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2024-03

Project Management Introduction

Not having a standard way to plan and manage projects is a common challenge among project managers. This is why adopting a configurable template approach from project selection to project close is crucial for success.

BrightWork 365 ships with customizable templates to give organizations a very fast starting point. Different situations call for different levels of structure and management.

BrightWork 365 brings the best of the Microsoft 365 ecosystem together providing a single solution that allows full control over project approval and starts your projects quickly with out-of-the-box project templates.

BrightWork 365 comes with five starter project templates to help you get started managing projects quickly:

The Project Light starter template is for managing projects that are at the low end of the complexity spectrum for projects that require small amounts of project management.
The Project Standard starter template provides a semi-structured process that is useful for a range of business departments to run their projects including sales, marketing, engineering, finance, etc. This template is in the middle of the complexity spectrum.
The Project Structured starter template is for managing projects that are in the high end of the complexity spectrum.
The New Product Introduction starter template relates to the submission of a new product idea and managing the delivery of the new product. This template is on the higher end of the project management process maturity scale.
The Product Update starter template is typically used for projects related to updates of existing products or technologies, and for complex support issues.

If you are unsure which project template would be the best fit for a particular initiative, consider the Project Standard template as a good compromise between using the lower project structure of the Project Light template, and the higher end of management complexity found in the Project Structured template.
Different Tabs, Sections, and Columns are hidden in Project Starter Templates (depending on the specific template) via the Form Configurator; the display options for these elements can be adjusted by users with appropriate permissions.

All Templates

Templates that are associated with a Content Template will be prepopulated with project data.
User entered dates will be saved as time zone independent UTC dates, not user local dates; the same dates will be displayed for all users irrespective of time zone.
Only the current project manager, or a user with the BrightWork PMO Manager or System Administrator security role, are considered owners of the project and can change who is listed as the project manager.

The elements below are common to all Starter Project Templates:

Charter

The Charter tab contains high level metadata about the project, including the project title and stakeholder information.

The following columns limit their user lookup values to the corresponding mapped BrightWork security role:

Project Sponsor column mapped to BrightWork Team Member security role
Project Manager column mapped to BrightWork Project Manager security role

The Charter tab also contains the mandatory columns Program and Portfolio. The values for these columns can later be changed in the Project Settings tab by a user with elevated privileges (see the Project Settings section below). All associated child items will be automatically adjusted to reflect these value changes.

The following can be specified in Project Templates and will populate corresponding columns in the Charter and Project Settings tabs of new Projects:

Content Template
Portfolio
Program
Project Manager
Project Sponsor
Project Type

Schedule Settings

The Schedule Settings option on the Charter and Project Settings tabs provides project managers with a convenient method for viewing global calendar settings and configuring project-specific calendar settings for flexible scheduling. BrightWork Team Members can view the settings, and the project's specifically assigned Project Manager (not project managers generally), and users with the BrightWork PMO or the System Admin role, can edit the settings.

Calendar

Global Settings (read-only)

Working Week: To enable project schedules to accurately reflect the organization's work practices, users with the BrightWork PMO Manager or the System Admin security role have the ability to set and update the global calendar settings (i.e., Working Week) for all projects using the Admin Area > Global Settings link. The Global Settings record is created with a default working week of Monday to Friday.
Days that are configured to be not part of the Working Week will format differently in the Gantt chart.
Global Settings are only editable in Admin Area > Global Settings, not from within a project.

Project Override Settings

Working Week: To provide project managers with scheduling flexibility, they can optionally choose a different set of days to be configured as the project's Working Week. Any days that are not part of the Working Week will format differently in the Gantt chart for easy identification.

After changes are made to the Project Override Settings, you will need to refresh the entire project (Ctrl-F5), and then click into the Gantt tab, in order for the changes to be reflected in the Gantt.

Project Exception Days

In the Project Exception Days tab, the project can be configured to add an extra day off or to ignore a global Non-Working Day (e.g., holiday). Project Exception Days will format differently in the Gantt chart.

Project Exception Days - Views (accessed via the drop-down menu):

Project Exception Days
Previous Project Exception Days
All Project Exception Days

To add new Project Exception Days:

Click + New Project Exception Days.
Fill out the Project Exception Days form.

