December 6, 1996 5:30 PM ET

Microsoft to ship Team Manager next week
By Paula Rooney

Microsoft Corp. will begin shipping its Team Manager application next week, officials confirmed today. Team Manager 97, a project and team organizer, integrates with several leading E-mail systems and is designed for the forthcoming Office 97 suite. It is also integrated with Outlook, Microsoft's desktop information manager for Office 97 and its new Exchange 5.0 client. Team Manager 97 tracks and consolidates tasks, offers progress and status reports, and maintains personnel information and performance reviews. It also tracks and monitors workloads of individual employees, company officials said. The application, which works with Microsoft Mail and Exchange and Lotus Development Corp.'s cc:Mail and Notes, features numerous tabs and views designed to enhance a manager's view of work in progress. The program offers views that enable managers to assign tasks, set priorities and establish deadlines. It also lets them view status and progress reports and create performance and project evaluations for individuals and teams. The program allows users and team members to view project data and sort and filter it based on a variety of criteria. Team Manager differs from Microsoft Project in that it emphasizes and integrates the workgroup and workflow aspects of tasks and goals, officials for the Redmond, Wash., company said. The program, which is based on the Access Jet database engine, also supports HTML and allows users to publish documents to the World Wide Web. Team Manager will come with two installation options -- one for full read-write capabilities and another that is read-only. The program will be priced at approximately $109 per person and is currently in beta testing. Copyright(c) 1996 Ziff-Davis Publishing Company. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission of Ziff-Davis Publishing Company is prohibited. PC Week and the PC Week logo are trademarks of Ziff-Davis Publishing Company. PC Week Online and the PC Week Online logo are trademarks of Ziff-Davis Publishing Company. Send mail to PC Week