InformationWeek

Teamware is one of the meeting grounds for a lot of different types of products that share a common name. A few weeks ago, we told you about a teamware application ("QuickTeam Plays To The Middle," April 10, p. 97; informationweek.com/781/teamware .htm) that spans document management, planning, and contact management. We're likely to see more of these software amalgamations this year.

Enact Enterprise 4.0 from Netmosphere Inc., set for a May release, is a teamware program that's indicative of this trend. Enact Enterprise is an online project-management application that's heavily weighted toward planning. It's best used as an enterprise project-planning and project-management system.

Enact consists of three areas: a project manager planning console, an executive manager reporting utility, and a project staffer's to-do list able to receive updates from team members.

The executive console, called ActionView, lets a project manager create a project by filling out a simple form. The designer chooses specific sections from a list that includes issues, status indicator (choices include quickly informative options such as a three-color traffic light), milestones, a set of report options, deliverables, financials, assignments, and links to key documents.

The executive views an ActionView report in HTML, an efficient, if unglitzy, delivery vehicle. Sections that are not assigned don't appear to the user, leading to clearer reports.

The project-participant console, called ActionTask, serves up a team member's assignments, organized by date. This will be the most widely deployed interface, sitting on the desktops of those who do project work. Unfortunately, this was the least-developed area in the beta version.

Netmosphere says version 4.0 won't have personal information manager integration, but it's near the top of the list for future editions. This is a necessary addition given how reliant business professions have become on personal organizers.

The way project managers assign and track tasks, especially those that are too small to merit their own line on a Gantt chart, frequently determines the success or failure of projects. The project-manager console, written in Java, is the most robust and feature-rich, just as it should be in its role as the authoring and control hub. ActionPlan, like Netmosphere's prior offerings, uses the Gantt method as its design model. You won't find Critical Path bubble tools, which may disappoint aficionados of that approach, although the product does allow the project manager to assign critical path attributes to tasks.

The Java application (more than 3 Mbytes in the beta version) is more full-featured than almost any Web project-management client, though less so than contemporary enterprise desktop project-management clients.

The Java application's initial loading time is noticeable as is. The company believes most users will be on intranets, which will minimize the wait. The attempt to stuff more-advanced features would make the loadable program larger and slower. The company also has a 32-bit Java program you can install on a project manager's desktop. The loading time for ActionView and ActionTask are less than trivial.

The trade-off between features and response time works pretty well. Just because projects are being managed enterprisewide doesn't necessarily mean the authoring tool needs to be complex, merely that the project needs many tasks with many delineated connections. For the minority of users who need initial project designs to be more complex or need to generate Critical Path Method charts or PERT reports, you can export and import MPX Microsoft Project Exchange format files with most popular project-management products.

I have a few issues with the interface in the beta Java application. Entry-aware data entry boxes that examine your typing and jump to the correct choice are, sadly, case-sensitive (that is, entering "boyd" doesn't bring up "Boyd").

The documentation for the current version isn't yet available. I'm not convinced documentation will be a make-or-break component of a product that's so simple for the executive and participant users to use, but I'll withhold final judgement until I see it.