Difference between revisions of "Project Management"

Revision as of 16:28, 28 December 2022

About this Addon Module

The Project Management addon can help you organise jobs and tasks by linking support tickets and invoices with to-do items to create projects. You can then work with these in a single interface and track internal discussions, share files, and track (and optionally bill for) time spent on individual tasks.

You can access the add-on at Addons > Project Management.

For more information, see the WHMCS Project Management website.

Addon Name	Latest Release	Current Version	Compatible With	Included in WHMCS
Project Management	N/A	N/A	N/A	Yes

Activating Project Management

Because this addon ships with WHMCS by default, you do not need to download files before you activate the addon through the Admin Area.

To do this:

If you have not already, purchase the addon.
Go to Configuration () > System Settings > Addon Modules or, prior to WHMCS 8.0, Setup > Addon Modules.
Click Activate for Project Management.
Click Configure.
Select the admin role groups who will have access to this addon.
Select the admin users who can configure Project Management settings within the addon.
Click Save Changes.

Project Management

The Project Management Overview lists all of your projects by default, in ascending order of due date. The list includes the title, assigned staff member, status, creation date, due date, number of days left or overdue, and the last updated date for the project.

From this page you can also review the most recent 10 activity log entries and search for projects.

Projects Tab

This tab displays a list of projects. You can search by project title or associated ticket numbers. If there is only one match for your entered search term, the system will direct you to the project view for that project.

You can apply several filters to the list of projects:

Incomplete — View all incomplete projects.
My Incomplete — View your assigned incomplete projects.
View All — View all complete and incomplete projects.
Assigned To Me — View all projects assigned to you, including completed ones
Due Within 7 Days — View all projects that are overdue or are due within one week.
Closed — View only completed projects.

Accessing Projects via Tickets

When you view a ticket that is associated with a project, the project's title, due date, and status will display within the support ticket itself.

Accessing Projects via Clients

In a client's profile's Summary tab, you can click View Projects under Other Actions to go to the project list at Addons > Project Management with the list already filtered by client.

Tasks Tab

This tab lists tasks for all of your projects and includes the filters that you can also use in the Projects tab.

Reports Tab

This tab lists reports on your projects, time, and invoice amounts. You can filter them by date range and by admin.

Projects

Everything in the Project Management addon, including tasks, tickets, invoices, attachments, and messages, requires a project.

When you access a project, all of the project's information will display in a single interface page.

At the top of the page, you can click the pencil icon to edit the project title and details.

This includes the creation and due dates, the assigned admin, the associated client, and the project's status.
Click Save to save your changes.
You can search for the associated client using Intelligent Search.

Use the buttons next to the project title to perform additional actions:

Start tracking time when you work on a project (Start Timer) or stop tracking (End Timer).
Add a private staff-only note (Add Comment).
Upload a file to the project (Upload File).
Send an email using a template under the General Messages email template type (Send Email).
Enable or disable email notifications about the project (toggle Watching to On or Off).

The system will also send email notifications to admins who are assigned to the project or task.

The top of the page also displays basic information about the project, including the creation date, a color-coded due date, the assigned admin, the client, the status, and the date of the last update to the project.

Creating Your First Project

To create a project:

Click + New Project in the top right corner.
Enter the title of the project, associated ticket number, assigned admin, associated client, the creation date, and the due date.
Click Create.

You can also create a project directly from within a support ticket by clicking the Create New Project tab. This option only appears in tickets if the ticket is not already associated with a project.

Tasks

To add a new task to a project:

Enter the task name in Add new task.
Select an admin to assign to the new task.
Set the desired due date.
Click Add Task.

To mark a task as complete, click the checkmark icon on the left of the list.

To edit a task, click the pencil icon, make the desired changes, and click Save.

To delete a task, click the trashcan icon. You can also click the pencil icon and then click Delete.

Messages

The Messages tab allows you to add notes and other messages that all admins can see when they view the project. Clients cannot view these messages.

To add a message, enter it in the text box and click Post Reply. You can also browse for and attach files.

Time Tracking

You can start the timer to track the time spent on tasks by clicking Start Timer.

This creates a timer entry in the Time Tracking tab. It includes the admin and the start time.
Click End Timer to end the timer.

To assign the timer record entry to a specific task:

Go to the Time Tracking tab.
Click the Edit pencil icon.
Select the relevant task from the menu.
Optionally, adjust the admin user, start time, and end time.
Click Save.

The system then calculates the total time for each task and for the project as a whole.

Tickets

To associate support tickets with a project:

Go to the Tickets tab.
Click Associate Ticket.
Optionally, search for the desired ticket number or keywords from the ticket name.
Select tickets by checking Select for each desired ticket.
Click Save.

A single ticket can be assigned to multiple projects, and a single project can have multiple tickets assigned to it. If a project does not have an associated client and you assign a client's ticket to that project, that client will automatically be associated with the project too.

You can create a new ticket to associate with the project by clicking Open New Ticket.

Billing

Associating invoices with projects allows you to view their status from within the project itself.

