Coda by Grammarly vs. Projector PSA

Coda is great to build a place for your users to go to and see information. It is easy to navigate through and the variety of content creation is great. However, it is not always easy to create what you want and there is a lot of playing around and learning. Coda also sometimes misses some functionality which is expected. For example, downloading a list of users that have access to the platform. Being able to send push notifications when a new page has been created etc. Overall it is a good tool to use just be prepared to invest time!

Incentivized

We think Projector PSA is a great tool to track and manage people in a professional service environment like management consulting. This system is easy to set up, easy to understand and should easily suit the needs of smaller and medium sized firms. It may be less appropriate for firms that rely very heavily on project management through another system (like MS Project) or firms that rely very heavily on a sales pipeline tracking system. While still very much possible to use, you would (I believe) have to do some re-keying between systems

• One source of truth: It's incredibly easy to keep everything organized and easy to find.
• Being able to show different views of the same information throughout your doc makes it really easy to customize the information.
• In general, I love the "coding" aspect of it, and being able to do advanced functions has helped us create some really interesting automation and streamline our process.

Incentivized

• Time tracking. For a service company that typically bills retainers, it is very important to be able to assign a direct cost to your resources at all levels and analyze your profitability.
• Expense reporting. Projector easily tracks expenses of all types and allows you to categorize them under non-billable projects, client billable projects and/or client development ventures.
• Reporting. Projector has a large list of standard reports right at your fingertips. These reports can be extracted as Excel docs, mdp files and other useful formats. They are intuitive, clear and easy to analyze. For those you need on a standard basis, you can set them up to pull on a recurring basis. It should be noted that all reports are easily customized and Projector's support team is always there to help get you the information you need.

Incentivized

• "Barrier of entry" is a little high for those who do not have any database experience.
• More out-of-the-box integrations with other applications would be nice.
• Performance for very heavy loaded/traffic documents could be improved.
• Scalability for enterprise level customers and doc loads could be improved.

Incentivized

• The split between the desktop and web environments was awkward at times.
• While the reporting modules are powerful, creating reports can be complex and required a fairly deep knowledge of the product.
• The appearance and interface of the desktop application appears somewhat dated.

Coda is definitely something that has been proven to drive positive impact in our organization. We have many divisions that can benefit from this that we have yet to explore. It would definitely be worth renewing.

Incentivized

We have been using this tool for a year now and find our use of it continually evolves and broadens. We are also very excited about the overhaul that's under way and feel many of the improvements being put in place will help make us that much more effective and efficient. The Projector team is also very responsive and collaborative in terms of user feedback and improvement suggestions, which helps us know they will work hard to help us get what we need out of the tool.

There is a little bit of a learning curve on where to point and click to add in different elements and make edits. But it is still very manageable once you get the hang of it. I do still have some issues with some of my connected pages updating each other when I don't want them to sync. So I'll end up editing one page, and it will make the same edits on another page.

Incentivized

Desktop interface feels complex to new users.

So far in the past year, we haven't had situations that Coda has gone down for us which is great.

Incentivized

In 5 years of use we have never experienced an unscheduled outage.

We haven't done any integrations - the initial part of our experience we found that for docs with complex formulas, the page tends to load slowly but in recent months, Coda has improved and optimized the loading times in general and we generally don't find any problems in terms of speed anymore.

Incentivized

Mainly due to timezone differences. I think Coda's support in general is well implemented and executed. They know their stuff and are helpful. But since I'm not in the same timezone, solution rates are slower for me, and that's not something I prefer. I work in customer service, too, and more often than not, time is important. Shortening the solution time would be a much greater experience.

Incentivized

I'm relatively inexperienced but this experience is meaningful. It would have been nice to have some guidance from Coda so that we understood more on Coda's purpose and potential.

Incentivized

For general use cases, Google Docs or Airtable are often a better starting place. But if things get complex or you're constantly pairing the two together, consider graduating to Coda to save yourself long-term headaches. Notion is great for personal use, but the powerful automation and collaboration features in Coda make it a better fit for teams in my experience so far.

Incentivized

We switched to Projector from Open Air. While Open Air was a good tool, we found it wasn't really designed for project management at the level of detail we needed from our PSA and used MS Project and Excel to supplement Open Air. We also struggled with the invoicing side of it, manually combining invoice summaries with custom time and expense reports in Acrobat. Projector however, was designed for project management. We are able to manage projects, track time and expenses, and invoice all out of one system. The project setup can accommodate a wide range of complexity, including milestones, dependencies, etc. Project and resource dashboards also help see the services portfolio and team at a summary level and allows us to zero in on particulars easily and more meaningfully than we were ever able to with Open Air. Invoice templates are also easily customized and we were able to get several set up quickly to meet our needs. Lastly, Open Air required us to purchase and pre-pay licensing for a year, so if we lost staff mid-way through the year, the unused seat was not prorated. Projector licensing is paid monthly based on actual number of active users that month, which makes more sense for a team with fluctuating headcount.

I think scalability is definitely good here since it's based on number of doc makers. Implementation into each dept becomes simpler. That being said, due to the nature of our work, we find it easier that we have a "super user" and then a team of other doc makers. This would make the doc creation and management more efficient.

Incentivized

• Increased insight for all stakeholders involved--both in terms of overview and details
• Better grip on issues and escalations--reduced friction, confusion, and higher clarity on status, next actions, and ownership.
• Reduced time required by those who need to maintain all information. Record (a detail) once and use multiple times.

Incentivized

• Even in the small time that I stayed to see Projector PSA reporting I saw ROI projections become more realistic. There was real data to analyze that proved we were spending way too much and charging way too less on some projects.
• Although employees were not used at entering their hours, this single reporting improved operations management and validated employees concerns that more people were needed to manage workload
• Project proposals were more realistic because they were driven by real data.
• Decision making overall for the department became more efficient and effective

Incentivized