Online productivity tools provider Zoho has launched a new version of its Projects service, designed to deliver enhanced online collaboration and project management capabilities.

Zoho Projects 2.0 allows users to manage projects by creating milestones, tasks, task lists, priorities, completion, dependencies and ownership. It also has a shared project calendar that all team members can view, and a Twitter-like status update feature where users can securely publish their latest update to their entire team.

The service also offers capabilities for group chat, interactive forums, centralised file sharing and integration with the Zoho Office online productivity suite.

"Zoho Projects 2.0 goes beyond the traditional 'project management' space and helps people work together to achieve a common goal," wrote Zoho marketing director Rodrigo Vaca in a blog post.

"It's not just about tasks, milestones and priorities (but we do that too of course). It's about how people interact and what they need while working on something, whether it's a local team or a distributed team, an internal team, or a customer-facing one."

Zoho Projects 2.0 is available in a limited-spec free version, or for $12 (£7) per month for the Standard Plan (10 projects and 2GB of online storage); and $80 (£49) per month for the Enterprise Plan (unlimited projects and 25GB of online storage).