How To: Manage Project Templates

Project admins can access Project templates and set defaults for newly created projects at the template. This will empower project managers to build projects that are standardized across the organization.

Navigating to managing project templates

To open up the navigation bar, you can click on the expand icon as indicated below (for more details on the navigation feature are available here):

To access project templates, Sysadmins and project admins can click on settings cog as indicated below:

On clicking the settings cog, the Projects settings page is available to the admin user. All admin users can click on project templates, to manage project templates, as indicated below. You can minimize the navigation bar by clicking on the collapse icon.

Project Templates Listing View

After an admin navigates to project templates listing page, they can either edit an existing template or create a new template as indicated below. 

Saving Changes to an existing template

After any changes are made as described below, the project admins will need to save the project templates. When making changes, a prompt is displayed to the user to indicate that any changes to all the projects created using that template.

Update Project Template to improve standardization across Projects

Admins can rename the project template name and description. This template name and description is displayed to any user navigating to the create new project page, providing the user the context of when this template can be used for project creation. For more details on project creation, please refer this article. 

Another key feature we can set at the project template level, admins can set a project status update template. This format will be pre-loaded for all status updates on projects that are created using this template. This will promote standardization on how multiple project managers provide updates for a grouped project type.

By switching on the update reminder, admins can set the cadence at which status updates need to provided.

Setting update reminders at the template level

1. After the update reminder is enabled, a settings cog will appear which indicates when the next run will be scheduled.
2. On clicking on the settings cog, a pop-up is displayed to the admin.  The system provides a summary of when the notification will be initiated. Project admins can edit the start date by clicking on the date picker.
3. The admin can also set the frequency at which the notifications are being sent.Some of the options include daily, monthly or weekly.
4. Once a frequency is selected, the pop-up provides options to customize the reminder frequency. Admins can select multiple days at regular cadence.
5. Admins can set up the time at which the reminder is sent. This gives control to the time when the email arrives in the recipients' inbox. The timezone will defaulted to the customer's timezone.
6. Admins can set the recipients for these reminders. Once applied, the assigned recipients will receive emails at the specified frequency to submit updates on all projects created using this template. These reminders can be set at the individual projects level.

Setting project phases at the template level

The project phases for project templates can be set by clicking on Add Project phases - there is an additional section in Projects settings where you can set the project phases, as detailed here. All projects created under this template will have the same project phases for centralization. Upon clicking save all changes are saved to this specific template.

Setting custom fields at the template level

By clicking on the Add custom field button, a list of custom fields created for all projects is made available to the admin. These custom fields are created in the Custom Fields tab, as indicated in this article.

These custom fields will be set for all projects created with this project template, further promoting standard data collection over similar projects. 

Setting Task grouping at the template level

1. User can set grouping of tasks at the template level. This will ensure all projects under a project template will have similar task grouping structure.
2. Clicking on Create grouping button, 3 options are made available to project admins, namely Project phase, Project status and custom grouping.
3. Project phase and status are great tools of contextualizing the tasks with Project related information . Project phases will default to the template phases set above and  status will pre-loaded as it set in the rest of the application(i.e., On Track, Some Disruption, Major Disruption, Completed). For custom task grouping, project admins can set up to 50 task groupings. Task grouping can be set at the template level and the individual project level. 

Pre-loading templates with tasks and sub-tasks

Project admins can pre-load templates with tasks and sub-tasks to make it easier for project managers to build projects and introduce a structure to all the projects created using a specific template.