Planio Review- Your Project Management Partner

‘Project Management’ is a term that governs the entire structure of an organization and influences every facet of your business. Managing your projects efficiently and effectively is a heavy task that consumes your time and budget beyond the set limit.

Having a compact and comprehensive project management tool has become the most inevitable need of the day. Also, Corporates and high-end firms are constantly researching for that one software that can hold the entire project under one umbrella and carry out undivided work to complete it successfully.

Planio is the ideal all-in-one project management software that provides flexibility and can facilitate project success despite having teams distributed around the world.

The German company Planio was launched in the year 2009 with the core intention of straightening the major pain points in project management. The features and benefits of Planio are totally designed to help your team execute the projects within the stipulated time and within the given budget.

Let’s find out the different features of Planio that makes it the most sought after Project Management tool of the digital space

Planio Features and their Benefits

Planio Task Management and Workflows

The Task Management approach of Planio is an easy and a powerful tool that is capable enough to handle projects of any size and magnitude. Planio tasks are configurable, flexible and are perfectly defined with properties such as status, priority, assignee, category, start and due dates and much more.

Additionally, Planio follows a Role Based Access Model that empowers you to exercise full and absolute control over who works on each tasks and the process followed by them to complete the tasks.

After the suitable role is assigned to the user, you can go ahead and develop a workflow that matches your process management strategy. This effective Workflow Management system is designed in such a way that the user needs to have appropriate permissions to manage the issues within the process.

The Task Management feature of Planio comes with the following benefits

• Well Defined Status, Priority, Assignee, Due Dates and more
• Absolute control over who works on the tasks and the process followed by them to complete the task.
• Steps defined for the project participants as per their role and expertise.
• Work on your tasks while travelling through Planio inbox and Mobile Apps.

Planio Agile project management

Planio is the most appropriate choice for the projects of any type- be it the agile projects that use Scrum or Kanban or the traditional waterfall projects. Planio ensures to complement well with the project management style instead of overpowering it. 

Agile Project Management completely depends upon the regular sprint planning. Hence Planio provides a simple way to get the work done. The drag and drop facility of Planio helps you move the tasks from the backlog to your sprint and you are done.

The Planio Task Board gives you a bird’s eye view of the complete sprint and empowers you to customize the task board as per your needs and requirements. You can also create any number of task boards for later use with Planio.

Planio converts your immediate project results into a chart form so that you have a clear idea about where you and your team are currently heading towards. The chart format enhances the transparency in the communication with your team members and also helps you monitor your team performance effectively.

Benefits of Agile and Traditional Project Management of Planio in short:

• Flexible to adapt with any type of Project design and style.
• User-friendly Sprint planning feature
• Interactive Task Board feature
• Chart format to plan your project tasks and to effectively monitor the performance of the entire team.

Planio Traditional Project Management

Planio allows you to exercise absolute control over your project management and this is made possible with the use of Roadmaps, Milestones, and Gantt Charts etc.

Planio uses Roadmaps and Milestones to identify the prevailing status of the project with a single click. Milestone notifies the completion of a key part of the project and Roadmaps are used to provide a comprehensive report status of the project via a dashboard interface.

Gantt chart displays each project tasks that are associated with a date or a milestone. The Gantt chart with the Roadmap feature gives you the perfect view report of the project status and the overall progress.

Planio offers a perfect time management gear to measure the time spent and the time required completing your project tasks. Every task within the project is assigned a due date and time, percentage completed and an estimated time for the completion of the project.

Benefits of Planio Traditional Project Management features are:

• Get summary project information through Roadmaps
• Track the project progress using the milestone feature of Planio
• Excellent Time management system to track and record time spent on issues
• Gantt chart technique to retrieve the perfect view of the project status

Planio Knowledge Management and Wiki

Planio makes the Wiki content writing easy and simple with its inbuilt tools like the tasks and project links, repository files, changesets versions etc.

The Parent-child relationship feature of Planio prepares the wiki to handle any organizational challenges you propose. You can create new pages using a simple link and clicking on it. Simultaneously child pages will be created. In addition to this, Planio wiki keeps a track of important updates and prevents losing track of your wiki pages histories with a host of useful management, security and tracking tools. Last but not the least Planio helps you control the data on your wiki effectively with the Roles and Permissions features.

