Kantata Reviews

The activity dashboard is the best part of Mavenlink. A feed that allows you to keep track of official communications and notes is perfect, plus it keeps clients involved. The API is also very strong and allows us to generate reports FAR beyond what is offered by Mavenlink. Our ability to manage projects and people has greatly increased due to the features that have been implemented since we switched to Mavenlink.

The Gantt chart needs a lot of work. The interface is slow and clunky, plus it is not a great view for the executives and sponsors, visually speaking. The purpose of this chart is not really to "manage" the project, but instead show a high level overview of everything. There is currently no great way to show this to execs and sponsors. There needs to be a better mobile experience as well. We need a fully functional way to log time, complete tasks, post activity and generally manage projects from Android and iOS.

Resource planning was made 1000% better by using the Mavenlink product. It is an intuitive modern UI that is feature rich across the board.

There are some gaps in the product and areas where I wish it had been more configurable. For instance, invoicing could use more flexibility in terms of how you build out an invoice (and how you display things on the invoice). Also, time tracking is easy but notes aren't required nor is there a config to make them required which has been a big pain for us.

Mavenlink enables us to know the workload of our teams and Ike projects on schedule and within budget.

I wish the reporting was easier so that more users could work in it.

- Time Entry
- Management of individual projects
- Integrations w/ Jira
- Forecasting/Planning
- Happy to have approvals, but they could be more flexible.
- Managing budgets against project timelines.

- Invoicing
- Reporting
- Happy to have approvals, but they could be more flexible.
- Granularity of permissions

Budget tracking is easy and effective, although depending on configuration, it can differ between the finances and budget tabs within a project. Gantt view is super helpful for changing timelines and communicating with client.

The task tracker sometimes is really slow to load when moving tasks around within a given project. There is often a huge number of notifications, but you can configure those to limit them significantly if necessary.

Depth of data analysis and business intelligence, gantt charts, deep task detail options, resource scheduling tools, built-in expense and budget tracking

There is an intermediate learning curve and may come across as immediately complex to the uninitiated creative. However, 10-15 minutes of poking around and taking advantage of the learning tools and startup tutorials offered by Mavenlink's stellar customer service program will address this minor concern. Mavenlink is a fantastically powerful information source, and with that power comes some proper approach and learning. It's all intuitive, though!

Mavenlink allows for our team to easily collaborate on projects from beginning to end. We can cater our tasks to our specific needs and show the progress along the way for everyone to see. The updates that are sent via email keep me on track with the numerous projects I have at hand. The time tracking integration is beneficial to us when we are working with outside clients. This function is simple to use!

I find it difficult to access archived projects when I need to refer back to them. It appears that you need to know the exact title of the project in order to search it. Even though the time tracking function is simple to use, I do wish I could pause my time on one project without tracking it and move to another project where I start tracking time as well. I feel that I have to submit small increments of time often because I cannot do this.

- Time tracking integration. Don't have to use a third party tool.
- Smart project task management.
- Easy to track if "to do" is a "task" or an "issue" (very helpful for website projects where you have a TON of issues to deal with).
- Easy to move tasks around and see the overall items you're working on.
- Google docs integration.
- You can track conversations all in one feed-- on more email.
- You can respond via email.

- So many features. I don't use all of them.
- They add on cool features... but want you to pay for them.
- Expensive -- but worth it when you're managing a team and don't want to login to a ton of applications.
- No dropbox integration.
- Takes awhile to get used too.
- You can't rename the issue or task items. For example, sometimes I want to change the status title from "needs info" to "client review" -- and I can't edit the status (I could do this in Wrike).

Ease of use and communication. The ability to start threads regarding specific tasks, upload/share google docs, post messages that also go to email, etc. has been critical to successfully completing projects.

The only dislike I have is that I cannot push a change across multiple projects at one time. We use templates for almost every project we launch. Sometimes those templates get updated and those changes need to be applied to current projects.

I like that my staffing projections are easy to access, view and share across digital teams.

Forecasting hours by the week/month needs to be automated - this is too manual and time consuming at the time. Need to be able to drag and drop hours, or somehow more speedily be able to populate staff allocations. Also finance reporting / utilization reporting is incredibly difficult of not impossible due to my current access level. I have to rely on the finance and resourcing department for all reporting - this is not sustainable for project management.

I love the way Mavenlink automates communication as the project moves on down through the workflow. By using dependency arrows on the gantt chart, our creatives are automatically notified when their tasks are ready to start. It's pretty slick!

How unforgiving the gantt chart is. I realize it's web-based in a browser, but it really needs an "undo" button.