

There aren't may softwares that let you schedule a team in such an easy and organised way.
I think most softwares nowadays are too complex and make you spend more time organising tasks than actually working on them.
Float is so clear and simple you can actually use it to manage big projects without spending too much time on it.

Cons

It's getting better, but it would be very useful if we could:

- Right click on a pencil and be able to copy it over into a different person.
- Book more than one person on the same project (for example if two workers are on the same project because one of them is doing a training but you don't want to charge twice for that time).
- Lately when I try to schedule more than 1 project in one day on the same person I get a message saying I can't schedule anyone for more than 24 hours) even if I'm not exceeding the 8 normal working hours. It'd be great if that could be fixed.
- It'd be good if milestones were more visible.
- I think reports should be a bit less complicated and more visual.
- It'd be really helpful if you could group projects up in folders when you go to the Projects tab as at the moment we have like... 45 different projects going on and although we color code them it's difficult to organise all of them.
-I'd like to have more than only three types of view when looking at our schedules a part from 'Days, 'Weeks' and 'Months'.
It'd be great if you could 'Archive' users as well as projects. So when a worker it's not working at the company anymore and you don't want to pay for it on Float you can kind of 'Archive' him (so you are not able to book him on anything but still you can see him on the boards so you don't loose what it's been scheduled on him.)

Pros

My company tried using Asana for about a year and found it too complicated to get everyone on the same page.
Then we went fully manual, by switching to spreadsheets for schedule and project management.

Float finds a nice middle ground of simplicity and interactive UI. It's great that managers can view everything from a project view and makers and creatives can look at just their own schedule. Plus the option to subscribe to an actual calendar format makes it easy to view our schedules on the go from our phones and personal devices.

Cons

I haven't found a way to specify what TIME of day things need to happen. When viewing from a subscribed calendar, every event is an "all day event"