The system will automatically associate invoices using the following methods:

Invoices with a line item including Ticket #xxxxxx followed by any associated ticket number.
Invoices with a line item including Project #XXX followed by the ID number for the project.
Invoices that you generated from within the project using either the Quick Invoice or Bill for Task Time Entries features.

To de-associate an invoice from a project, you must update or remove the line item description to remove the ticket or project reference.

Files

The attachments section allows you to upload files to the project without posting a message.

All attachments, both uploaded here and as attachments in messages posted on the staff messageboard, are stored under the attachments directory, in a folder structure of /projects/xxx/ where xxx is the Project ID number, so projects can be easily accessed by FTP if needed, and cleaned up.

Log

The Log tab lists a full history of each action in that project, the date and time, and the associated admin.

Task Templates

Task Templates are predefined lists of tasks to add to a project.

You can save and import task templates from within individual projects.
You can view a list of task templates and delete them by going to Settings > Task Templates in the top-right corner of any Project Management page.

Save Task List

To save all of the tasks in the current project as a new task template:

Click Save Task List.
Enter a name for the new task list.
Click Save.

You can now replicate this task list in this or other projects.

Import Tasks

To import tasks from an existing task template:

Click Import Tasks.
Select the desired task template from the menu or enter text to search for a template and select it.
Click Import.

This will import a new copy of all of the task template's tasks into your project.

Settings

You can configure several Project Management settings as well as configuring permissions for related actions. To do this, click Settings in the top-right corner of any Project Management addon page.

You can configure the following settings in the General tab:

Default Hourly Rate — Set the standard hourly rate to charge in automatic time-based billing calculations. You can override this rate on a per-case basis when generating invoices for time-based logs.
Project Statuses — Set the available statuses for projects as a comma-separated list.
Completed Statuses — Select the statuses to treat as completed (not incomplete or awaiting work). This defaults to Abandoned and Completed.

You can configure the following settings in the Client Area tab:

Enable/Disable — Check to enable or uncheck to disable Client Area project access.
Allow Access To — Check the sections of the Client Area in which clients can view the status and details of their projects. To access this, add the following line to your Client Area URL: /index.php?m=project_management

You can view a list of task templates and delete them in the Task Templates tab.

You can set admin role access by checking and unchecking individual permissions in the Permissions tab.

Homepage Widget

The addon also includes an Admin Area Dashboard widget, which you can activate for your admin role group in the normal way in Configuration () > Manage Admins or, prior to WHMCS 8.0, Setup > Staff Management > Administrator Roles.

The widget allows you to see an overview of projects, including title, due date, days left, status, and recent activity.

API

A range of API commands are available for the addon to facilitate project management from remote systems:

For more information, see our API documentation.

Upgrading

To apply a manual update to the Project Management addon, download the update from our website, unzip the files, and upload them to the root WHMCS directory.

The files are in the appropriate sub-directories to ensure correct upload.

Uninstalling

To uninstall the module and completely remove all associated data (projects, logs, tasks, task templates, and attachments), see Addon Modules.

Troubleshooting

N/A

Change Log

Project Management Addon v1.0.0

Release Date: 11th January 2012

Initial Release

Project Management Addon v1.1.0

Release Date: 16th March 2012

TASKS: A new streamlined task list view
TASKS: Drag'n'Drop re-ordering support for tasks
TASKS: The ability to assign specific staff and due dates to tasks
TASKS: The ability to add notes to a task
TASKS: The ability to browse and filter projects by task
OVERVIEW: The ability to see from the projects overview screen tasks completed vs outstanding
PROJECTS: Ability to manually associate invoices with tasks
PROJECTS: The ability to edit staff messages
CLIENT AREA: Client Area Project Overview
CLIENT AREA: Configurable Access Permissions
TICKETS: Ability to create tasks directly from within tickets
TICKETS: Ability to start & stop timers directly from within tickets
TICKETS: Ability to create multiple projects from a single ticket
PROJECTS: Added new staff permission to allow only viewing projects assigned to them

Project Management Addon v2.0.0

Release Date: 26th June 2017

[PMA-10] - Implement V2.0 UI refresh
[PMA-11] - Implement email notifications
[PMA-15] - Implement ability to watch projects
[PMA-21] - Allow multiple file uploads with project messages
[PMA-22] - Allow quick start of time tracking
[PMA-27] - Allow tickets to be unlinked from a project
[PMA-30] - Implement invoice search for associating invoices
[PMA-31] - Allow image attachments to be previewed without downloading
[PMA-35] - Implement live client search for project assignment
[PMA-40] - Only allow billable time to be invoiced when project is assigned to customer
[PMA-41] - Improve handling of no active payment gateways when attempting to invoice
[PMA-44] - Add pagination to project log
[PMA-47] - Improve UX of multiple file attachments in messages
[PMA-49] - Add ability to search/filter list of projects by client name/email
[PMA-50] - Add ability to send email templates in relation to a project
[PMA-51] - Allow projects to be duplicated/copied
[PMA-52] - Add ability for a project to have no due date
[PMA-53] - Add project search to intelligent search
[PMA-54] - Add department and client name/submitter to Associated Tickets view