Planio’s Knowledge Management and Wiki features the following benefits

• Comprehensive rich-text formatting
• Easily understandable Parent-Child relationships
• Robust table of Contents
• Watch pages, lock content and track wiki page histories
• Gain access to effectively control wiki

Planio Communication Feature

Planio uses Blog posts to broadcast information to your project participants directly on their homepage. The users can view the latest articles and related information about projects with a single click on Planio My page. The project team can make use of feature rich text, file attachments and topic posts to enable transparent communication among the team members. You can also make relevant changes by using the comment feature of Planio blog posts.

The Planio Blog posts ensure to keep the Project team leader and the participants on the same page. It is one of the most effective ways to converse and communicate with your team without any disturbances or interruptions.

The flexible message forums of Planio initiates free flow of instant communication between the team leader and the project participants. Also the comment tool of Planio allows you to post an instant comment on the work done, or to cite relevant reasons pertaining to a certain action taken on the project or if you have to communicate about any changes to be brought to the specific project area instantly.

Benefits Summary of Planio’s Communication Feature

• Use Blog Posts to effectively communicate with your key workers
• Blog and Forum messages are used to share critical data amongst your team members
• Message forums encourages team communication
• Empower colleagues to input relevant comment on the respective action taken on the project area

Planio Repository Hosting Feature

The Planio Repository feature comes with a large amount of Git and Subversion repositories. Simply update the role of your developers and they can easily gain access to the repositories of Planio.

The user can view the all the files and folders in the Planio repository just by browsing a code online and you can integrate your commits with task management, time tracking and the wiki.

The Planio Repository Hosting feature gives you the following benefits

• Subversion or Git and unlimited repositories of your choice
• Provide access to team members via Planio’s roles and permissions
• Use your regular credentials to authenticate
• Cross-reference commits, issues, timelog entries and wiki pages

Planio Time Tracking feature

Planio’s time tracking feature gives you a great option to track time spent on the project appropriately. The inbuilt time tracker can be switched on when the work commences and can be paused or switched off by using the “Stop Tracking” option in the time tracker.

Planio helps you construct a perfect report based on the exact time taken to work on the minute details of the project tasks. This comprehensive reporting feature filters the date and time level using the minute details entered into the time tracker feature. Planio also helps you track the time spent on the previous project tasks and lets you do a comparative analysis of the time factor that is influencing the project as a whole.

The Benefits of Planio’s time tracking feature are:

• Simple, Easy and Accurate form of Project Time Tracking
• Enter relevant comments,select an activity and use custom fields
• Build comprehensive reports that feature time and issue metrics
• Monitor progress of the project successfully

Planio’s File Storage Feature

The Planio’s File storage feature empowers everyone to view and access the files and folders respectively. Planio’s storage capacity accommodates files of all kinds irrespective of the data size.

Moreover you can also access the older versions of your files automatically with the Planio storage facility.

Planio enables you to view you files in your preferred formats directly in the browser without downloading it. The slideshow mode of Planio lets you navigate effortlessly between files without leaving the Planio browser.

Planio’s storage feature allows you to access your files and folders offline through your mobile devices. This particular feature ensures to keep you well connected even when you are offline, so that you do not miss on any important update when you get back to the online mode.

Planio’s storage feature has the following benefits in store for you:

• Centralized storage of your files and folders
• Synchronized file formats and sizes
• Definite accessibility of your files and folders both online and offline
• Access to updated latest version

Customer Service and Helpdesk Feature

The Helpdesk feature of Planio allows the customers to interact with you directly through Planio issues. This feature uses the Planio inbox to communicate effectively and transparently with your customers via configurable elements, auto replies and customized message content.

The Helpdesk also serves as a FAQ management tool with the use of Helpdesk templates

Customer Service and Helpdesk Feature exhibits the following benefits

• Intuitive E-mail Handling
• Automatic replies to customers
• Uses Issue Details interface to communicate directly to the customers
• Custom e-mail for message redirects
• FAQ management tool that lets you add templates to the Planio FAQ section

Planio Team Chat Feature

The Planio Team Chat feature promotes team productivity, efficiency and transparent communication between the team members.

The Team Chat associates with all the features of Planio so that you can link to an issue or a wiki page or any external content like videos or tweets. The Planio Team Chat feature ensures to store and save all the chat history details appropriately.

Planio shows the ability to connect with your favourite chat client so that you can use the service without any interruptions or disturbances. As Planio’s account is regarded as a full- fledged IRC server, you can go ahead and connect with any chat client that supports IRC.

