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Audience
Team members, project managers and executives
Description
Make it easy for your team to access and work with valuable project assets and files. Because projects are collaborative efforts, having a centralized place for collaboration and document sharing is important. Collaboration on projects is applicable for all team members, so everyone should attend.
Benefits
- Learn how to standardize and organize your documents folders
- Know when to add project assets versus linking to them
Key Points
Access Project Documents from Dashboard
Project Documents Folder
Upload File
Quick View Uploaded File
Using Version Control
Add Comments to Files
Check-in/Check-out
Setting Version Control on By Default
Navigating Folders, Sub-Folders and Documents
Upload Multiple Files
Add Documents to Other Items
Standardized Structure Folders
Using Links and Shortcuts
Using Article Builder
Using Search
Transcript
Projects always have assets, files or documents that play a significant role in the project management process. You may have a project charter, statement of work or some other kind of project initiation documentation. You may have requirements documents, design documents or a set of specifications. There may also be agreements, test plans, lessons learned and the list goes on. The documents that you need will vary depending on the type of projects you are performing.
One of the big benefits of enterprise project management software like Project Insight is that you can centralize your project assets, files and deliverables alongside your projects. Typical challenges without an enterprise PPM are:
-Searching for documents in email or on a network
-Losing documents because they get stored in the wrong place
-Not knowing what version of the file you are on
-Wasting executive and stakeholders’ time looking at the wrong data
Once your documents are stored in Project Insight, you can collaborate on them, set version control, check the file in or out and even initiate approvals.
Project Insight also may even help you to eliminate some of your documents. For example, if your team is filling out a form now in a Word document or Excel spreadsheet, you can replace that document entirely with an intelligent form in Project Insight. You can attend our Using Custom Items and Forms training session to get more details on that.
Accessing Project Documents from the Dashboard
Here is a sample dashboard that has been set up to have a search component, notifications and a list of projects that this resource has been assigned to.
You can search on documents using the Search on the dashboard or Search icon in the menu options and that is covered more later on in this session.
If you hover on a project, you will see some icons that give you one click access to additional information about that project.
One of those options, is the document icon. Click on that.
That takes you to the Documents folder for that project.
Project Documents Folder
Every project has a Documents folder.
That project documents folder is created automatically by Project Insight as soon as you access it. You do not need to worry about creating a documents repository for each project.
You can rename the folder, if you require, but it is a best practice just to leave it as Documents so that your stakeholders and team members now that every project will have a documents folder.
Project Documents Sub-Folders
There is a lot of flexibility in the documents folder. You can create a hierarchy of sub-folders if you wish. This is the case here, for this project, there have been multiple sub-folders set up.
These sub-folders can be nested as many levels deep as you want, but like your Windows Explorer folders or Outlook folders, you do not want to make this so many levels deep that you cannot ever find anything.
Remember this can all be searched but if you create a standardized organizational system, you may not need to use the search.
Add a Folder
To add another folder, hover on the Add icon and click Folder. As long as you have permissions, anyone can add a folder to the project documents folder. You do not have to be a system administrator to add folders at this level.
However, you do have to have permissions to add an item to this folder. Also, folders have to be an item type that can be added in here. Your system administrator will have set up those permissions separately. Doing all that is covered in detail in the Secure Your Project Insight Data with Permissions training session.
Since this user is a system administrator, there are additional tabs displayed and additional functions available, such as set permissions on the folder and set what type of items are allowed to be added into the folder.
If you are not an administrator when you are adding a folder, you will just see the general tab and be able to enter the name of the folder.
Enter in Specifications.
Click Save.
That folder is now displayed.
Upload a File
You can add a file directly to the project documents folder or any of the sub-folders. To upload a file to your project documents folder, hover on the Add icon and click Add File.
In the Upload File, click Browse.
Browse to the file you want to upload and double click on it.
The Name of the file is automatically entered and also the file type is set.
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You can change the name of the file if you wish. This is the name used in Project Insight and what your team will see when they look at the file. You are not changing the actual file name, just the label that your users will see. Just click in that and change it, to FloorPlan for Office.
