Backstage: Select File to use features in the Backstage, where you can manage your project files and the data about them. Use the Backstage for everything that you do to a project file that you don't do in the file—creating, saving, inspecting for hidden metadata or personal information, and setting options.
Click-to-Run: Install Project Online over the internet, internal networks, local file systems, or from offline media.
Contextual right-click menus: Right-click any item in a project view (such as a column title) to get instant access to what you can do with that item.
Custom fields: In addition to the fields that are included with Project, you can also use custom fields to meet your organizational needs.
User interface, the ribbon: Increase productivity with the ribbon, a tab interface that you can use to quickly find and use Project features and controls.
Multiple-level undo: You can undo multiple changes at the same time by using the Undo menu.
Network Diagram view: View tasks, dependencies, and the critical path of your project in a Network Diagram view.
Office store: Need an application to help you with Project? Find new applications for Project in the Office store. See Add-ins for Project.
Placeholder text in Project fields: If you're not sure of all the details for a project, you can use placeholder text, such as "TBD" for resources, start dates, end dates, and so on.
Project templates: You can save lots of time creating a project by using a past project as a template.
Start experience: Instead of dropping you into a blank project, Project 2013 presents a one-stop center for starting your project. You can use customer templates or a built-in guide to get you started in four easy steps.
Text wrap: Wrap task or resource names so they flow on a second line.
Timeline view: Build and customize the timeline view to visualize schedule details and communicate with stakeholders.
Zoom controls: Use zoom controls on the status bar to quickly change the timeline perspective of your project schedules.
The following core services functionality features are available in Project Online.
Active Directory integration: Active Directory provides a central location for administrators to manage user credentials and permissions. Active Directory integration with Project means that users and groups in Active Directory are synchronized in Project Online or Project Server 2013.
Administration, deployment, and extensibility: Project Online and Project Server 2013 provide features for administrators to plan, install and configure, maintain and extend Project.
Getting started: Getting started content is available for Project Online.
Issues and risk management (for team members): Project Online and Project Server 2013 include features to prevent, identify, and mitigate potential business- or project-related risks and issues.
PPM Partner ecosystem: Microsoft PPM solutions are backed by hundreds of Microsoft partners who have earned their PPM competency and undergone relevant exams and numerous deployments in over 80 countries and regions worldwide. Go to a PPM partner in your region if you need help with assessment, envisioning, deployment, or training.
Service reliability: We stand by our 99.9 percent uptime promise with an industry-leading financial guarantee for customers.
Service updates: We regularly update Microsoft services with new features and capabilities.
Team member collaboration: Team collaboration supports and drives overall project success and effectiveness. Project Server 2013 lets organizations collaborate on projects.
Time and task management (for team members): Use a centralized and common approach to time reporting and task management. Capture work and nonworking time for payroll, invoicing, and other business purposes. Efficiently communicate status on projects, everyday work, and ad-hoc requests to gauge usage peaks and valleys or progress on tasks. This helps you anticipate the effect on planned effort, cost, and timeframe.
Project planning
The following project planning features are available in Project Online.
Baseline rollup: Baseline data can roll up or be summarized in a summary row.
Budget planning: Budget planning allows you to compare current progress against a baseline that you set at the start of a project.
Compare project versions: Compare two versions of a project. A report is created that shows what changed, such as the addition of new tasks.
Deadlines: Mark major goals of your project with a milestone.
Filtering: Filter project plans by any value in the plan.
Reports: With Project 2016, you can create crisp, colorful, professional reports without having to export your data to another program. Add pictures, charts, animations, links, and more—everything that you must have to clearly and effectively share project status information with stakeholders and team members.
Team Planner: Use a view that shows people and their assignments.
Project management
The following project management features are available in Project Online.
Issues and risk management: Project Online and Project Server 2013 include features to prevent, identify, and mitigate potential business- or project-related risks and issues.
Manage project resources: Provide project managers with the ability to view available resources, build teams, and request resource engagements.
Project Home: Project Home is the starting point that gives you quick and easy access to projects recently worked-on and important, top-of-mind projects. You can mark these projects as favorites with easy-to-use controls so they display prominently in Project Home.
Reporting and business intelligence: With Microsoft PPM solutions, you have several options for viewing and creating reports and working with Project Server 2013 data. Some reports are available automatically, and you can easily create your own reports using lots of reporting tools.
Schedule management: The schedule represents the tasks and deliverables that must be completed to deliver the project on time. You can create a timeline for your projects to track progress and manage change.
