Features, Pros And Cons – Forbes Advisor – Technologist

As a project management app, MeisterTask packs all the features you need to run a project for a team of any size. Some advanced features are lacking that could help with multiple projects, such as milestones and resource management.

Task Management

The base of MeisterTask is task management; after all, task is in its name. You can create tasks for yourself or as part of a project. Each task includes the basics you’d expect, such as due dates, statuses, an activity feed and tags for priority. I was also able to add a checklist, which can act as subtasks. However, subtasks are now available on the high-tier plan, which I found is a much easier, cleaner way of creating a hierarchy of related tasks.

Speaking of related tasks, you can set up task dependencies but I had a bit of trouble executing this. It worked for one task but not another and there’s no reason why. I chalked it up to lag because after reloading the page, the task relation worked as intended. Automations are easy with MeisterTask too; I created automations quickly with a few clicks, adding a checklist to a task as soon as it entered a specific column on the Kanban board.

It’s worth noting that I had a huge frustration with finding archived tasks. Once I moved tasks to the completed column, they disappeared, which is expected. However, there’s no easy way to find those archived tasks, at least not in an intuitive way. I finally figured out that I had to go into the project menu to find them and then restore them to interact with the task again.

Project Planning

There are plenty of options in MeisterTask to help you plan a project. You can use templates to help with project planning, create a project with a Kanban board and set up deadlines and scheduling for tasks via a timeline view that displays at the top of your board. I think project planning could be a lot faster and more effective if MeisterTask’s dev team focused on adding standard advanced features, including the ability to duplicate a task without having to click into one first, and budgeting tools.

This is a small complaint but there’s no consistency with which features or icons have description bubbles when you hover over them. It’s a quality-of-life enhancement that could make a big difference for new users of MeisterTask. That could be the reason it took me so long to find the work-in-progress limit function. Once I enabled it, I added more tasks than the WIP limit would allow, except it did allow it to happen. And the only notification I got that it was over the limit was in the form of an exclamation mark at the top of the Backlog section or bucket.

Software Integrations

There are few integrations you can set up to work with MeisterTask. The good news is that one of them is Zapier, which allows you to set up connections with other tools that allow you to run certain functions from one app to another. The other integrations include Google Calendar, Microsoft 365, GitHub, Slack and Zendesk. These are useful, but there are some glaring omissions that are typical of the best project management software, including various CRMs and storage apps.

In the project settings section you’ll find a list of integrations that work with MeisterTask, including Slack and Google Calendar.

Collaboration

For the most part, MeisterTask’s form of collaboration is simply its platform that your whole team can use for task and project management. You can leave comments and tag those you need to address in tasks. However, there’s no direct messaging or built-in chat of any kind. The best option would be to connect to Slack.