However, you should just leave whatever file type is set. Project Insight will determine automatically the file type.
Then you have the description. This is where you can enter additional information about the document. This description is searchable, so you may want to enter more descriptive text about what this document and its purpose is. You can also add in terms that you think your team may use to search for this document.
For example, this was a floor plan, enter in the location, in this case, enter Irvine, which is the location of our head office.
Then just click Save.
Now, that document is uploaded to Project Insight.
It is important to note, that the Project Insight document functionality is not integrated out of the box with your file server. When you upload a file, that copy of that file is left on your file server. It is a separate document to the one uploaded to Project Insight and you would manage that as you normally would, separately outside of Project Insight.
If you add, edit, change or delete that file on your file server, it has no effect on the file that you uploaded in Project Insight. If you do edit it and make changes to it, you must save those changes as you normally would using the application that created the file, then you upload it as a separate step in your process to Project Insight. You’ll see best practices for that later on.
You do want to ensure that your processes dictate that the document of record is the one uploaded in Project Insight and not any copies that still may reside in your file server.
Quick View Uploaded File
To view a file you uploaded, click on the Download icon next to it.
You will receive some additional prompts, depending on the type of file it is and what operating systems you have.
Click Open.
You are able to view that graphic in a separate tab. If it is a Microsoft Office document, you can open and edit it.
Close that tab.
Add File to Sub-Folder
To add a file to a sub-folder, click on the sub-folder name.
Click on Specifications.
This time instead of navigating to the add icon in the upper left menu, just right click on the white space on the form.
This brings up context sensitive menu options, which is a navigation tool and gives you quick access to the functions specific to where you are.
Hover on Add and select File.
Using Version Control
Click Browse. Browse to the file you want to upload and double click on it.
This time before clicking save, click on the Version Control checkbox. When you check on Version Control, an additional field displays called Custom Version.
This is where you can enter your versioning numbers. This is optional. If you enter your own custom version number, then that is the version number that you will see.
For example, enter V1.0, if that is your internal versioning numbering system. Then when you add additional versions, you may change it to 1.1 and so on.
If you leave it blank, Project Insight will automatically create and maintain version numbers, starting at 1, then goes to 2 and 3 and so on.
You need to choose one option or the other. Either have Project Insight create and assign version numbers automatically, or you maintain your own versioning numbers.
Let’s use the Project Insight automatic versioning number for this document, so leave the Custom Version blank.
Click Save.
That document is now uploaded to Project Insight and version control is enabled on that file.
View File Details and Versions
Remember, you can quick view this file by clicking on the Download icon.
However, to view the details about the file including the versioning information, click on the file name.
From this form, you can add comments and collaborate on the document, create an approval workflow and even check in and check out the document.
To download and view the actual file from this form, click on the file name.
Again, you will get different actions that happen next depending on the operating system and type of file.
In this case, click Open to actually open this Microsoft Word document.
When you do this, you are now using the native functionality of Microsoft Word and not Project Insight any longer.
Leave that form open for now and switch back to Project Insight.
You can also see the current version of this file, which is version 1.0.
Edit Document with Version Control
You can edit this document by hovering on the Edit icon and clicking Edit File. When you do that, you cannot toggle the version control on or off. It just tells you that Version Control is enabled for this file.
Once version control is invoked on a document, you cannot turn it off. Also, you cannot delete previous versions. That is a standard best practice. If you turn on version control, it is because you want to always keep those previous versions. The only way to delete versions of a document is to delete the entire document itself.
Another best practice of version control is to set permissions on the documents folder to allow your team to have read, add and change access, but not delete access on that folder. New information can be added and existing information changed but you would not delete a document or its associated versions unless you were a project manager with folder permissions or a system administrator.
Again, doing that is covered in the Permissions training session.
Make changes to the name or description, for example, add Revisions at the end of the name.
Click Save.
You will see that the Version number did not change. It just changed the label associated with the document.
So you can edit the current version of the document and make some changes to the information about that document without changing the version.
