Understanding your Project Interface
Adding Tasks to Your Task Groups
Cleaning up the plan/archiving completed tasks and completed groups
Creating a New Project
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Go to the Project List: On the Coordinate dashboard, navigate to the project list.
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Add a New Project: Here, find and click the 'add a new project' button.
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Name Your Project: Enter a suitable name for the project, for example, 'My First Client Project.' Once named, your project is ready, and you'll be taken to an empty project page.
Understanding Your Project Interface
This is what a new project will look like:
If you read the article on Templates, you will notice it looks very similar. You will notice there are a few things you will be able to do and see that are not available if you are looking at a Template.
Depending on what you set as your Advanced Features, your Project Navigation Bar may look slightly different.
The project page is divided into a few main sections:
Plan Header
This area shows the name of your Project and has 2 buttons.
The link button allows you to copy the project link as a shareable link - you can send this link to your collaborators and they will have access provided they have already been invited to the Project or they are a licensed account user
You can click directly on your Project Name to open the Project info modal - the same modal will open by pressing on the gear icon on the right most side of the Plan Header.
Inside of this Modal you can do the following:
- Rename your Project
- click on the name in this modal and type the new name you want to change it to
- Add custom fields
- Add Capacity Planning including a start and end date (if you have one) for your Projects
- Have internal discussions with your account users on the Project - your customers will not see these messages
- Add a description for your project - any details that will help your managers work on the project or any notes you may have regarding the project
- Add an Object ID
- Add Tags - this allows for more organization and more filter options in your Project List
- Archive your Project
- works similar to deleting without being a destructive action. Invited collaborators will no longer have access to the project, you will not be able to invite new collaborators or make significant changes to the project, and archived projects are hidden by default from your Project List. All of the info and files and discussions are saved and the project can very easy be activated again by clicking the Archive toggle
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Delete your Project
- Be wary of doing this as this change is irreversible. It is recommended you archive your project instead
Left Nav Bar
These are all of the pages you can navigate to on your Project. Depending on your Advanced Options and Permissions Settings, you and/or your customers will see different navigation links. Please take a moment to familiarize yourself with the settings and how to enable/disable certain pages such as Progress Reports, Timeline, and whether or not your customers see your Plan
Left Actions Bar
Many of these are visible only to licensed account users. You are able to do the following:
- Add new content pages or global content pages
- Reorder Project pages - rearrange the order your links in the Left Nav Bar appear
- View activity feed (available to view to collaborators depending on your settings and permissions)
- this is a very useful tool if you have any questions about any actions that occurred on your plan. If something does not appear as you think it should:
(IE: a task was completed, deleted, moved etc, or a specific user is on the Project that should not be or is not on the project that should be etc)
viewing the activity feed will tell you who completed what action and on which date. You can get a broad overview and accountability using this feature
- this is a very useful tool if you have any questions about any actions that occurred on your plan. If something does not appear as you think it should:
- Invite Collaborators (visible to collaborators)
- this is exactly the same as pressing the Invite button on the collaborator panel
- Your Notifications (visible to collaborators)
- change your notification settings for the Project you are currently on
- Calendar Link - add your projects to your google calendar
Plan Actions Bar
Use these actions to craft your plan.
From left to right, you can:
- Add a task
- Add a Group
- Schedule recurring tasks
- Shift all Due Dates - shift all due dates on this project (example: shift by 10 days)
- Save as Template - save the project in its current state as a template.
- once you save the template, any changes you do to either the Project or Template WILL NOT affect the other. You can make as many changes as you like to the Template and it will not affect the Project you created it from and vice versa
- Load Template - load any Template into this project
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Filter Completed - You can choose to Hide your completed tasks and/or your completed groups. You can also choose to complete all tasks on your plan
Plan Content
(directly under the Plan Actions Bar) - this starts out blank with just an image which lets you know this is a brand new Project
This is where you'll input tasks and task groups to craft your Project Plan
If you give your collaborators permissions to view the Plan, they will have access to see everything here except for private groups and wait on dependency status tasks - depending on your settings
Right Actions Bar
- This is where you will be able to add Project Goals, Summary, Action Links
- The Project Goals area is reserved for specifying the goals of the project. You can use these as milestones to let your clients know of the status of the plan.
- Use the Summary to add quick links, important or general info about your Project, add a video, and many other things.
- Use Action Links to create questionnaires for your clients.
- The Project Goals area is reserved for specifying the goals of the project. You can use these as milestones to let your clients know of the status of the plan.
Collaborators Panel
Here, you can invite collaborators like clients, other team members, or third parties.
Creating Task Groups
Task groups are essentially the various milestones in your project. Click Edit Plan button and select New Task Group to create a new group
You can add task groups relevant to your project phases like 'Kickoff,' 'Work Phase,' and 'Final Deliverables.'
