Introducing Three New Mission Control Add-Ons
Project management technology has come a long way. We have better planning tools, better reporting, better resource management and more project data available than ever before.
But there’s still a fairly simple challenge that many project teams face every day: the Project Management application isn’t necessarily where the work is actually happening.
Your Project Manager might build and maintain the Project Plan in Mission Control, but your team is communicating in Slack or Microsoft Teams. Actions are agreed during conversations. Issues are discovered while people are collaborating. Risks emerge during the working day. And increasingly, people are turning to AI applications to find information, analyse data and help them get work done.
Every time someone has to stop what they’re doing, switch applications, find the right Project and update the project management system, there’s friction. Sometimes the update happens immediately. Sometimes it gets added to the mental list of things to do later. And sometimes it doesn’t happen at all.
That’s why we’re excited to introduce three new Mission Control add-on modules: Mission Control Slack App, Mission Control Teams App and Mission Control MCP.
While each application solves a different problem, they’re built around a common idea: bring project management closer to where people are already working.
Project Management Should Fit Into the Way Your Team Works
There’s an important distinction between where a Project is managed and where project work happens.
Mission Control remains the central Project Management and Professional Services Automation platform where organisations can manage their Projects, resources, time, financials, Risks, Issues and reporting.
But your project team doesn’t necessarily spend all day inside Mission Control.
They may spend a significant proportion of their working day collaborating in Slack or Microsoft Teams. That’s where questions are asked, problems are discussed, decisions are made and responsibilities are agreed.
The challenge is connecting those everyday interactions with the project management system without adding unnecessary administration.
Our new Slack and Teams Apps are designed to do exactly that.
And as AI becomes another important part of the everyday working environment, Mission Control MCP extends that same philosophy further by enabling customers to connect Mission Control with compatible AI applications.
Together, the three applications provide new ways to Ask, Analyse and Act on project information while reducing the friction involved in everyday project management.
Introducing the Mission Control Slack App
If your team spends its day collaborating in Slack, the Mission Control Slack App brings key Mission Control functionality directly into that environment.
The goal is simple: project administration shouldn’t disrupt project work.
Think about something as straightforward as logging time. A team member finishes a piece of work and needs to record their hours. Traditionally, that might mean leaving Slack, opening Mission Control, locating the appropriate Action, recording the Time Log and then returning to what they were doing.
The same thing happens when somebody needs to record an Expense, create an Action or capture an Issue or Risk.
None of these tasks is particularly complicated. But each one introduces another interruption.
The Mission Control Slack App helps reduce those interruptions by giving users access to a range of Input Tools, including:
- Log Time
- Log Expense
- Add Action
- Add Issue
- Add Risk
- Add Requirement
- Add Resource Request
But project teams don’t just need to put information into Mission Control. They also need quick access to the information already there.
That’s why the Slack App also includes Output Tools that can surface information including Daily Digests, Status Reports, Open Issues, Open Risks, Holidays, My Timesheet, My Team Timesheet and My Actions.
The result is a two-way relationship between Slack and Mission Control: your team can contribute project information and access the information they need while remaining within the flow of work.
Introducing the Mission Control Teams App
The Mission Control Teams App brings the same philosophy to organisations whose teams collaborate through Microsoft Teams.
Your Project Team may spend its day communicating and collaborating in Teams. Every time somebody needs to leave that workflow to update Mission Control, there’s another opportunity for project information to be delayed, forgotten or never recorded.
Mission Control Teams App brings the system of record closer to where your team is already working.
Users can create information in Mission Control directly from Teams through Input Tools including Log Time, Log Expense, Add Action, Add Issue, Add Risk, Add Requirement and Add Resource Request.
They can also bring information back from Mission Control using Output Tools including Daily Digest, Status Report, Open Issues, Open Risks, Holidays, My Timesheet, My Team Timesheet and My Actions.
This gives project teams a much more convenient way to interact with Mission Control without requiring Microsoft Teams to become another separate project management system.
