Projects — User Guide

Who can use Projects

Enable the Projects module from Marketplace (free) — no other modules are required first. Your role must include the relevant permissions (view, create, update, delete, restore, force.delete, assign as needed).

Without assign, you only see projects where you are the assignee, a member, or the creator.

Board, list, Gantt & Heatmap

Open Projects from the sidebar under Operations. The default view is the Board (columns by status). Switch to List for a table, Gantt for a portfolio timeline, or Heatmap for assignee workload by week.

• Search by title
• Filter by status, Contact / Company / Opportunity (when those modules are installed), assignee, and My Projects
• KPI cards summarize totals, mine, by status, and Overdue for your scope
• Table and board show assignee, members, dates, optional CRM links, and the latest note
• Gantt shows one bar per project from starts on → ends on. Expand a row to see milestone diamonds and linked Task due markers (Tasks must be installed). With update permission, drag a bar left/right to shift both dates together
• Heatmap shows one row per assignee with weekly cells. Cell intensity is open projects overlapping that week plus linked Task due dates (when Tasks is installed). Summary columns show open/overdue counts and a pressure score (healthy / watch / overloaded)
• Users with restore can filter Active / Include deleted / Deleted only, then Restore a soft-deleted project from the row menu
• Delete permanently requires projects.force.delete — granted to the workspace owner by default

Status labels:

Value	Label
planned	Planned
active	Active
on_hold	On Hold
completed	Completed
cancelled	Cancelled

Create & edit

1. Click New project
2. Enter a title (required) and optional description in the rich text editor
3. Optionally set starts on / ends on dates
4. If Contacts, Companies, or Opportunities are installed, optionally link them — use New beside a picker to create and select inline when you have that module’s create permission
5. When Customer Portal is installed and a Contact or Company is linked, optionally turn on Share with customer portal so that customer can see the project (tasks stay internal unless marked visible on each task)
6. Optionally set an assignee and members (requires assign)
7. Save — new projects start as Planned; without assign permission the creator becomes the assignee

Edit from the row menu or the record page. Status changes use the status action (not free-form field edits of status).

Status workflow

Move a project with the status action:

• Activate (planned → active)
• Put on hold (active → on_hold) or Resume (on_hold → active)
• Complete (active → completed) — terminal
• Cancel (planned|active|on_hold → cancelled) — terminal

Invalid transitions (e.g. completing directly from Planned) are rejected with a validation error.

Members & assignment

• Assignee is the primary owner of the project
• Members are additional teammates who can see and work the project (without assign, membership grants visibility)
• The assignee is not duplicated as a member
• Users with assign can set/clear the assignee (Assign) and sync members
• The assignee receives an in-app notification when someone else assigns them; newly added members are notified when they are added

Optional CRM links

Contact, Company, and Opportunity links are soft — they only appear when the corresponding module is installed, and they are always optional. A project without links works the same as one with them.

Tasks on a project

When Projects is enabled, Tasks can optionally set a project (project_id). The link is soft: Tasks still work without Projects; linking fails validation if Projects is not entitled or you cannot see that project. On a shared portal project, use Visible to customer so that task appears in the Customer Portal; leave it off for internal work. See Tasks.

Dates & overdue

starts_on / ends_on are dates (not date-times). Overdue means the project is still open (planned, active, or on_hold), has an end date, and that end date is before today in the workspace Timezone (Settings → General). A project ending today is not overdue.

Notes & timeline

• Notes — free-form notes on the project
• Timeline — history of create, update, assignment, members sync, status change, note, and delete/restore events

Dashboard

When Projects is entitled and you have projects.view, the dashboard can show Active projects and Overdue projects widgets (same visibility rules as the list).

Milestones

On the project record, manage milestones (title, optional description / due date, sort order). Mark a milestone Complete when done. Tasks on the same project can optionally link to a milestone and declare dependencies on other tasks in that project (cycle-safe).

What's not here yet

Automation Create Project (create_project, Automation 1.4.0) is shipped — soft-links opportunity/company/contact from the trigger. Project tags and PRJ- numbers remain deferred — see the Product Roadmap. Portfolio Gantt, workload heatmap, and Calendar projection for project start/end dates are shipped.