Adding Tasks to Your Task Groups
In each task group, you can now add specific tasks:
- Kickoff Tasks: In the 'Kickoff' task group, you could add tasks such as 'Kickoff Meeting' and 'Gathering Requirements.'
- Client Task: To engage your clients, consider adding a task for them, like 'Client to Complete First Task.'
You can create Ungrouped tasks by navigating to Edit Plan > New Task
Ungrouped tasks show up at the top of the plan. They can be moved inside groups by using the drag handle on hover. Moving tasks is only available to licensed account users, not to collaborators.
If you want to add a Task directly inside of a Group without having to drag it in, expand the group you wish to add the task to, and select + Add Task
Detailed Task Management
Now that your tasks are in place, let's dive into the additional functionalities that make managing tasks in Coordinate easy and effective:
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Assigning Tasks: Tasks can be assigned to anyone involved in the project, be it a client or a team member. You can assign tasks in 2 ways:
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From the plan, on the right hand side of any Task
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Inside any Task modal, the first dropdown option.
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Setting Due Dates: Every task can be associated with a due date to ensure timely completion.
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Status Update: The status of tasks can be updated to reflect the current state of the task, such as 'in progress,' 'blocked,' or 'completed.'
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Call to Action: When assigning a task, you can specify what you expect from the assignee, like completing the task, attaching files, or finishing a checklist.
Enhancing Task Details
To add more clarity to your tasks, Coordinate provides several options:
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Description: You can add a description to each task, providing more details or a relevant link.
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Adding Media: Images, videos, or other embedded content can be included for comprehensive understanding.
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You can either attach files to your Task
- Or you can add images and videos into the Description. Check this guide on best practices on how to embed videos
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Start Dates and Progress Bar: A start date can be set, and a progress bar can be used to track the progress of the task.
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Checklist Items: You can add a checklist for your clients to have an itemized list of subtasks to complete inside of the Task they are assigned.
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You can also treat these checklist items as separate subtasks and assign any of these checklist items to any of your collaborators.
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Task Dependencies: If one task is contingent on the completion of another, you can set this task dependency. Read an in depth guide about Dependencies Here. This also includes how to automate your plan using the Task Status: Wait on Dependencies.
Task Actions
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Move Task - Moves the task to any group within the current project plan
- You can also do the same action from the Plan by dragging the drag handle on the left side of any task and moving it to any position inside the group or to any other group
- You can also do the same action from the Plan by dragging the drag handle on the left side of any task and moving it to any position inside the group or to any other group
- Add Tag - if you have any tags on your account, you can apply a tag to your task here
- Copy shareable link - copy the link to this task here
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if you send it to a collaborator that is invited to your plan, it will open the page with the task modal view that you copied
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If you send it to a collaborator that has not been invited, they will see a permissions page
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Lock Task - This locks the task preventing any user and/or collaborator from making any edits to it from the plan. Any licensed user on the account can go in to the task modal and toggle to unlock, but any client collaborator will not be able to make any modifications.
- Delete Task - completely delete the task from your plan
From the plan, there is a ... menu to the left of every task. Here are some things you can do from that menu:
- Edit Task - Opens the task modal where you can edit your task (if you are a licensed user of have permissions to edit)
- Duplicate Task - makes a copy of the task directly below the selected task
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Copy to another project - This will make a copy of the task and place it in the ungrouped area of the selected Project
- Delete Task - completely delete the task from your plan
Shifting Due Dates
If you have due dates set on at least 2 tasks inside of a group, you can automatically shift all due dates for those tasks inside of each group.
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If you know which task's date you would like to automatically shift all other tasks in that group relative to, click on the ... menu to the side of that task and select Shift due dates for this group
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In the modal that pops up, click on the calendar and select your new date
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Once your date is selected, you will see the UI change slightly. You will get an info box that says how many business days you are extending the due date by along with showing the date you have selected. Below that, you have the option to select a few tasks that you want to shift or you can click the Select All box to shift all of them.
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Click Apply and you will see all of the tasks you have selected now have a new due date
Cleaning up the plan/archiving completed tasks and completed groups
If you would like to remove, hide, or archive your completed tasks from your plan, but do not want to delete them, we have a feature that lets you hide your completed tasks and/or groups
- You can set up ways to clean up your plan by using the completed state
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If you navigate to the plan settings, you can select Hide completed groups and/or Hide completed tasks
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Hide completed tasks will visually remove all tasks with the status of complete from the plan
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Hide completed groups will visually remove all groups that have all tasks with complete status inside
- you will see a little eye appear near the top of your task list that will let you know if one both of these checkboxes are enabled.