A project holds everything for one piece of work: its milestones, tasks, notes, docs and files, the people doing it, and the contacts and deal it's for. Use one for each engagement, launch or internal push you want to track from start to finish.
Before you start
Owners, admins and managers can create projects. Members can work in the projects they can see.
Create a project
- Choose Projects in the sidebar, then New project.
- If your organisation has project templates, choose Start from scratch, or Use a template to reuse a saved project's milestones, tasks and dependencies. See Project templates and milestones.
- Give it a Name.
- Set its Stage, Access, Project lead, Members and Tags.
- Choose Create project.
Choose the right Access:
- Personal: only you can see this project and its tasks.
- Private: visible to its members, the lead, and owners and admins.
- Public: visible to everyone in the organisation, except guests, who see only the projects they've been added to.
Find your projects
The projects page has a List and a Board, which groups projects by stage. Drag a card on the board to change its stage.
Use Filter and Sort to narrow and order the list. To change several projects at once, tick them and choose Actions, such as Update stage, Set lead or Set due date.
Right-click a project's card or row for quick changes: its stage, priority, start and due dates and tags. You can also open it, copy a link to it or pin it to the sidebar.
The project page
Open a project to see its header and tabs.
The header shows the project's stage, name, lead, members, priority, dates and tags. Change any of them in place. Setting a start date on a project with no due date sets the due date to the same day, and you can change it afterwards. The header also shows the contacts the project is for and the deal it came from. Choose Link a contact to add a company and people.
The tabs are:
- Notes: a rich-text description of the project. It saves as you type.
- Milestones: the project's work, grouped into milestones. See below.
- Board: the project's tasks as cards, grouped by stage.
- Calendar: tasks by due date, by Day, Week or Month. Drag a task to another day to change its due date.
- Gantt: tasks on a timeline. Drag a bar to move its dates, and link tasks to show what blocks what.
- Automations: rules for this project's tasks. See below. Guests don't see this tab.
- Forms: forms made for this project, such as an onboarding questionnaire or a request form. See below. A guest sees the project's live forms here instead, and can open one to fill it in and send it.
- Inbox: the form responses filed with this project. It appears once there's at least one you can see. Guests don't see this tab.
The project's tasks, docs, files and activity are in the actions sidebar on the right: each panel opens on the project's own tab, such as Project Tasks. Chat opens on the project's chat. See Write and share docs, Store and share files and Chat with your team.
Work with milestones
Milestones split a project into stages of work, such as Discovery or Launch. Each one shows its dates, dependencies and a progress bar.
- On the Milestones tab, choose New milestone.
- If your organisation has milestone templates, choose Start from scratch, or Use a template to reuse a saved milestone's tasks.
- Give it a Title and, if you like, a description, Start date, End date, and what it's Blocked by or Blocks.
- Choose Create milestone.
Then:
- Choose Add task in a milestone to add work to it.
- Drag a task between milestones to move it. Tasks that aren't in a milestone sit under No milestone.
- Drag a milestone's handle to reorder it.
- Use a milestone's menu to Edit milestone, Save as template or Delete milestone. Deleting a milestone deletes its tasks too.
Set up automations
On the Automations tab, two switches keep a task and its subtasks in step:
- Subtasks follow their parent: when a task is completed, put on hold or cancelled, its open and on-hold subtasks move with it.
- Parent follows its subtasks: when a task's last open subtask closes, the task closes too.
Both are on for a new project, and you can turn either off. A project made from a template starts with the template's switches. The tab also holds automations for the project, which can run when a task enters a stage or a tag is added to a task in the project.
Add a form to a project
A project's form is an ordinary form with one difference: every response to it is filed with the project, and shows on the project's Inbox tab.
- On the Forms tab, choose New form.
- Give it a Name, choose its Layout and, if you like, a Milestone to put it under.
- Choose Create form. It opens in the form builder as a draft.
You need to be able to create forms and to edit the project. A project's form counts towards your plan's forms like any other. See Build a form.
Manage members
- Choose the members chip in the header to open Members.
- Use Add a member… to add people. Choose Make lead or Remove member beside someone.
The lead, owners and admins can manage members. Any member other than the lead can choose Leave project. Personal projects don't have other members.
Pin, close or delete a project
Open the project, then choose Project actions (the menu beside the name).
- Pin project adds it to the Projects list in the sidebar, so it's one click away. You can pin up to 3.
- To close a project, change its stage to Completed, On Hold or Cancelled.
- Under Access, switch a project between Private and Public.
- Create template saves its structure as a template. Personal projects don't have this.
- Delete project deletes it, along with any tasks that aren't linked to anything else. This can't be undone.
Project settings
Owners and admins can set up project stages and tags.
- Open the organisation menu at the top of the sidebar and choose Manage organisation.
- Under Settings, choose Projects.
- On the Pipeline tab, choose Add stage, or rename, recolour, reorder or delete an open stage. On the Tags tab, manage project tags.
Projects start with the same stages as tasks. See Tasks.
Good to know
- The project lead can edit the project. Owners, admins and managers can edit any project they can see.
- Everyone gets a personal project, such as "Ada's Project", when they join an organisation. It's pinned for them to start with, in the sidebar and the search palette, and tasks they create on the planner go there. Its header calls it your personal hub: only you can see it, and that includes the docs, files and notes you add to it. It stays in the In Progress stage and has no dates, priority, tags or linked contacts. It can't be deleted.
- A personal project can't be made private or public, and a shared project can't be made personal.
- A personal project can't be saved as a template, and nor can its milestones. It can't be linked to a Mission either.
- A private project's tasks can only be assigned to its members.