Audience

Project requestors, project creators and project approvers

Benefits

• Learn how to centralize project requests in a folder
• Hear what the fields mean and they link to a project if approved

Trascript

Project Requests enable you to capture and manage requests for work so that you can evaluate that and decide whether or not it should become a project.

It is recommended that you create a separate folder for your project requests.

Navigate to the folder to create a new project request.

From there, you may add a project request from the menu up top, or use the context-sensitive right click menu and select ‘add,’ then ‘project request.’

Let’s collapse the left navigation to get a little bit more room.

This is your project request add/edit form.

Any team member can add a project request and they do not have to be project creators.

If you are familiar with adding projects, you will recognize that the information on the request looks very similar to the information you enter for a project, however, they are two separate forms.

Start by giving your request a name.

Your team may want to decide upon a naming convention for requests as a way to keep organized and consistent.

Select one of your project templates from the list, if you know which one is applicable for this request.

Enter in a detailed description for the request. The description section will allow you to report on that information and other fields in the form.

You may categorize your requests by type, which is useful as you can roll up all of your requests by type in the reports section. This field is the same project ‘types’ field that you associate with projects.

Project Insight will populate the request start date with today’s date. You can change it now or change it later if you require.

You can assign a project manager to the request although it can only be someone who can also add projects.

If your team uses executive sponsors, you can associate a sponsor to the request by selecting that person’s name from the select list.

All the data that you have entered so far will be automatically carried over to the project if one is created from this request.

You may assign the request to a resource although this too can only be a team member who can also add projects. It may be the project manager or someone different.

The assignee will have this project request appear in their My Work in the left navigation, the work list and s/he will receive an email and a notification that assigned the request.

Project Request Budgeting Information

You may click Save at this point; however, there is other data you may also fill in.

If you are using custom fields, then you may fill those out as well. Custom fields may appear in the general tab or have their own tab, depending on where your administrator decided to place them.

The time, expense and billing tab is next. You may associate one or more companies or organizations with your request. This is useful for reporting purposes. For example, if you want to run reports on all project requests that have come from a specific client, then you can do that.

If you use contracts or rate cards, you may associate a contract with the request here.

Cross functional teams or groups and departments may be linked to the request as well and are used for reporting.

The target budget information tab is used for recording high level financials. You may input the total planned hours and an average rate. The value of the time or total labor cost will be calculated automatically from these values. You can enter the hard costs or expenses and the total of labor and expense is calculated.

The second row is used if you this is a request from a client and you need to input the billable budget. These values allow you to capture high level information about the revenue you will earn from this project and report on that.

If you don’t want automatic calculations done, uncheck the Auto-calculate values while entering.

Hover on Save and click Save and Display project request.

My Work Project Requests

You can see the name of the person to whom this request has been assigned. If you expand out the My Work section and click on Project Requests, you will see any requests assigned to you.

Click on the Project Request to view the details.

Route a Project Request for Approval

To create approvals for a project request, click on Create Approval Request.

This is optional .

Create a Project from a Request

Once the request has been approved or you are now ready to create a project for it, click on Create Project. The Project Add/Edit form appears.

All the information from the Project Request is carried over to the project, such as the template, the description, the project managers, the sponsor, the project type and the scheduled start date.

The Time, Expense & Billing Information and Target Budget Information will be carried over as well.

You can change any of this information if you require. You can edit any of the other details on the project add/edit form. The information on the project can be different from the request.

Change the project type and you can see that you can change it from what was set in the project request.

To decide which folder or project space you want the project request to be stored, click on the drop down for the parent item and change that folder. Some teams may prefer to move the closed requests to a different folder than the open requests. That way, the project request folder consists of only open, unapproved ideas.

Leave the option, move project request under new project checked if you want the request to be moved with the project to a new folder. Uncheck it, if you want the request to stay in the folder in which it was created.

Hover on Save and click Save & Display project.

You can see the project that was created. It has tasks already because a project template was associated with the request and the tasks of that template were also carried over to the project when the project was created.

The project will have been created in a different folder, than the request.

Viewing the Associated Project Request

The project request still exists with its original request information and can be referenced.

Hover on Views and select Status. You can see the project type as well as the other project data. Click on Related Items to expand.

The Project Request is listed as a related item to the project. Click on it to view the details.

You can see the type in the project request form is still the original value even though the project itself now has a different type.

You can see the project which was created from the request. The project request will also automatically be closed when you create a project from it.

That means it will not show in your project requests list anymore. If it is still showing, just refresh your screen.

Helpful Resources

Project Requests

Project Request Help