Microsoft Project 2024 & Project Online

Project Standard 2024 is the basic desktop scheduler — Gantt charts, network diagrams, resource sheets, baselines, critical path analysis, cost roll-ups and report templates. It is the right answer for individual project managers running self-contained schedules on a single PC. Project Professional 2024 adds team collaboration features (assigning tasks, tracking work, resource levelling across multiple projects), the ability to connect to Project Online or Project Server for centralised portfolio management, and built-in synchronisation with SharePoint task lists. Both are perpetual, one-time-purchase desktop applications activated against a Microsoft account (retail) or via KMS / MAK (Volume Licensing).

Project Plan 1 gives access to Project for the Web — a modern, lightweight planner that runs in the browser, integrates with Microsoft Teams as a tab, and stores data in Microsoft Dataverse. It is the right answer for teams that want a shared visual board and simple Gantt without the complexity of the desktop app. Plan 3 adds the Project desktop app (the same binaries as Project Professional 2024, delivered as a subscription) plus Project Online Professional in the browser, with timesheets, multi-project resource management and Project Online publishing. Plan 5 layers on Portfolio Management and Project Online Premium — the demand-management workflow, portfolio analysis, what-if scenarios and the resource engagement model — for organisations running a PMO function.

These are genuinely different products under the same brand. Project for the Web is the modern, web-first experience built on Dataverse and integrated tightly with Microsoft 365 and Power Platform — it is the right tool for collaborative task tracking, ad-hoc planning and Teams-centric workflows. The desktop Project (Standard / Professional 2024) is the traditional, schedule-centric tool with critical-path mathematics, resource levelling algorithms and the full breadth of Microsoft Project's 30-year feature set. Project Plan 3 gives you both, which is the most flexible deployment for organisations that want one licence for everyone but support both styles of planning.

Project Online is the cloud-hosted portfolio management service that comes with Plan 3 and Plan 5. Project Server is the on-premises equivalent and was last released as Project Server 2019; no Project Server 2024 has been announced and Microsoft has clearly pointed the on-prem audience toward Project Online for new deployments. Existing Project Server 2019 deployments remain supported through extended support, but greenfield portfolio-management projects should target Project Online.

Project for the Web and Project Online both surface their data through Microsoft Dataverse, which means Power BI dashboards, Power Automate flows and custom Power Apps can read and write Project data with the standard connectors. The Teams integration adds Project tabs inside channels and the new Roadmap experience for cross-project portfolio views. Desktop Project files (.mpp) can still be uploaded to Project Online and Project for the Web for portfolio-level visibility, but native cloud authoring delivers the cleanest integration story.

Retail Project 2024 is per-device — one purchase, one PC. Volume-licensed Project Standard / Professional 2024 is per device by default but can be per user under specific MPSA or EA programmes. Project Plan 1 / 3 / 5 are always per user. Like Microsoft 365, the cloud plans allow up to five PC / Mac, five tablet and five phone installs per user, with shared device activation available for shared-device scenarios.

Decades-old .mpp files generally open fine in Project 2024 with their schedule, resources and baselines intact. Project Online and Project for the Web accept .mpp uploads for portfolio visibility but the modern Dataverse data model is structured differently from the classic project file — for active collaborative projects, the better pattern is to recreate the schedule natively in Project for the Web (or in desktop Project published to Project Online) and treat the legacy .mpp as an archived record.