Add New Version of the Document
Remember, you had previously opened this document in Word and viewed it.
Switch back to Word. Again, you are now using inherent Microsoft Word functionality. Go ahead and make some changes to this document.
Now because you are using Word functionality at this point and not Project Insight, you must save your document as you normally would. By default because you opened it from Project Insight, if you just used the save function it would save in Word’s default save location. So you may choose to Save As, and specify the location where you want it saved in order to manage and find it again easily.
You can keep the same name if you want and over-write your previous document.
That’s fine, because the original version is still in Project Insight so you do not need to keep it on your file server.
If you want to change the name because it is easier for you to keep track of, you can as well. It does not matter.
Word does require that you save the document though before you can do anything with it.
Click File Save as and navigate to your directory and save it with the same name.
Close word for now.
To add that new version to Project Insight, hovering on the Edit icon and clicking Edit File again.
Click on the Browse icon.
Browse to that version of the file you just saved and select it.
When you upload a new file for a document that has version control on, Project Insight knows automatically that is the new version of the file and will create a new version.
If you do not choose to upload a new file, during the edit, then you are just changing the information on the current version, which is what you saw previously.
Change your user defined version number if you are using those.
During the upload of the new version of the document you can enter a comment.
Add a comment such as, added new requirements.
Click Save.
Right away, you can see the version number of the document has been incremented to 2.
You can see the comment that was entered.
And, there is a new tab now showing called Version History.
Click on that.
You will see version 1 of the document listed.
To see that version, click on the version number or the download icon.
Again, you may get additional prompts. Click Open.
That is the version 1 of the document without any requirements entered.
Switch back to Project Insight.
Click on the name of the current version.
Click Open.
That is the new version of the document with the requirements entered.
You can see both versions.
Switch back to Project Insight.
You saw that you can add comments when you are uploading a new version.
But you can also add comments right from here by clicking the Add comment icon.
Anyone can add comments to a document which makes it handy for collaboration purposes.
Enter the comments such as looks good.
Click Save.
There is a separate training session dedicated to Social Collaboration , so if you’re interested in learning more about that, you may want to view that training video.
Check-in/Check-out
The next topic you are going to learn about is when to check-out and check-in a file. Go back to your main document folder.
You may do that by hovering on Views and clicking Documents, or you may also just click Documents in the links at the top of the page.
Click on your graphic file that you uploaded.
For graphics, you will actually see a thumbnail of the graphic on the details form which is handy.
If you were going to create a new version of this graphic, you would download it, then use your graphics editing software to make changes to it, save it and then upload a new version.
Changing a graphic may take you a few hours or a few days to do. What happens in the meantime, if someone else accesses this graphic and wants to make changes too or they make decisions on this graphic because they think it is the final version and do not know there are changes being made to it?
To prevent that, you can check out the document.
Click on the Check Out icon.
You get a message it was checked out.
Once you check it out, no other user will be able to download this file. Neither will they be able to upload any new versions of the file.
When you are done with the document, you can check the file back in manually, by clicking on the Check-in file icon.
Or a more likely process is that you will make the edits to the document and you upload that version of the file by clicking the Edit File icon.
Browse to the new version of the file and select it.
Make sure you check version control is on, because it was not set previously.
Click Save.
When you upload a new version, the file gets checked back in automatically at the same time.
You do not have to separately check-it back in.
Then you can see a thumbnail of both the current version and the previous version.
To see the current version, click on the thumbnail for that. The graphic is displayed in a separate tab.
Click on the Project Insight tab to switch back.
To see the previous version, click on the thumbnail for that. The graphic is displayed in a separate tab.
You can switch between the two versions by clicking on the tabs to view the changes.
Click on the Project Insight tab to switch back.
Setting Version Control on By Default
You saw that you had to turn on version control for each file that you uploaded. However, your system administrator can set version control to be on by default.
Expand the left navigation.
Click on the Administration section to expand it.
Click Files.
Click on the option for Default setting for File Version Control to turn it on.
Click Save.
