Projects Overview

Projects can be used to manage all kinds of work. In addition to traditional projects involving product developers, product evaluators and samples, other possibilities include projects for stability testing, marketing requirements, analytical and documentation requests.

The flexibility required for diverse projects is achieved using Project Templates and Task Types. These are available in the Project Administration section and allow a User to design a project template and task types which belong in it, along with defining which fields (properties) are required. You can define information to be included in a project, assign Tasks to users automatically, give the Project a flow using dependencies and status. This can be done directly in the software without the need for programming.

For more about project set up see the Projects Set-up.

Project Structure

A Project is a collection of information and work. The key Project information includes the Primary Party (e.g. customer), the Delivery Party, Start and End Dates, the Project Manager and a description of the requirements. It can also include Attachments, which are documents uploaded to the Project, for example customer communications about their requirements.

A Project also includes Tasks which are individual pieces of work that need to be completed to fulfil the requirements of the project. Tasks are usually allocated to different users, potentially with different deadlines.

A task contains a request part which asks for work to be done, this is usually sent by the project manager. The task also contains a response portion where the user gives their response when they ‘Action’ the task.

Working with Projects and Tasks

You add Projects using ‘Add a New Project’ and manage them with ‘Manage a Project’. Tasks are allocated to users and monitored users in these Projects function.

Tasks can be answered in ‘Action Task’. You can also press the ‘Action’ button from ‘View a Task’.

For monitoring and managing your work and team work, ‘Search for Project’s and ‘Search for Tasks’ are very helpful. In these searches you can select an existing search type, e.g. ‘My New Projects’ or ‘All Overdue Projects’.

Add a New Project

The process is outlined in related help article Adding a New Project.

Action Task

You can answer your tasks from ‘Action Task’. There is a specific option ‘Action Tasks’ but you can also find action from View a Task, and Search for Tasks.

In Action Tasks, enter your answer in the ‘Response’ tab of the Task. When you have finished your task, update the response status to ‘End’ so the project manager knows you’ve finished, this also allows dependent tasks to proceed.

Search for Projects

In ‘Search for Projects’ choose a search type and press ‘Search’ to find the projects. When results are displayed in the Results tab, you can select an individual project and then click View Project to look at it. You can also use ‘Print’ to print a list of all the projects found and customise what is printed using Customize Columns. In customize columns there are many options to show additional information including ‘Task summary’ which gives a summary of tasks of the project. You can print the results to PDF, excel and other formats.

In addition to the pre-defined criteria, you can use ‘Custom Search’ to define your own criteria for searching for Projects (or Tasks). This can be particularly helpful see what work has been done. For example you could search for all Projects for a specified customer in a defined time frame, or all projects with a specified user as the project manager. You can make use of the flexible printing too, which includes ability to print to excel.

Search for Tasks

Search for Tasks contains pre-defined searches such as ‘My New Tasks’ and ‘Outstanding Tasks where I am Project Manager’. These pre-defined criteria are particularly useful for investigating current work.

When you have chosen the criteria, press ‘Search’ to find the Tasks. When results are displayed in the Results tab, you can select an individual task and then click View to look at it. You can also use ‘Print’ to print a list of all the tasks found and customise what is printed using Customize Columns. You can print the results to PDF, to excel or other formats.