Question
How do I setup projects?
Answer
Background
Under system tab (general settings), you can setup your system projects' Work Breakdown Structure so they have multiple WBS levels (e.g. Project > Task Group > Task). Once enabled, the system automatically will enable a Project Management Dashboard for each project. This article gives instructions on how to setup your projects using this project management dashboard.
Project Management Dashboard Setup Options
You can setup a project management dashboard manually using the project management dashboard UI. You can also use import/export tools to import projects from third party systems, or to clone complex projects by exporting them, renaming and modifying them, and importing them back into the system as a newly named project. Before setting up or using the full project management dashboard, make sure you have already setup the system WBS with at least the Project and Phase and/or Task levels enabled.
Manually Setting Up Projects
Setting up a Project Profile
- Navigate to Projects (if Tasks are the bottom level of your WBS, then navigate to the Tasks tab and then the Projects sub-tab).
- Create a Project by clicking Add.
- Fill in the summary properties of the Project such as: Name, ID, description, planned start date, planned finish date, planned work.
- Later you can fill in actual start date and actual finish date.
- The system will automatically fill in actual work hours (days) and estimated hours to complete percentages.
Setting up the Project Management Dashboard
- Within the new project profile, Navigate down the page to the Project Management Dashboard by clicking on the Show/Hide button.
- Hide the Project profile details and bring the project management dashboard to the top of the page for easier editing and viewing.
- Click the Edit button to go to the project configuration page.
- Click Add to add a new Phase / Task row.
- Then fill in status, planned start date, planned finish date, and planned work, and any notes for that row.
- Continue adding Phase / Task combinations until you are done.
- Note that each row has a row number that will come in handy later.
- While adding rows, note you can click and drag on the handles next to the left of the check box and move the row into a new position.
- When done, click on Okay and you will be taken back to the top-level of the project management dashboard.
- As project work is done, the actual work hours (days) will flow into the dashboard automatically.
Using Import/Export Tools to Setup Projects
- Before setting up project management dashboards, you need to import project profiles.
- All new project profiles can be imported using an import tool.
- Navigate to the Projects sub tab.
- Go to Tools to import a projects.csv file to create new or update existing projects.
- The first time you use the import tool, go to Projects > Tools > Exports Projects to see the standard projects.csv file import template.
- You can import as many projects as you need.
- Now you are ready to import the project details for project management dashboard.
Using Import/Export Tools to Setup Project Details
- Navigate to any project management dashboard Tools then click Export to generate an import template file (which is automatically named project-details.csv).
- As you did for the Project imports, flesh out the details of your project details import file.
- Add as many rows to the file as you need to breakdown various phase-task combinations for the project with planned start and finish dates, and planned work (hours budgets) for each task.
- Note the Position column assigns a number to order the phase-task rows for the project.
- You can have many project-details in on project-details.csv file. However, be sure to assign the correct Position for each row, e.g. Project 1 might have five phase-task rows numbered 1 - 5, and Project 2 might have six phase-task rows numbered 1 - 6.
- Save the project-details.csv file to a Pacific Timesheet projects directory on your computer for safekeeping.
- Go to any Project's Project Management Dashboard > Tools > Import and import the project details file.
- Note that the import will populate the project management dashboards of multiple projects from one imported file.
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