Project Exception Days affects all tasks in the project, including completed tasks. We strongly recommend not adding older historic Project Exception Days because of the impact on all tasks.
Project Exception Days do not override the Working Week set within Global Settings, they only override the solution-wide configured Non-Working Days (e.g., holidays).

The Project Exception Days can be displayed in a Calendar view.

Users can set the Month display default in their Personalization Settings (BrightWork 365 app settings gear > Personalization Settings > Activities > Default view > Default Calendar).

Status

The Status tab allows the project manager to set current project metrics and KPIs.

See the Project Status Reporting article for more information.

Team

The Team tab automatically populates with the names of work item assignees, and the earliest start dates and latest finish dates across all the work assigned to them.

To manually add a team member that has not yet been automatically added from being assigned a work item, click + New Project Team Member.

To manually delete a Project Team Member from the Team tab in a project, you will first need to remove the user from all work assignments in the project.
Dates may not update in the Teams tab until an update of some kind is made in the Gantt tab, which will trigger the date update.

Gantt

List of project tasks with a corresponding bar chart that represents the project schedule with task start and end dates. Visually depicts dependency relationships between the tasks as well as task status. See the Task Management article for more information.

Users are given the option to access a French (Canada) version of Gantt through Personalization Settings > Formats tab.

My Work

To view all work assigned to you within a project, click into the project's My Work tab. You can enter a specific piece of work by clicking on the Name of the assignment.

Deleting a work item from My Work only deletes the assignment to the resource, not the underlying work item itself.
If a work assignment has multiple assigned users and it is marked Complete by one of the assignees, an alert will be presented asking for confirmation of the status change.
Parent tasks will be updated accordingly when its child tasks are set to Not Started or Complete in My Work.
If an Issue, Cost or Action has a status of Cancelled or On Hold, then the user will not be able to mark the assignment as Complete/Not Started in My Work. They will need to manually go into the assignment and change the status.
Filtering and sorting do not work on the Completed column in the My Work tab.

Documents

The Documents tab is where you can create new Microsoft Office documents and upload existing documents. These files are stored in your organization's SharePoint document library that is associated with BrightWork 365.

By default, files deleted from the Documents tab will be permanently deleted from the SharePoint site associated with BrightWork 365 and cannot be restored from a recycle bin. Contact your Microsoft Support representative to discuss activating the associated SharePoint Recycle bin to be able to restore deleted documents.
SharePoint has an indexing limit that is reached when a document library contains more than 5000 items. If you receive a message about the SharePoint throttling limit being exceeded, see this article.

Project Settings

Only users with the BrightWork Project Manager, BrightWork PMO Manager or BrightWork Program Manager security role can access the Project Settings tab.

The Project Settings tab provides additional project information and gives the manager the ability to change the portfolio or program associated with the project, reset the target dates in all project tasks (baseline the schedule), and other administrative tasks.

Microsoft Teams

Project Settings also allows the project manager options with regards to Microsoft Teams, e.g., they can create a Microsoft Teams Channel for the defaulted associated Microsoft Team (which is based on the project's parent program Microsoft Team setting), or they can connect to a different Microsoft Team if a Channel has not yet been created for the project.

If the project is later moved to a different program, the project's Microsoft Team Channel will not move to the new program's Microsoft Team.
In newer versions of Microsoft Teams, Microsoft retired the ability to load websites inside the Teams client. These website links will open in a new browser tab instead.

Send Stage for Approval

If approval is required for a stage, the approval process will need to be started manually by the Project Manager by clicking the Send Stage for Approval button in the Project Settings tab. When a stage is sent for approval, some sections of the project will be made read-only, and a related message will display on the Charter tab. The Business Process Flow will not be disabled, but users will be prevented from moving a stage forward or backward.

Approval History

The Approval History section of the Project Settings tab includes a history of the approval process for each stage of the Business Process Flow.

Schedule Settings

The Schedule Settings option on the Charter tab and Project Settings tab provides project managers with a convenient method for configuring project-specific calendar settings, overriding global calendar settings which will adjust the project schedule accordingly. For more information see the above Schedule Settings section.

Approvals

The Approvals tab is only visible to users given the BrightWork Approvals Coordinator security role.

Approvals Coordinator is a lookup and security role - the nominated user must be chosen in the Approvals Coordinator field and also be given the BrightWork Approvals Coordinator security role. The Approvals Coordinator will be notified of approval process progress.

