Cerebro

Cerebro is intended to support collaboration, even in very complex projects. In this respect, the application allows all sorts of project management activities, including planning, task assignment and monitoring.

Its desktop client supports seamless interaction with the cloud services, which allow storing and sharing data with other members of your team.

Cerebro is definitely not an easy-to-use app. Therefore, it is very likely that you will need long hours before you feel comfortable with it and able to exploit all its features. However, there are wizards to help you flatten the curve a little. In this regard, there is the Getting Started wizard that helps you create a demo project, add colleagues and set up access rights. Likewise, there are templates for such project types as animation, design and marketing as well as visual effects. However, this does not mean you cannot also create other types of projects.

Additionally, there are other wizards for other common tasks, like creating a standard user, an email user, a material resource, a group, an activity and a new status. Similarly, you can create new tags and file storage by means of wizards as well.

As a common characteristic for most projects, the tool permits tracking budget and time for specific tasks. Moreover, you can use its built-in calendar to manage working hours, holidays and sick days. Besides, you can conveniently assign resources to tasks in a dynamic way. Furthermore, you can group tasks into projects.

Collaboration features allows managing document versions as well as exchanging information via instant messaging, forums and wikis. Similarly, you can create to-do lists corresponding to different workflows. Still, its scheduling algorithms are not sufficiently optimized.

All in all, one of the best advantages of Cerebro is its versatility: It can adapt to projects of diverse complexity and is suitable for organizations of any size. Likewise, it can be used by a wide range of industries, including advertisement agencies, architect firms and animation studios.

The desktop client as such is free; however, it is useless without its powering services. Luckily, you can try them for a limited period of time at no cost. Then, you can purchase one of the available plans: Team, Studio and Factory. It is also very convenient that there are similar apps for other platforms. Finally, it is important to bear in mind that there is another product with the same name, but it is an alternative to Searchlight.