Creating a Project from a Pipeline Board

Fluid streamlines many of the processes involved in project planning from ideation to launch. Our Project Pipeline board is geared to With capabilities for task management, project visualisation along with collaboration, reporting, and confusing workflows are minimised. Therefore, the entire project management process from start to end, is optimised. 

Article Outline:

• How to create a project from a board
  • 1. Creating a project with board columns set to create projects
  • 2. Creating a project from the Linked Project section
  • 3. Creating a project from the task Tools menu
• Setting the project status
• Setting the project properties
• Points to be noted when creating projects from boards
• Using the Unlink projects option

How to create a project from a board

Role required: Project Administrator
Only board members and owners can create a project. Assignees who are not members or owners of a board, can therefore not create projects on the board. 

There are three options available when creating a project from a board:

1. Creating a project with board columns set to create projects
2. Creating a project from the Linked Project section 
3. Creating a project from the Create Project tab 

1. Creating a project with board columns set to create projects

From the relevant board, select + New Kanban Task. Create the board task and start by naming it. However, if the task is a request it will already be created and be in your backlog. Move the task from the backlog to the board to start the approval process. 

Note: the task title will be used as the name of the project once it is created.

Columns that are set to automatically create projects will have the projects icon displayed on the board. 

(Click here to learn more about creating and setting up a project pipeline board.) 

Board owners and members can then simply drag the task to the flagged column, to automatically create a project.

The user will be prompted to create a project when the task is moved to a flagged column. Select Yes, Create Project to create the project, which will be displayed on the board task card.

Note: If you do not want to create the project yet, you can select No, Create Project Later and follow the steps outlined below to create the project at a later stage once you have finished editing all relevant data fields.

2. Creating a project from the Linked Project section

Open the relevant task by clicking on its title. Navigate to the left-hand navigation pane and select Linked Project. Now select + Create a Project. 

The user will be prompted to create a project. Select Yes, Create Project to create the project, which will be displayed on the board task card.

3. Creating a project from the task Tools menu

Open the relevant task by clicking on its title. Select the Create Project link under the Tools menu to create a project. Note that the link will only be visible if a project has not already been created for this task.

Once the project is created, the name/title will be displayed on the board task card.

A notification will be displayed in the board's chat channel, stating that the project has been created. 

Setting the project status

The status of the new project that is created is based on the project pipeline board settings.

• If the project was created from a task that was dropped into a column where the user selected Yes, create project now, the project status will be set to the status specified in the column definition. You can learn more about how to set board columns to create projects here.
• Otherwise, the project status will set set to the default status as defined in the administration console.

Setting the project properties

The project creation process tries to set as many project properties as it can, based on the task information. It applies a best effort matching, i.e. the task custom property needs to match the project property for the information to pull through. For two properties to match, they need to have the same name, the same type and the task property value must be a valid value for the project property.

Board custom properties and project custom properties can be matched to update project information by aligning to:

• Project first class custom properties: these are the standard project details such as Primary PM, Project Start and End dates, Project Type, Project Category, Tier etc. (these are found in the key details, community section, and project administration sections of the Project Details). By adding a custom property to the board that is set as Primary PM for example, will then update the field in the new project's details under the Primary PM in the Community Section of the new project. 
• Project custom properties: these are various custom property fields that have been added as additional reporting fields to better represent your organisation's data. These fields are found under the Data Field section of your project details.   

For example, below are the custom properties that have been created on a project pipeline board. Two custom properties (Current Phase & Original Implementation Date - red) have been set up  based on project custom properties, the Project Category, Tier, Start Date, End Date and Primary PM have been set up based on Project first class custom properties (blue).

Now you can update the task and set up the values for these properties. Note: If the incorrect value is selected from an option that does not match in the project settings the data will not pull through. 

When a project is created, the matching project properties will be set with the values in the new project.

Points to be noted when creating projects from boards

Updating tasks via My Items as an assignee

• if the members/owners of the board update the status of a task using the quick update option (status option on the right side of the task), they will not get a prompt message for creating a project but the project will be created on the board.
• the board members/owners will get a prompt message if creating a project only when updating a task status via the full task dialog. 
• if the assignee is not an owner or member of the board the task is from and updates a task's status to a status that is set to create projects, the project will not be created. They have to be an owner/member of the board in order to be able to create projects.

Rules for setting project dates

This is some important behavior rules for setting project start and end date when creating a project:

• If the task does not have a Start Date and/or End Date custom property with a value, the following will be applied for the Start & End date of the project that is being created:
  • The Start Date will be set to the date the project is created and will have no end date. 
  • If the task due date value is greater than today, then the project end date will be set to the tasks due date and the project start date will be set to the date the project was created.
  • If the task due date value is less than today's date then the projects start and end date will be set to the tasks due date.
  • If the task does not have an Due Date, the project start date will be set to the same date that the task was created and it will have no end date. 
  • If the tasks Due Date value is less than the date the task was created, the project start date will be set to the date the task was created with no end date

Bulk Editing tasks

• When a board task is created with a status that is set to create projects, the project will automatically be created once the bulk edit file is uploaded.

Export to Excel

• The export to excel file will include project columns for the tasks that have projects created on them.

Using the Unlink projects option

As part of project pipeline, an option to unlink projects that are created on board tasks is made accessible to the board members. 

Note: This option does not work the same as linking/unlinking projects in the workhub module for task management. The linking/unlinking option in project pipeline is solely for project creation. If a project is created by mistake on a board task when moved to a column that is set to create projects, that project can be removed from the board task by unlinking it. 

Unlinking a project on a board task will not archive the project, the project will still exist in the instance. To archive the project, the Project Administrator will have to action the project's deletion from the instance. 

For example, a user can unlink existing projects to the board tasks that they have created by unlinking the projects.

• To unlink a project, navigate to the Linked Project section on the board task and select the Unlink option next to the project name.

• Once the option is selected, you will receive a prompt message to notify you of completing the action to unlink the project. 

The project will now not be linked to the board task but if you need to delete the project, you will still need to archive the project in the project module