Business Process Flow Stages are used to control the number of stages and the stage names in the Approval sections of the Approvals tab. The default settings are controlled by the configuration set in Templates Area > Project Templates by a user given the BrightWork Template Editor security role.

See the Project Stage Approval Process article for related information.

Related | Audit History

The Related tab contains the Audit History link that allows you to view changes that were made throughout the project.

Project Light

The elements below are also included in this template:

Header, Business Process Flow, Project Management Tabs and Charter Columns

Status

See the Project Status Reporting article for more information.

Project Standard

The elements below are also included in this template:

Header, Business Process Flow, Project Management Tabs and Charter Columns

Status

See the Project Status Reporting article for more information.

Status Reports

The Status Reports tab provides the project manager with the ability to create snapshot status reports of the project's current standing and to view a history of status reports. See Status Reporting for details.

Stages

Stages are automatically listed in the Stages tab after being created in the Gantt tab (a Gantt task can be set to be a Stage type task in Task Details). Manually adding stages from within the Stages section is not supported.
The default sorting for the Stages list is by Current Start - Older to Newer.
In the Stages section, the Current Stage column will match the current stage set in the Business Process Flow if the names of the stages in the Gantt match exactly with those in the Business Process Flow at the top of the project.
The Current Stage detail values are tied to the progression of tasks within that Stage in the Gantt.
You can view in the Stages tab the percentage complete of stages within projects in order to easily get a high-level view of how different stages are progressing.
Click on a stage link to view additional details about the stage including description and status information.

Actions

Log project actions, decisions, and changes. See the Actions article for details.

Issues

In the Issues section you can create a new issue by clicking + New Issue (do not use the Add Existing Issue option).

The list of available users to choose from in the Assigned To column is limited to those users given the BrightWork Team Member security role.

Issues can be added to the project's associated program or portfolio by clicking into the issue and choosing the relevant escalation location.

Project Structured

The elements below are included in this template:

Header, Business Process Flow, Project Management Tabs and Charter Columns

Status

See the Project Status Reporting article for more information.

Status Reports

Stages

Stages are automatically listed in the Stages tab after being created in the Gantt tab (a Gantt task can be set to be a Stage type task in Task Details). Manually adding stages from within the Stages section is not supported.
The default sorting for the Stages list is by Current Start - Older to Newer.
In the Stages section, the Current Stage column will match the current stage set in the Business Process Flow if the names of the stages in the Gantt match exactly with those in the Business Process Flow at the top of the project.
The Current Stage detail values are tied to the progression of tasks within that Stage in the Gantt.
You can view in the Stages tab the percentage complete of stages within projects in order to easily get a high-level view of how different stages are progressing.
Click on a stage link to view additional details about the stage including description and status information.

Actions

Log project actions, decisions, and changes. See the Actions article for details.

Issues

In the Issues section you can create a new issue by clicking + New Issue (do not use the Add Existing Issue option).

The list of available users to choose from in the Assigned To column is limited to those users given the BrightWork Team Member security role.

Issues can be added to the project's associated program or portfolio by clicking into the issue and choosing the relevant escalation location.

Risks

In the Risks section you can create a new risk by clicking + New Risk (do not use the Add Existing Risk option). Enter Risk information for those items identified as potential future issues, with probability, impact, status and other relevant Risk details.

The list of available users to choose from in the Assigned To column is limited to those users given the BrightWork Team Member security role.

Risks can be added to the project's associated program or portfolio by clicking into the risk and choosing the relevant escalation location.

Risk Status Values

Identified
Mitigated
Occurred
Managed
Closed

Assignment Status Values

Not Started
In Progress
Completed

Costs

The Costs tab provides a comprehensive method for capturing and tracking project budgets and actual costs at the project and individual item levels. See the Costs article for details.

Communications

Initiate and save project related Emails and Appointments directly in the BrightWork 365 app and save these items as well as Phone Call details and Notes, within associated projects. See the Communications article for details.

New Product Introduction

The elements below are included in this template:

Header, Business Process Flow, Project Management Tabs and Charter Columns

Status

See the Project Status Reporting article for more information.

