UMT launches Minute Maker for Microsoft SharePoint

Johannesburg, 18 May 2010

Local enterprise project management (EPM) solution provider, UMT Consulting SA, has launched Minute Maker, a Microsoft SharePoint add-on that enables companies to create minutes of meetings from the SharePoint lists contained in SharePoint meeting sites.

These meeting sites can be linked to a specific project where one can maintain status meeting minutes, or they can be linked to any other SharePoint site.

UMT Consulting CEO Pieter Meyer says SharePoint allows one to link any meeting site to a recurring Microsoft Office Outlook meeting request. “It allows users to see the meeting dates that have been scheduled to the left hand side of the meeting site. This means that a user can capture decisions and action items online in real-time and in the right meeting workspace for the relevant date on which the meeting was held.”

As powerful as the standard SharePoint is, UMT Consulting SA found customers were reluctant to start using SharePoint meeting sites for their meetings, mainly because it wasn't easy to print minutes from the information captured in the site. To satisfy this requirement, it developed the UMT Consulting SA Minute Maker.

The main feature of Minute Maker is the ability to print minutes in a user-friendly fashion. With the Minute Maker Web part, one can simply select the meeting as well as the date and click on Minute Maker link. The Minute Maker generates a printable report of the minutes containing all the header details, as specified, along with the attendee list.

“Minutes printed directly from the SharePoint Meeting site do not look that great and it is often required that one needs a set of printed minutes either for hard-copy files or to obtain signatures. This is why UMT Consulting SA developed an enhancement in Minute Maker,” he concludes.

For more information, contact UMT Consulting SA on (012) 345 3518 or visit http://www.umtsa.co.za.

UMT Consulting SA

UMT Consulting SA is the largest project, program and portfolio management solutions implementation partner in South Africa and has serviced more than a 100 of the country's leading organisations with its offerings. UMT Consulting SA recently concluded a BEE transaction whereby the Notsi Group owns a 25% shareholding in the ordinary share capital of the company. The company is equipped with sound staff values, capacity to deliver on its promise, practical knowledge and it has a BEE partner that actively participates and contributes to the company's success.

UMT Project and Portfolio Management Services South Africa (UMT Consulting SA) was formed through the merger of Fulcrum Business Solutions, South Africa's leading provider of enterprise project management solutions, and UMT Portfolio Management SA, the leading portfolio management organisation.

Since 1989, UMT Consulting has pioneered the field of project and portfolio management and devised unique methodologies that, when combined with effective project management, enable an integrated link between strategy formulation and execution. UMT Consulting SA contributes to its clients' success by linking business and IT strategies to execution through day-to-day activities leading to improved performance and tangible projects delivery results.

UMT Consulting SA methodology, training, mentorship and coaching approach assist organisations successfully to deploy practical and essential project, program and portfolio management processes, templates, systems and governance solutions across their multi disciplinary divisions or departments.

UMT Consulting SA solutions that consistently help its clients build capabilities that support effective business decision-making and enhance business delivery performance. Its objective is to assist its clients in ensuring the operational delivery of their strategy through effective project, program and portfolio management.

UMT Consulting SA is a Microsoft Gold Certified partner and a Microsoft Project, SharePoint and Portfolio Server implementation partner.

According to UMT Consulting SA CEO Pieter Meyer, the time has passed to just improve on your delivery processes but to introduce a new way of collaborating between team members, program and project managers, senior managers and executives. “Organisations need to enable and revive their processes by introducing a responsibility, accountability, consult and inputs (RACI) formal governance framework to their projects environments and to use work flow that will manage the governance outputs. Role base delivery management methods will become very important in any organisation ensure return on investments in their project delivery space.”

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