Project Management Addon v2.0.1

Release Date: 11th July 2017

[PMA-68] - Ensure reports are able to render successfully
[PMA-65] - Update default view filter to only include active/incomplete tasks
[PMA-57] - Fix projects from earlier versions failing to load under certain conditions

Project Management Addon v2.0.2

Release Date: 18th July 2017

[PMA-65] - Modify default view filter to only include active/incomplete tasks
[PMA-69] - Allow timers to be toggled multiple times without page reload
[PMA-70] - Update UI styling of in-ticket timer management

Project Management Addon v2.0.3

Release Date: 20th September 2017

[PMA-66] - Allow timer entries to be deleted
Also known as: PMA-71, PMA-91
[PMA-75] - Ensure time entry can be assigned to a task when editing
Also known as: PMA-92
[PMA-76] - Correct client association when creating a Project from a ticket
[PMA-77] - Correct Due Date calendar selection when adding a task
[PMA-78] - Correct consecutive usage of Due Date picker for Tasks
[PMA-81] - Restore ability to edit admin user associate with tracked time
[PMA-83] - Correct Delete button in edit task modal
Also known as: PMA-100
[PMA-85] - Ensure clients can see and files upload by admin users
Also known as: PMA-97
[PMA-86] - Correct JS paginate for products and optimise progress bar
[PMA-88] - Use HTTPS for gravatars
[PMA-94] - Ensure End Time records are properly stored
[PMA-95] - Display task total time on tasks list
Also known as: PMA-82
[PMA-96] - Ensure project task time in the client area shows only hours and minutes
[PMA-98] - Correct project status update when using API updateproject
Also known as: CORE-9079

Project Management Addon v2.0.4

Release Date: 17th April 2018

[PMA-114] - Ensure charset is itemized in mod_project table schema definition
[PMA-115] - Refine Recent Activity tab for PHP 7.1 compatibility

Project Management Addon v2.0.5

Release Date: 28th August 2018

[PMA-117] - Correct project permissions within the Project Management addon
[PMA-106] - Improve decoding of HTML entities for edit screen of project task
[ADDON-6025] - Correct display of not applicable project due dates on Dashboard Widget

Project Management Addon v2.1.0

Release Date: January 21st, 2019

[FEATURE-1792] - Implement Active Filtering of Clients Dropdown
[FEATURE-2016] - Add support for Amazon S3 and S3 compatible storage providers for file uploads
[ADDON-6026] - Correct Project Management widget caching

Project Management Addon v2.2.0

Release Date: 23th September 2019

[PMA-90] - Provide option to Apply Tax on invoices from Billing Timers
Also known as: PMA-93
[PMA-102] - Correct Week and Weeks language strings
Also known as: ADDON-6009
[PMA-105] - Improve queries to avoid mismatch collation issues
Also known as: ADDON-6012
[PMA-110] - Allow task list to be sorted
Also known as: ADDON-5958
[PMA-111] - Show uploaded date of PMA attachments in client area
[PMA-116] - Provide more accurate description of timer durations
[PMA-129] - Ensure Import Tasks button is enabled/disabled appropriately
[PMA-130] - Remove support for custom status color of PMA projects
[PMA-134] - Ensure project log updated when adding timer entry
[PMA-140] - Correct entity rendering on add new task
Also known as: ADDON-6029
[PMA-146] - Improve view of Due Date editing on Project Management Details
[PMA-147] - Add dates to Project Management Project Time Logs report
[PMA-150] - Implement ability to delete task templates

@@ Line 377: / Line 377: @@
 * [FEATURE-2016] - Add support for Amazon S3 and S3 compatible storage providers for file uploads
 * [ADDON-6026] - Correct Project Management widget caching
+===Project Management Addon v2.2.0===
+Release Date: 23th September 2019
+* [PMA-90] - Provide option to Apply Tax on invoices from Billing Timers<br />&emsp;Also known as: PMA-93
+* [PMA-102] - Correct Week and Weeks language strings<br />&emsp;Also known as: ADDON-6009
+* [PMA-105] - Improve queries to avoid mismatch collation issues<br />&emsp;Also known as: ADDON-6012
+* [PMA-110] - Allow task list to be sorted<br />&emsp;Also known as: ADDON-5958
+* [PMA-111] - Show uploaded date of PMA attachments in client area
+* [PMA-116] - Provide more accurate description of timer durations
+* [PMA-129] - Ensure Import Tasks button is enabled/disabled appropriately
+* [PMA-130] - Remove support for custom status color of PMA projects
+* [PMA-134] - Ensure project log updated when adding timer entry
+* [PMA-140] - Correct entity rendering on add new task<br />&emsp;Also known as: ADDON-6029
+* [PMA-146] - Improve view of Due Date editing on Project Management Details
+* [PMA-147] - Add dates to Project Management Project Time Logs report
+* [PMA-150] - Implement ability to delete task templates

Documentation