Outlining the Project Template Workflow
Administering project templates is an ongoing activity for Template Administrators who wish to make changes to adapt to specific needs and necessary updates.
The following general steps describe the workflow for creating and publishing templates:
- Plan the template. Decide what to include in the template, and whether one large or several small templates will better meet your needs.
- Create the template. You can create a new template from scratch or copy an existing template.
- Add project groups on the Team tab. Add project groups to the template that are added to every project created from the template, or define rules for dynamically adding project groups to project teams.
- Add phases and milestones on the Tasks tab. Phases help you organize groups of tasks, while milestones help project team members track important tasks on the project’s Overview tab. You can also use predecessor tasks and phases to guide project team members in completing tasks in the proper order.
- Add and organize documents on the Documents tab. You can organize template documents in folders and nest those folders. There is no constraint on the type or number of documents you can store in a template.
- Add tasks to documents and phases. You add tasks to documents and phases by performing the following actions:
- Adding document tasks (such as review, negotiation, or approval tasks) as you add documents on the Documents tab.
- Adding To Do tasks on the Tasks tab.
- Setting notification profiles for template tasks.
- Create participant rules for project templates that contain events. Participant rules dynamically add participants when the event is created.
- Create conditions. Define the conditions you will use on documents and tasks in the template to show or hide them under specific circumstances.
- Specify a display rank.
- Publish the template. A template must be published before you can create projects using the template.
You must create a new version before you can edit a published template. When you are done editing the template, you republish it.
Project Template Statuses
Template status is shown in the upper-right corner of the template editor page.
A newly copied or created template is in Draft status. You must publish a template to change its status to Active and make it available to users creating projects.
The following table defines template statuses:
| Status | Definition |
|---|---|
| Draft | If a template’s status is Draft, you can edit the template. This template version cannot be used to create projects. New templates are automatically in Draft status. To allow a template version to be used to create projects, you must publish it. To discard a draft version of a template you are working on, you can revert it. |
| Active | If a template’s status is Active, it is published, and you can create projects with it. However, you cannot edit it. To edit an active template, create a new version by choosing Actions and selecting New Version. The new version has the status Draft. |
| Inactive | If a template’s status is Inactive, you cannot edit it or create projects with it. To use or edit an inactive template, you must change the status back to Active by choosing Reactivate. You can also choose Create a New Version, which creates a new version of the inactive template with the status Draft. |
Summary
- Planning: Outline the template structure, choose between new or existing templates, and decide the size for your needs.
- Add Essential Elements: Integrate project groups, phases, milestones, and documents to structure tasks to help guide the project workflow.
- Set Dynamic Rules: Define questions and conditions to adjust task visibility based on response options.