Mission Control remains the source of the project information. Teams simply becomes another way of interacting with it.
Less Administration, Better Project Data and Less Chasing
There are three benefits at the heart of both our Slack and Teams Apps:
Less Administration. Better Project Data. Less Chasing.
They’re also closely related.
Let’s start with administration.
Project administration is essential. We need people to record their time, capture Issues and Risks, maintain Actions and keep project information current.
But there’s no reason that administration needs to be unnecessarily difficult.
If we can reduce the number of steps involved in completing routine project management activities, we can help people spend less time navigating systems and more time delivering their work.
Then there’s project data.
One of the most common causes of inaccurate project information isn’t necessarily that people don’t understand what they’re supposed to record. It’s that recording it gets postponed.
Someone identifies a Risk and thinks, “I’ll add that later.”
An Action is agreed during a conversation and somebody plans to update the Project afterwards.
A team member finishes their work and decides they’ll complete their Timesheet at the end of the week.
The greater the distance between something happening and somebody recording it, the greater the opportunity for information to become incomplete or inaccurate.
By putting project management tools directly into the flow of work, we’re making it easier to capture information closer to when things actually happen.
And that brings us to chasing.
When information isn’t easily accessible or isn’t kept current, the Project Manager often ends up becoming the person responsible for finding it.
Have you updated that Action?
Can you log your time?
What’s happening with that Issue?
Who is away next week?
What do you have outstanding?
Giving team members and managers greater self-service access to project information can help reduce that administrative burden and give Project Managers more time to focus on the activities that genuinely influence project outcomes.
Introducing Mission Control MCP
Our third new add-on takes Mission Control in another direction—and it’s one we’re particularly excited about.
Mission Control MCP enables customers to connect Mission Control to compatible AI applications, opening up a new way for people to interact with their project information.
Instead of navigating through screens or starting with a particular report, users can start with a question or an instruction expressed in natural language.
Imagine asking:
“What Actions do I have outstanding?”
Or:
“How is the Apollo Project performing?”
Or:
“What are the biggest Risks on this Project?”
Or:
“Who has the right skills and availability for this work?”
Mission Control MCP includes more than 50 pre-built tools designed to enable AI applications to interact with Mission Control and support everyday project management activities.
But importantly, this isn’t only about asking questions.
Ask. Analyse. Act.
We’ve been using three words to describe what Mission Control MCP is designed to enable:
Ask. Analyse. Act.
Ask means using natural language to find the project information you need.
Analyse means using AI to help interpret that information, understand what’s happening and identify areas that may require attention.
And Act is where things become particularly interesting.
Mission Control MCP supports tools that can help users create and update project information, log time, manage schedules and create complete Project Plans.
For example, you could ask your AI application to help create an Agile Project with a Backlog and multiple Sprints.
The AI can prepare the proposed structure for review before the Project, Backlog and Sprints are created.
Or perhaps you’ve just completed a customer requirements meeting. Rather than manually turning those notes into a Work Breakdown Structure, you could use AI to help recommend the Project Plan before creating the relevant Mission Control hierarchy.
AI becomes more than another place to ask questions. It can become another way of interacting with your project management environment.
Turning Project Data Into Answers
Another area where we see significant potential is project analysis.
Most organisations aren’t short of data.
The harder part is often turning that data into useful information quickly enough to support a decision.
Traditional reporting remains incredibly important, but AI gives us another way of approaching the problem.
Instead of beginning with “Which dashboard or report contains the information I need?”, a Project Manager can begin with the question they’re actually trying to answer.
How is this Project performing?
Where are we seeing problems?
What should I be watching?
What work is outstanding?
What resources are available?
Mission Control MCP provides the connection between the AI application and Mission Control information, enabling users to interact with project data in a more conversational way.
That has the potential to make project analytics accessible to more people while reducing the time between having a question and getting the information needed to answer it.
Helping Teams Make Better Resource Decisions
Resource Management is another area where faster access to information can make a significant difference.
Mission Control MCP can provide information about active Roles, including Job Title, Function, working hours, Teams and Skills.
