User Manual - Project Details
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PROJECT MANUAL LINKS
A Project within dotProject is an entity to which tasks (or the actual work required) are added, user's are assigned and so on.
dotProject does not allow tasks to be generated that are not attached to a project.[1]
In order to be able to start to create projects it is a good idea to have a company and associated contacts generated in the first place and you may also want to have all your staff (or dotProject users) defined and ready to go.
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1 Selecting a Project / Viewing Details
To display the details of any project in your listing, click on the project name and dotProject will take you straight to the detailed display.
2 Detailed Project Display
The detailed project displays is the header or descriptive display on a per project basis.
The display is broken into two sections down the screen - the header showing the Details and Description of the company and then the Tabs listed at the bottom of the screen.
| Active Projects | Lists all of the projects associated with this particular company. |
| Archived Projects | Lists all of the archived (active flag turned off) projects that belong to this particular company. |
| Departments | Lists all of the departments that have been generated for this company. |
| Users | Lists all of the users who are associated with this Company. |
| Contacts | Lists all of the Contacts associated with this Company. |
| Files | Lists all of the files that have been associated with the Company. |
As with all displays, wherever practical there are links directly to the listed elements, for example, if you click on any of the project names in either of the Project Tabs then the Project Detail Screen will be displayed showing that project.
3 Creating a Project
You can generate projects from:
- - New Item - > Project
- Project Module > new project button on the right hand side
The options for completion are:
| Project Name | This is the name that is displayed in the majority of locations within dotProject to identify the project (see Short Name below as well). You should try to give the Project a name that will guide your team members about the requirements and distinguish this project from any others in your system. |
| Project Owner | This field automatically defaults to the person entering the Project Information. The owner of the project is automatically set in many of the display filters throughout dotProject and whilst being the owner does have limited effect in terms of permissions, it has a major effect in terms of accessing the project quickly (in dotProject terms) and ultimately in a business sense, indicates who is responsible for managing the project. |
| Company | This field is used to nominate the company to which this project is attached. |
| Start Date | The expected start date of the project. Tasks can still be entered that commence before this date if required. |
| Target Finish Date | The expected or target finish date of the project. The detailed project display will also show the actual finish date as mentioned earlier. |
| Target Budget | This field is not used in any dotProject calculations or reports, but you can use it to store / record the project target budget. |
| Actual Finish Date | As mentioned above, the Actual Finish date is automatically calculated. |
| Actual Budget | This field is not used in any dotProject calculations or reports, but can be used to store the final project budget for future reference if required. |
| URL and Staging URL | These fields can be used to store any web addresses that are appropriate for the project. You may choose to use them for recording supporting sites, documentation related to the project, the company specifications or similar. |
| Select contacts | Contacts are users who can be recorded against the project, by way of having an “interest” in the project as opposed to users who are actually allocated tasks to do within the project's workloads. These project contacts can then optionally receive updates of statuses as we will outline in Day to Day System usage later in this manual. See User Manual - Project Details#Adding Project Contacts for more details. |
| Select department | Projects can be assigned to departments within the nominated owning Company. This can give you a better differentiation of project ownership and relationships if you require it. See User Manual - Project Details#Adding / Selecting a Project Department |
| Priority | This field is used to indicate the priority assigned to a project. The priority displays throughout dotProject in displays (normally with a flag in the P column). The priority options can be set to suit your own organisation, by your own system administrator but they are dotProject installation wide – not definable by company, user etc. |
| Short Name | This field is used instead of the full project name in some locations throughout dotProject where real-estate or room is at a premium. dotProject will generate a default short name based on the starting characters of the full project name you entered, but you should perhaps adjust that to something that will be meaningful when seen. |
| Color Identifier | Colours are used throughout dotProject in displays to quickly identify projects. You can use those colours to provide a visual indicator to your team members as suits you. Some people use colours to define the “type” of project, some use them to provide a quick visual indicator of the Company / area that the work is being performed for. Whichever way you choose to use colours, you can use the color identifier option to pop up a display which will show you the available colours or you can enter the 6 character RGB code for the colour.[2] |
| Project Type | The project type is another category or grouping option for projects. At the moment no tabs use Project type nor are there any particular reporting requirements on the field, but it may be of some use. As with most of these drop down options, your System Administrator can customise the list to suit your own requirements. |
| Status | The Status field does have a direct bearing on dotProject as the tabs on the main project listing are derived from the status options that you are using. (Your System administrator again can tailor these to suit your own requirements if necessary). You use the status flag to indicate where the project is currently up to, and that has a direct relationship with which tab it is listed on on the main module page. |
| Progress | The % progress field will show the % complete of the entire project, based on the % complete of all the tasks associated with the project. |
| Active | The active flag stipulates whether or not the project is Active or Archived.