Time and task management: Use a centralized and common approach to time reporting and task management. Capture work and nonworking time for payroll, invoicing, and other business purposes. Efficiently communicate status on projects, everyday work, and ad-hoc requests to gauge usage peaks and valleys or progress on tasks. This helps you anticipate the effect on planned effort, cost, and timeframe.
Project publishing
The following SharePoint and Skype for Business interoperability features are available in Project Online.
Create a project site: If you are using Project Web App, you can share a project with others by creating a new project site in SharePoint or by synching with an existing site. The site shares your project's tasks as a SharePoint task list.
Master projects on SharePoint: Master projects can be added to a SharePoint site to roll up other projects.
Task list sync to SharePoint: After the first time you pair your project with a SharePoint task list, you can continue to synchronize with the task list as you update your project. Predecessor relationships between tasks, milestones, and field mapping (including notes) are maintained during synchronization. Your team members don't have to have Project Professional 2013 installed to access their tasks.
Task management
The following task management features are available in Project Online.
Active and inactive tasks: When you inactivate a task, it stays in the project plan but does not affect the following: resource availability, the project schedule, or how other tasks are scheduled.
Auto-complete: Get suggestions for task or resource names as you type.
Automatic scheduling: Use Auto Schedule mode to schedule your tasks automatically.
Calendar date extended to 2149: Project tasks can now use calendar dates up to 2149.
Cross-project critical path: A critical path is the series of tasks that must be completed on schedule for a project to finish on schedule. You can create, edit, and delete a dependency relationship with a task in another project.
Task inspector: View factors that affect the scheduling of a task, such as a changed start date or error messages.
Task path analysis: See how one task connects to other tasks by highlighting its task path throughout the project.
Manage resource pool: Manage an enterprise resource pool - both by individual and in bulk.
Plan resource capacity: When you need to know if resources are overbooked, you can use the Capacity Planning view in the Resource Center to compare how many hours a resource is able to put in versus how many hours they're needed on projects.
View available resources and build teams: Gives you the ability to build teams from available resources.
Project resource management
The following project resource management features are available in Project Online.
Cost resources: Manage the costs on your project.
Manage nonworking time: Add vacation, holidays, medical leave, and other nonworking time into your project schedule.
Resource leveling: When people in your project are working on too many assignments at the same time, you can adjust their assignments automatically. This is known as resource leveling.
Resource sheet and usage views: Present resource information graphically using resource usage, sheet, graph, and form views.
Team resources: Add resources to a team's project, such as material resources like computers and cement.
Work, generic, and material resources: Add resources to your project, such as work resources like people, generic resources like carpenters, and materials resources like computers and cement.
Portfolio management
The following portfolio management features are available in Project Online.
Analyze projects and optimize portfolio: Analyze your projects to determine which of them will give you the best return on your investment of both budget and resources. This process is known as portfolio analysis.
Enterprise resource management: Resources are the people, materials, or costs that are required to get your project done. Microsoft PPM solutions let resource managers manage the resource pool, plan resource capacity, and approve, reject, and modify incoming resource engagement requests.
Financial management: Adopt financial management processes to improve estimates of costs and benefits. Effectively track cost performance to make sure that each project is delivered within budget and that the portfolio achieves the expected results.
Participate in workflow: Workflows provide a structured way for projects to proceed through the phases. A workflow includes definitions of the lifecycle stages through which the project progresses, such as proposal creation and initial approval. The workflow sets the information that is required or locked in each stage.
Portfolio analytics and selection: Effectively identify, select, and deliver project portfolios that best align with your organization's business strategy and maximize your return on investment (ROI).
Program management: In program management, each project has its own set of goals that, when combined with each other, deliver the forecasted benefits of the overall program.
Roadmap: Roadmap combines information from multiple waterfall and agile projects to provide a highly visual, aggregated timeline view.
Reporting and business intelligence
The following reporting and business intelligence features are available in Project Online.
Data feeds: OData feeds enable REST queries and a variety of OData client libraries to make both queries of reporting data from a Project Web App instance. For example, you can directly use a REST query in a web browser, or use JavaScript to build web apps and client apps for mobile devices, tablets, PCs, and Mac computers.
Out-of-the-box portfolio dashboards: Rich, out-of-box reports are designed to be immediately useful for many customers, and the web app also allows customization of your portfolio dashboard to help meet specific organizational needs. Choose from a variety of project, task, and resource-based reports, including issues/risks/deliverables reporting, as well as several filtering options, including filtering by custom fields. Reports can be customized easily without leaving the app.
Project desktop reporting: Project desktop reporting allows you to create and customize striking graphical reports of whatever project data you want, without having to rely on any other software.