Microsoft president Steve Ballmer announced Project 2000 at Comdex on Monday, an upgrade to its project management software that comes a couple of weeks behind arch rival Lotus Development Corp’s launch of its knowledge management server, code-named ‘Raven’. He also unveiled Microsoft Project Central, a web-based companion product that when used together with Project 2000 enables knowledge workers on teams of any size to manage projects collaboratively, he said.

He said that Project Central enables team members to participate in project planning and tracking. For example, team members can identify missing tasks or suggest new tasks and easily submit them to the project manager for inclusion in the plan. They can provide more accurate estimates for how long it will take to accomplish tasks, and they can reassign tasks better carried out by other members of their team, Ballmer said. Project Central also provides the project manager with better reporting tools, according to Microsoft. For example, the project manager can request a status report, and Project Central will take all the feedback team members submit and consolidate it into a single report, without the project manager having to cut and paste various responses.

The upgrade also enables users to locate people in their organization with special expertise as well as documents and files. As companies increasingly depend on teamwork to achieve greater success, it is essential that all people in an organization have access to colleagues and critical project information, said Kathleen Hebert, general manager of the Office Family Division at Microsoft.

Microsoft is offering a free marketing beta version of Microsoft Project 2000 to the first 5,000 people who order the CD from the web site at http://www.microsoft.com/project/ . The CD includes Microsoft Project 2000, Microsoft Project Central and a Windows 2000 deployment template for IT managers planning their deployment of the Windows 2000 operating system. After the first 5,000 CDs, customers can order the beta version for only $6.95.

Microsoft is expected to deliver the final version of Project 2000 in the first quarter of next year. The product will come with one copy of Microsoft Project Central, with more user licenses available at an additional cost. á