|
| Import tasks from | This option allows you to import (copy) tasks from another project directly into this one at the time that the project header is saved. For more details see User Manual - Project Templates for more details. |
| Description | This field should be used to provide a detailed description / summary of the project for the team members to use to acquaint themselves with the requirements. |
3.1 Adding Project Contacts
Project contacts can be added to any project, regardless of the project owner and/or assigned Company. To attach a contact to a project, from the Project Add/Edit screen you can click on the button > Select contact. A pop up listing of contacts / companies is provided for you to select from.
Note: Contacts must "belong" to a company to be selectable via this screen.
You can adjust the required company by using the pull down box at the top of the screen. Select the required contact by placing a tick in the box beside their name. Once you have nominated all the required contacts to be attached to the project, use the continue box to return to the main screen.[3]
3.2 Adding / Selecting a Project Department
Selecting a department is similar to selecting a company except that there is a variation between creating a new project and editing an existing project.
In the case of creating a new project, once you have selected the company that the project is to be associated with, there is an option > Select department which, when clicked on will display a popup box of available company departments and you can click on the required one to select. Again you will not see that selection until you save the project and look at the Detailed display.
When editing an existing project you will see that there will be a listing box on the screen in place of the Select department link which shows all the departments for the associated company and you can highlight (hold the CTRL key down when clicking on multiple selections if required) to nominate the associated department.
4 Editing a Project
Projects are edited by selecting the project and displaying the detailed display screen - there is then an edit project option in the Crumb Trails. You can then change all of the details as outlined in User Manual - Project Details#Creating a Project
5 Viewing a Project
The fields Worked, Scheduled and Total hours on the project details display indicates:
| Worked Hours | Shows the total number of hours recorded against this project in task logs. |
| Scheduled Hours | Shows the total number of hours recorded within the durations of all tasks associated with the project. |
| Project Hours | Shows the Scheduled Hours multipled by Task Assignments. |
6 Deleting a Project
Projects are deleted using the delete project option on the right hand side of the Detailed Project Display screen.
NOTE: Deleting a project is final. All associated tasks, logs, statuses etc are deleted at the same time.
NOTE 2: You will have to delete any associated files manually via the Files Module
7 Outstanding Tasks for this Page
![[1]](/images/task_1.png "High priority task"){kind=small}
Go through and link to relevant sections![[2]](/images/task_2.png "Medium priority task"){kind=small}
Link up relevant FAQs
8 Return to...
9 Footnotes
- ? If you require ad hoc task management then we normally suggest that an ad-hoc project be setup and those general tasks are assigned to that project. It is very unlikely that we will ever expand dotProject to have ad hoc tasks not assigned to a projects as this is a fundamental design requirement within the application as it stands.
- ? Take Extreme care if you leave the default colour as white - this may mean that your project and/or tasks do not appear on all pages within dotProject if the theme you are using has a white background.
- ? Currently assigned contacts cannot be seen until the project is saved and the Project Detail screen displayed. The project contacts will then be listed in the left hand column on the screen.