Status Reports

Stages

Stages are automatically listed in the Stages tab after being created in the Gantt tab (a Gantt task can be set to be a Stage type task in Task Details). Manually adding stages from within the Stages section is not supported.
The default sorting for the Stages list is by Current Start - Older to Newer.
In the Stages section, the Current Stage column will match the current stage set in the Business Process Flow if the names of the stages in the Gantt match exactly with those in the Business Process Flow at the top of the project.
The Current Stage detail values are tied to the progression of tasks within that Stage in the Gantt.
You can view in the Stages tab the percentage complete of stages within projects in order to easily get a high-level view of how different stages are progressing.
Click on a stage link to view additional details about the stage including description and status information.

Actions

Log project actions, decisions, and changes. See the Actions article for details.

Issues

In the Issues section you can create a new issue by clicking + New Issue (do not use the Add Existing Issue option).

The list of available users to choose from in the Assigned To column is limited to those users given the BrightWork Team Member security role.

Issues can be added to the project's associated program or portfolio by clicking into the issue and choosing the relevant escalation location.

Risks

The list of available users to choose from in the Assigned To column is limited to those users given the BrightWork Team Member security role.

Risks can be added to the project's associated program or portfolio by clicking into the risk and choosing the relevant escalation location.

Risk Status Values

Identified
Mitigated
Occurred
Managed
Closed

Assignment Status Values

Not Started
In Progress
Completed

Costs

The Costs tab provides a comprehensive method for capturing and tracking project budgets and actual costs at the project and individual item levels. See the Costs article for details.

Communications

Product Update

The elements below are included in this template:

Header, Business Process Flow, Project Management Tabs and Charter Columns

Group Manager Field

The list of users returned in the Group Manager drop-down field that is in the Charter tab of Product Update projects is limited to the users added to the Senior Managers Dynamics Team found in Admin Area | Dynamics Teams.

Location Field

The Location drop-down menu choices that are found in the Charter tab of the Product Update template are configured in Admin Area | Locations.

Status

See the Project Status Reporting article for more information.

Status Reports

Stages

Stages are automatically listed in the Stages tab after being created in the Gantt tab (a Gantt task can be set to be a Stage type task in Task Details). Manually adding stages from within the Stages section is not supported.
The default sorting for the Stages list is by Current Start - Older to Newer.
In the Stages section, the Current Stage column will match the current stage set in the Business Process Flow if the names of the stages in the Gantt match exactly with those in the Business Process Flow at the top of the project.
The Current Stage detail values are tied to the progression of tasks within that Stage in the Gantt.
Click on a stage link to view additional details about the stage including description and status information.

Actions

Log project actions, decisions, and changes. See the Actions article for details.

Issues

In the Issues section you can create a new issue by clicking + New Issue (do not use the Add Existing Issue option).

The list of available users to choose from in the Assigned To column is limited to those users given the BrightWork Team Member security role.

Issues can be added to the project's associated program or portfolio by clicking into the issue and choosing the relevant escalation location.

Risks

The list of available users to choose from in the Assigned To column is limited to those users given the BrightWork Team Member security role.

Risks can be added to the project's associated program or portfolio by clicking into the risk and choosing the relevant escalation location.

Risk Status Values

Identified
Mitigated
Occurred
Managed
Closed

Assignment Status Values

Not Started
In Progress
Completed

Costs

The Costs tab provides a comprehensive method for capturing and tracking project budgets and actual costs at the project and individual item levels. See the Costs article for details.

Communications

2023-09

Project Management Introduction

BrightWork 365 ships with customizable templates to give organizations a very fast starting point. Different situations call for different levels of structure and management.

BrightWork 365 comes with five starter project templates to help you get started managing projects quickly:

The Project Light starter template is for managing projects that are at the low end of the complexity spectrum for projects that require small amounts of project management.
The Project Standard starter template provides a semi-structured process that is useful for a range of business departments to run their projects including sales, marketing, engineering, finance, etc. This template is in the middle of the complexity spectrum.
The Project Structured starter template is for managing projects that are in the high end of the complexity spectrum.
The New Product Introduction starter template relates to the submission of a new product idea and managing the delivery of the new product. This template is on the higher end of the project management process maturity scale.
The Product Update starter template is typically used for projects related to updates of existing products or technologies, and for complex support issues.

If you are unsure which project template would be the best fit for a particular initiative, consider the Project Standard template as a good compromise between using the lower project structure of the Project Light template, and the higher end of management complexity found in the Project Structured template.
Different Tabs, Sections, and Columns are hidden in Project Starter Templates (depending on the specific template) via the Form Configurator; the display options for these elements can be adjusted by users with appropriate permissions.