ManageEngine announced the general availability of the project management module for its ITIL-ready help desk software, ServiceDesk Plus.

With the project management module moving out of beta, IT administrators now have a production-level, integrated tool for managing large IT help desk projects and for collaborating with different teams and experts.

Managing day-to-day IT operations and IT services in silos creates a huge workload for IT administrators. As an IT department scales up, individual projects may become individual islands of activity that inadvertently change configuration items and adversely impact related, critical applications or services. An integrated tool for managing both IT operations and IT services ensures that critical applications and services will continue to operate at peak efficiency.

"One of the biggest headaches in IT service management is simply the coordination of help desk projects," said Uma Shankar, director of product management at ManageEngine. "Word docs and Excel spreadsheets just don't work. Effectively managing all of the individual milestones and tasks for any given project basically requires a dedicated project management solution. And that's what the ServiceDesk Plus project management module delivers - project management designed expressly for the IT service management team."

The project management module in ServiceDesk Plus serves as the implementation tool to carry out IT changes identified in the application's change management module. The project management module helps to divide any size project into different milestones and divide each milestone into different tasks. This level of detail helps when assigning tasks to the technicians and tracking their activities as well as when documenting the respective tasks.

The project management module helps to set security levels by customizing roles and permissions to each project member based on the requirement and availability. The module performs feasibility checks by cost estimation and resource management. It also tracks all the changes made and tasks completed through the help of a Gantt chart and calendar view, making it much easier for IT staff to track the status of a project in a single dashboard.

The ServiceDesk Plus project management module is available immediately, free of charge, for users of the ServiceDesk Plus Enterprise Edition. The new module is also available as an add-on for users of the Professional Edition.

Related Links:

Download ServiceDesk Plus

A video tour of the ServiceDesk Plus project management module

A pre-recorded on-demand webinar

More information on ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus