Projects

A project groups the tasks, files, forums and work logs for one piece of work. Every project belongs to a company. This page explains how to find, create, edit, archive and delete projects.

Find a project

Click Projects in the top menu. The list opens with one tab per project status. Each tab shows how many projects it holds, for example In Progress (4).

The tabs are:

• All: every project you can see, whatever its status.
• One tab per status: Not Defined, Proposed (called Initiating when the dotProject+ add-on is installed), In Planning, In Progress, On Hold, Complete, Template and Archived.
• Gantt: a chart of the projects. See Gantt chart and board.

Two filters sit above the tabs:

• Owner: shows only the projects owned by one person. It starts on your own projects. Pick All Users to see everyone's projects. Click the Owner: label to jump back to your own.
• Company/Division: shows only the projects of one company or department. A company's list also includes the projects it runs for clients (where it is the internal company).

Click a column heading to sort by it. Click it again to reverse the order. The first column shows the project's progress on its colour. The P column shows a warning icon for projects with a problem reported in a task log, or else priority arrows. Tasks (My) counts all tasks and the tasks assigned to you.

Click a project name to open it.

Project statuses

The status says where a project is in its life. The standard values are:

Status	Use it for
Not Defined	A project whose status nobody has set yet.
Proposed (Initiating)	An idea or offer that is not approved yet.
In Planning	Approved work that you are still planning.
In Progress	Work that is under way.
On Hold	Work that is paused.
Complete	Finished work.
Template	A model project that you copy tasks from (see Import tasks from another project).
Archived	Old work you want out of the way.

Note

An administrator can rename or add statuses under System Admin. The names on your site may differ.

Archived projects drop out of many lists. The tasks list, the to-do list, the Gantt charts and the list of projects you can move a task to all leave them out unless you ask for them.

Create a project

You need at least one company first. If there is none, dotPulse asks you to create a company.

1. Go to Projects and click new project.
2. Fill in the form. The fields marked with * are required.
3. Click submit.

You can also start a project from a company or contact page. The company or contact is then filled in for you.

Project fields

Field	What it means
Project Name *	The full name.
Project Owner	The person responsible. It defaults to you.
Company *	The company the project is for.
Internal Division	The company of yours that runs the project. Only companies of type Internal appear here.
Start Date	The day work starts. Click the calendar icon to pick it.
Target Finish Date	The day the project should end. If you pick a start date after it, the finish date moves to match.
Target Budget	The planned budget, in your site's currency.
Actual Finish Date	Not editable. It shows the end date of the task that finishes last, as a link to that task. It turns red when it is later than the target. On a new project it says Dynamically calculated.
Actual Budget	The money spent so far. Some add-ons calculate it from the task costs; the field is then greyed out.
URL	A web address for the project, such as the live site.
Staging URL	A second address, such as a test site.
Priority *	low, normal or high.
Short Name *	Up to 10 characters, used where space is tight. If you leave it empty, the first characters of the project name fill it in when you leave the name field.
Color Identifier *	A hex colour (like FF9900) for the project in lists and charts. Click change color to pick one.
Project Type *	Unknown, Administrative or Operative.
Status *	See Project statuses.
Progress	Not editable. The percentage done, worked out from the tasks.
Import tasks from	Copies the tasks of another project into this one. See below.
Scale Imported Tasks	Stretches or shrinks the imported tasks to fit this project's dates.
Description	Free text about the project.

To the right of the dates you will find:

• Select contacts...: opens a list of contacts. The ones you tick become the project's contacts. They show on the project page and can receive task log emails.
• Departments: appears when the chosen company has departments. Pick the department that owns the project.

Your administrator may have added custom fields. They appear below Staging URL.

Edit a project

1. Open the project.
2. Click the pencil icon (edit this project) at the left of the coloured title bar.
3. Change what you need and click submit.

Change the status of several projects

On the projects list you can change many projects at once, if you may edit them:

1. Tick the boxes in the Selection column.
2. Pick the new status in the list at the bottom of the table.
3. Click Update projects status.

Archive a project

Set its status to Archived, either in the edit form or with Update projects status. The project stays in the database with all its tasks, files and logs. You find it again under the Archived tab.

Tip

Archive finished work instead of deleting it. Deleting cannot be undone.

Import tasks from another project

You can copy all the tasks of an existing project into the project you are editing. This is handy when you keep a model project with the status Template.

1. Edit the target project (or create it).
2. In Import tasks from, pick the source project. Projects are grouped by company.
3. To fit the tasks to the new dates, tick Scale Imported Tasks.
4. Click submit.

The copies keep their parent tasks and the dependencies between them. Their dates shift by the gap between the two projects' start dates. With Scale Imported Tasks, dates and durations also grow or shrink in proportion to the length of the two projects. Scaling only works when both projects have a start date and a target finish date.

The project page

Open a project to see its page.

The coloured bar at the top shows the project name. Click the arrow next to it to show or hide the details:

• Details: company, internal company, short name, dates, target budget, owner, URLs, custom fields and description.
• Summary: status, priority, type, progress, and three hour totals. Worked Hours adds up all task logs. Scheduled Hours adds up the task durations. Project Hours weighs each duration by how much of it is assigned to people. Departments and contacts follow.

The buttons in the title area let you add a new task, a new event or a new file to this project. The Search box filters the task list by name and description.

Under the buttons you find these links:

• organize tasks: change many tasks at once. See Tasks.
• reports: the project reports, such as the task list and task log reports.
• delete project: see Delete a project.

Project tabs

The tabs below the details show the project's content. Which tabs you see depends on your permissions and on the modules your site uses.

The core tabs are:

Tab	What it shows
Tasks	The active tasks, as a tree. See Tasks.
Tasks (Inactive)	Tasks whose status is Inactive.
Gantt Chart	The tasks on a timeline. See Gantt chart and board.
Board	The tasks as cards in To do, In progress and Done. See Gantt chart and board.
Task Logs	All the work logged on the project's tasks. See Logging work.
Forums	The discussion forums linked to the project. See Files, forums and links.
Files	The files attached to the project.
Events	The calendar events of the project.

Add-on modules add more tabs when they are installed. The most common are:

Tab	Add-on	Purpose
Links	Links	Web links attached to the project.
History	History	A record of changes to the project and its tasks.
Planning and monitoring, Execution	dotProject+	Planning work packages and activities, and following their execution.
Principles	dotProject+	Rate how well the project follows each PMBOK principle (1 to 5), with notes.
Performance domains	dotProject+	Record the health of each PMBOK performance domain, with notes.
Risks	Risks	The project's risk register.
Costs, Budget	Costs	Cost estimates and the budget.
Journal	Journal	Dated notes about the project.
Initiating	Initiating	The project charter.

Delete a project

Warning

Deleting a project also deletes all its tasks, their assignments and dependencies. It cannot be undone. Consider archiving instead.

1. Open the project.
2. Click delete project.
3. dotPulse asks you to type the project name. Type it exactly (you can copy and paste it) and confirm.

If the name does not match, nothing is deleted. You only see delete project if you have permission to delete it.