Following Benefits can be drawn from Planio’s Team Chat feature

• Clutter free and transparent communication
• Carry the Team Chat feature wherever you go
• Fully Integrated with Planio content and external media
• Chats are securely archived and easily searchable
• Chats are always well encrypted

Planio’s Search Feature

The Planio search feature is a highly flexible tool that allows you to have a telescopic as well as a microscopic view of your data. Do you want to have a close look or just have a random view? Whatever the type of data view you need, Planio search function will help you find the right detail without any hassle.

The filter functionality of Planio’s Search feature gives you the option to view the exact details you need instead of making you run around in circles.

Planio’s search feature does not simply pull out the data, instead it displays the search results in context, highlighted and collated according to the specific functionality.

The Search feature of Planio gives you the following benefits

• Simple Search functionalities
• Control how you want to view the data
• Functionality filters to see the content relevant to your search
• Make sense out of the search results

Planio Email Inbox Feature

Through Planio each project is assigned a unique email address that allows you to create a new task just by simply sending and forwarding an email to your respective project. This feature comes in handy at situations when you are away from your desk or travelling.

Planio also empowers you to update your issue’s status by sending you an automatic email issue notification. With this feature you do not have to dig deep into your issue to update the status as this email inbox technique will help you modify the status field in the body of your email.

The Planio inbox effectively integrates with the Planio Help desk so that your customers can communicate freely within the Planio environment. This also allows the non Planio users to update the project issues using this particular email inbox feature.

The Email Inbox feature of Planio paves way to the following benefits

• Constant track of your project from any location
• Create quick issue by adding projects email address to your mobile contact list
• Reply to any project notification email to update a task
• Reach out to your customers effectively

Planio’s Customizing and Flexibility feature

Planio breakthrough in software customization is that one feature that needs to be duly highlighted. Planio gives you a full throttle control over how your project data needs to be organized, presented and defined.

The Customizable field functionality of Planio creates custom fields that help you spread your experience and expertise across a broad variety of functional areas of your project.

As mentioned before, Planio gives you the freedom to control your project task and issue management process according to your specific needs and requirements.

The Benefits of Planio’s Customization feature are

• Saves Money
• Employees can use app’s that are relevant to them
• Project functional areas are arranged as per your framework
• You are in full charge of what data is presented and how the data is presented

Roles and Permissions Feature of Planio

Planio’s Roles and Permission structure gives you absolute control over the system access. The Roles can be defined easily and can be activated through an easy-to-use permission assignment interface.

Through the Role based approach of Planio, you can manage how the app is used by the employees as per their requirements and the Permission structure defines how they use the app.

Planio’s permission interface is characterized by Projects, Issue tracking and forums. Planio conducts a full hand authentication process that helps you control which specific users can access the project functionality based on their expertise, experience and role.

The workflow structure of Planio provides access to status modifications for chosen trackers based on their specific role. This ideally refers to the process where you can manage the access to the issue workflow based on the type of users.

The Roles and Permissions feature of Planio gives you the following benefits

• Clearly defines what type of users can use the Planio tools
• Specifies the permission details on how users can operate the system
• Effective control of the users or user groups who can access the project features
• Manage access to issue workflow based on the types of users in your organization

Planio Security

The Planio Security function comes assures to safeguard your data by implementing several security measures. Planio depends on the following features that tightly secure your project data.

• A Data Center that secures your data beyond imagination
• A Secure System that gives top priority to your data security
• PGP Encryption for outgoing and incoming emails
• GDPR and Data Protection to clearly safeguard your data
• The Data independence feature keeps you in full charge of the data
• Planio is super fast and always available with the help of rock solid private cloud clusters in the industry

Planio Pricing Plans

Planio gives you a great opportunity to try its services free for 30 days so that you get to know more about the tool in a detailed manner.

The Planio pricing plans are offered as:

Platinum Plan priced at 149 Euro/month

Diamond Plan priced at 75 Euro/month

Gold Plan priced at 39 Euro/month

Silver Plan priced at 19 Euro/month

Enterprise plan priced from 299 Euro/month

Final Thoughts

The Planio Project Management software is a storeroom filled with software solutions and tools required to complete your project management tasks. Planio gives you a safe space where you can complete your project tasks by experiencing utmost flexibility and freedom mixed with high-end security for your project data. The Planio Project Management tools are crucially designed to take care of each and every minute facet of your project so that you can be rest assured with the prompt delivery of your project result.

Use Planio, Feel Accomplished and Enjoy the Success of your Results!