That means a Resource Manager can use natural-language interactions to investigate the people potentially suited to upcoming project work.
Rather than simply asking “Who is available?”, the conversation can incorporate the capability required as well.
The objective isn’t to remove human judgement from resource decisions. It’s to make it easier for the person making that decision to access and work with the relevant information.
That’s an important distinction in how we think about AI across Mission Control.
Different Applications, One Common Philosophy
At first glance, a Slack App, Microsoft Teams App and Model Context Protocol might seem like three very different product launches.
Technically, they are.
But from a customer perspective, we think they’re closely connected.
They all recognise that the future of Project Management isn’t necessarily about getting people to spend more time inside the Project Management application.
It’s about making the Project Management system more accessible from the places where people are already working.
If your organisation uses Slack, bring Mission Control into Slack.
If your team collaborates in Microsoft Teams, bring Mission Control into Teams.
If your organisation is adopting AI applications, connect them to Mission Control through MCP.
And depending on how your organisation works, you don’t necessarily need to choose only one.
Different teams and roles may have different preferred ways of interacting with Mission Control while still contributing to and working from the same underlying project information.
Keeping Mission Control at the Centre
There’s another important point here.
These new applications don’t diminish the role of Mission Control as the central project management platform. They extend it.
Your Project Managers can continue to use Mission Control’s planning, Resource Management, Time and Expense, financial management, Risk and Issue management, Program and Portfolio Management and reporting capabilities.
The new add-ons provide additional ways for people to interact with that environment.
For project team members, that may mean completing routine activities from Slack or Teams.
For managers, it could mean getting quicker access to project information from their collaboration platform.
For Project Managers and business leaders, it could mean using AI to analyse information and support project management activities through Mission Control MCP.
Different experiences, but the same underlying objective: keeping project information connected and helping teams deliver successfully.
From Better Productivity to Better Project Outcomes
Whenever we develop new functionality for Mission Control, productivity and efficiency matter.
But they’re not the final objective.
If we save somebody a few minutes logging their time, that’s useful.
If we make it easier to capture an Issue, that’s useful.
If a Project Manager spends less time chasing people for updates, that’s useful.
If AI can analyse project information more quickly, that’s useful.
The real value comes from what those improvements collectively enable.
More current project information can improve visibility.
Better visibility can support better decisions.
Capturing Risks and Issues earlier can give teams more opportunity to respond.
Reducing routine administration can give Project Managers and team members more time to focus on delivery.
Making project information easier to access can help everybody stay better informed.
That’s why the bigger goal across the Mission Control Slack App, Mission Control Teams App and Mission Control MCP is ultimately the same:
helping our customers achieve better project outcomes.
Three New Ways to Work With Mission Control
The way we work continues to evolve.
Collaboration platforms have become central to the working day. AI is quickly becoming another important productivity tool. And people increasingly expect the applications they use to connect rather than operate as isolated systems.
We believe Project Management needs to evolve with those expectations.
The launch of the Mission Control Slack App, Mission Control Teams App and Mission Control MCP represents an important step in that direction.
The Slack and Teams Apps put project management tools directly into the flow of work, making it easier for teams to contribute and access project information from the environments where they’re already collaborating.
Mission Control MCP enables organisations to put AI to work across the project lifecycle, creating a new conversational way to ask questions, analyse project information and perform supported project management activities.
Three new applications. Three new ways to interact with Mission Control.
But one shared objective:
Less administration. Greater productivity. Improved efficiency. Better information. Better decisions. Better project outcomes.
To learn more about the Mission Control Slack App, Mission Control Teams App and Mission Control MCP, or to arrange a demonstration, please visit the pages below:
Mission Control Slack App: https://aprika.com/mission-control-slack-app
Mission Control Teams App: https://aprika.com/mission-control-teams-app
Mission Control MCP: https://aprika.com/mission-control-mcp
Mission Control is a comprehensive Salesforce Project Management software application. Make sure you check out our other Project Management Best Practices.