Collapse the left navigation.
Click on Documents in the navigation.
Navigating Folders, Sub-Folders and Documents
On the Documents view, you can see that some of the sub-folders have an arrow next to them.
That arrow is a visual indicator that there are items in that folder or attached to that folder and you can click on the arrow and expand out that section to view them.
This is a common navigation concept used throughout Project Insight.
You can click on the arrow to collapse that again.
You are also able to drag and drop files to move them.
For example, instead of having your floor plan graphic in the main documents folder, click on your graphic and drag it to Architectural Drawings.
Click on the arrow next to Architectural Drawings to expand that out and see that graphic file now in that folder instead.
Depending on your settings and permissions, you may need to be a system administrator to do that.
Upload Multiple Files
There is also a way for you to upload several files at once, instead of adding them individually. Before you do that, you may want your system administrator to ensure that the version control by default is turned on if you use version control. Otherwise, you will have to manually edit each file after it is added to turn on version control.
Click on the Specifications folder.
Hover on the Add icon and select Multiple Files.
Click on the Select icon.
Navigate to the folder.
Click and hold your CTRL key and select all the files you want to add.
Click Open.
Those files will be prepared to be added. Depending on the number of files you have and their size, this may take a couple of seconds.
As they are being prepared a traffic light indicator shows next to them.
Once they are prepared, they will have a green light against them.
This is important, they are not yet added, just ready to be added.
You could click Remove to remove them from the list of files to be added.
Click Save to actually upload and add them.
Those files will be listed.
You can click the Edit icon for a file to turn on versioning control if it was not turned on by default or add descriptions, comments or your own version number.
Click Cancel to exit it out of there.
Add Documents to Other Items
Now that we have explored adding documents to the project’s documents folder, let’s look at how you can add files to other items in in Project Insight, including tasks, project requests, issues, to-dos or even custom items.
To see that, click on the Views menu, to see the task list view for this project.
Click on a Task.
Hover on the Add icon.
Select File.
Click the Browse icon and select the file.
Click Save.
Then click the Related Items section to expand it.
You will see that document listed.
That is how it works for other types of items as well.
You can edit it right from here by clicking the edit icon.
Then add new versions if you require by uploading the new version of the document.
Click the back icon.
You can also see a Quick View by clicking on the download icon.
Click on the name to go to the details and then you manage the document as you saw earlier.
That is how you attach a document to project, task or other item.
Standardized Structure Folders
Project Insight is very flexible. You may set up a standardized set of folders that help you to organize documents. If your team starts to follow a standard methodology, then they will become familiar with where things are located, making it easy to find.
You can put documents in Project Insight that have nothing to do with projects, tasks, issues or any other item type. For example, some customers like to create a folder for a knowledgebase.
Expand your left navigation.
Click on Folders to expand it out.
This is a standard set of folders your system administrator has set up.
You could create a folder just for general documents, process documents, customer documents or a knowledgebase.
Another way to see a view of these top level folders is by clicking on the left most arrow in your top navigation, that is next to the back icon.
That will show you this view as well.
Click on the Knowledgebase folder.
Then right click on the white space, hover on Add and just add Files or Folders as you saw previously.
Using Links and Shortcuts
Pre-configured Links
Instead of uploading files to Project Insight, you can create links or shortcuts to files residing in other applications such as your SharePoint site or a ticket management system.
For example, you want to create a shortcut to your SharePoint site.
Hover on Add and select Shortcut.
Enter the name of the shortcut such as SharePoint.
There are some preconfigured links to your SharePoint site already created by your system administrator.
Click in the drop down for Map to see those preconfigured links.
Your system administrators have configured Project Insight with the base routing information for a SharePoint drive so all you need to do is provide the parameters it requires to point to specific data in there.
You could link it to a specific document ID or folder.
If you were creating this shortcut in the project documents folder for a specific project, then you want to enter the ID for that.
For now just leave that blank to link to the main Sharepoint folder.
Leave Display within IFrame.
Click Save.
The link gets created.
You may get some additional security prompts depending on your system.
It opens the SharePoint documents folder right from within Project Insight.
Then you can navigate around in SharePoint as you normally would, by clicking on the folders.
Click on a graphic or file to view it.
You can always get back to your folder in Project Insight by clicking the link in the top navigation.
Click the Knowledgebase folder.
To get back to that SharePoint link, just click on the name.
Click the back icon.
You can also add more dynamic links. For example, if you wanted to display a map of a certain location, such as the location where the project was being executed, you can do that as well. Instead of just uploading a graphic image of the location, you can bring up an interactive map, such as a Bing map with the location instead.
Hover on the Add icon and select Shortcut.
In the name, enter PI Head office as you’ll enter the Project Insight Head Office map coordinates.
Click in the drop down for Map to see the preconfigured links.
Select Bing: Address.
Your system administrator put in the configuration items already to create a Bing map, but when you create the shortcut, you need to provide the address so it knows what to display.
In the Street Address, type 230 Commerce
In the City, State and/or Zip Code, enter 92602.
You have options for how you want this to display. Not all applications will allow you to display information within an iframe. That has nothing to do with Project Insight. It has to do with that applications permission settings.
If you are having problems with iframes display, Click on Display in a new web browser window when clicked or display in current web browser or display in targeted web browser.
For now, click on Display in a new web browser window when clicked
Click Save.
Click on the name of the shortcut.
It opens the Bing map in a new window automatically.
Setting up those pre-configured links is covered in detail in the training session Pulling Data and Using Shortcuts and URLs so you can attend that training session to see how that is set up.
Adding General Shortcuts
You can just add a shortcut without a pre-configured link.
Hover on the Add icon and select Shortcut.
In the name, type Project Insight website.
In the URL, type http://www.projectinsight.net/
Click Save.
It now shows the Project Insight webpage. You could put a link to your own website or other information management portal or even your file server.
Again it is very flexible and you can use shortcuts to streamline your process and easily access information in different applications right from within Project Insight.
Click the Knowledgebase folder in the top navigation.
Using Article Builder
Another thing you can do is add your own Articles. Instead of having a Word document, you can create an HTML article with photos, formatting and so on.
You can do this if you have a photo or other graphic and information that you want your team to see without having to download it.
Hover on Add click Article/HTML: Page.
Enter a brief description of the article, maybe you record your operating procedures for initiating a project because you want it easily accessible to your team, so name it Initiation Procedures.
In the description, type in Overview.
You can apply formatting such as bolding and underlining.
Highlight the word Overview and click on bold and underline.
Then turn off the bolding and underlining or the next line.
You can write additional text such as Part 1.
You could insert a picture such as a flowchart graphic.
Click on the Image Manager icon.
Click the Upload icon.
You can upload multiple graphic files at once.
Click the Select icon.
Browse and select your graphic.
Select multiple ones if you want.
You can click the Add icon to add even more.
When you’re done, click Upload.
This gives you a set of graphic files you can insert into your article.
Just double click on the graphic to insert it.
Hover on Save and click Save and Display Article.
You can see the article itself displays right inside of Project Insight without you having to download it.
Then you can collaborate on it by adding comments and even send it for approvals.
Doing this, you could even do things like document lessons learned for easy access or have a knowledge base of information about the actual product that was delivered and so on.
Using Search
The last we cover in today’s session is the Search function.
To invoke a Search from anywhere in the system, click on the Search icon at the top of the page.
The Search will expand so that you have a space to enter your search term.
The Search will basically search any item you have created in Project Insight such as a project, task, issue, file, Article or HTML page.
It will also search the content of certain file types such as text, HTML files, Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, Excel and Adobe Acrobat.
You entered in the description of one of the files that was uploaded was Irvine, so type that in.
Click Search.
It finds the graphic file.
It also finds some Word documents.
Click on the word document to go to the details.
Click on the name of the word document again to open it.
Scroll to the bottom and you’ll see the word Irvine in the footer.
That’s an example of Project Insight searching the content of the document.
Close that and switch back to Project Insight.