Project: Overview

In Flowlu, you can comprehensively manage the projects, from coordinating the work of the team to monitoring profitability. All data is recorded and available in one place—in the project card. In this article, you're going to find out more about the purpose of each project section.

Main Section

The widgets help you to keep track of the following:

• the number of payments and expenses, as well as the percentage of payments received;
• the amount of planned and actual time spent, as well as the percentage of spent time resources.

If you do not need to record the time spent on tasks, you can disable this option in the settings of the Tasks app. In this case, only the number of planned and completed tasks will be displayed in the widget:

• the remaining number of days before the project deadline;
• the progress of work performed: current project stage is completed milestones;

• custom fields;
• you can change the project manager, customer, set a project deadline by clicking on the field with the date;

Additionally, on this page you can:

• add all main items—invoices, tasks, events, and invoices;
• move the project to the next stage;
• record payments and expenses;
• change milestones and fill in the information on them (report, description, attach files)
• create a chat if it wasn't created during the project creation.

Tasks

This section is designed to manage project collaboration. When you add tasks to a project, they become available to all project participants. The project team will see a stage of each task, assignees and the deadline.

Tasks have several views and can be displayed as:

• cards on the Kanban board.
• task list.
• the lists sorted by an assignee.
• Gantt chart.

Here you can switch the task list view:

Task Board

The task board is one of the most useful tools for planning and tracking the planned and completed project tasks. All tasks on the board are presented as cards.

You can:

• move task cards between stages and see what has been already completed or what is to be done;
• move the highest priority tasks to the top—this will help you to identify which ones need to be performed first.

Please note: When transferring a task to the In progress column, the time tracker does not start automatically, because the task can be performed in several steps. To start the timer, you need to click the Start button in the sidebar. At the stage Done, there are tasks completed, but not accepted by the task owner. Only the task owner can transfer these tasks to the Completed tasks column after checking them.

On the board, you can instantly add a task, immediately specifying the description and the person responsible:

The Assignee filter hides the tasks that certain employees do not have to deal with (they are not an owner, or responsible).

In each task card, the important information is displayed:

• priority, as a colored arrow on the task ticket:

turquoise—low priority;

no arrow—medium;

red—high.

• planned and actual time, which makes it easy to control time costs and notice deviations in time;
• deadline date. A date on the card notifies about an overdue date;
• an owner and an assignee.

The total time spent on a project by an employee can be viewed in the task list table.

Task Grouping by the Project Stages

In the task board, you can enable grouping of the tasks by stages of the project. There are several options for grouping tasks:

• for all stages of the project, even if not all stages have tasks;

• only for those stages that have tasks;

• without grouping.

You can switch the grouping mode by clicking the Settings button on the project task board.

Select "Project Stage" to enable task grouping. If you need to see all the stages of the project, including those that do not have any tasks, check the box "Show empty sections".

Select "Do not group" if you do not plan to use the grouping.

Finance

This section allows you to plan project income and expenses, issue invoices, record the actual payments and track the project profitability.

Read more about all the features of this section in the article on managing project finances.

Team

Add your co-workers to the project. This will allow all participants to work in a single workspace: see and add tasks, events, notes, comments, documents, project progress (completed stages and milestones).

To add participants, click on the appropriate button:

In the opened window, select the participants and click Save:

About project access rights.

Events

This section contains all the project events—past and planned. Here you can complete events and add new ones. To quickly create a new event, use the hotkeys.

Work Structure 

This section allows you to track the work performed by the project — stages, milestones and tasks.

To add a stage, click on the blue 'plus' button to the bottom of the project stage. Clicking 'three dot' button will open a menu to export the work structure to CSV or create MS Word report.

• Milestones are added to a certain stage using the "+Milestone" button.
• Tasks for a stage are added by clicking on the "+Task" button.
• To change the order of milestones, use drag and drop. 
• To edit a stage, use the 'pencil' icon.
• To delete a stage, click on the 'recycle bin' icon.
• Click on a milestone or a task to edit them. 

To change the order of milestones, use drag and drop. Click on the recycle bin to delete a milestone. To mark a milestone as completed, mark the checkbox next to its name. 

You can create tasks in a project that are not linked to a milestone. The tasks related to the stage are displayed under all milestones at the end of each stage.

Please note: In a custom project, you can add milestones, stages, and tasks. In a workflow project, only milestones and tasks are available for adding.

Each report is displayed under each milestone. Click on the milestone to fill in the report. In the Milestones record, you may edit the report, add tasks related to a milestone, attach files, leave comments, and see full information about the milestone.

Progress reports can be filled in only by the project manager and the milestone assignee. 

The completed stage is marked with a double check mark. 

The current stage is marked with a purple color.

Notes

Add all project notes are located in one place. This may be, for example, recommendations that can be taken into account in the project implementation.

Enter the text of the note in the window to add it and click the Create button:

When adding or editing a note, you can format it. Highlight the text of the note and you will see a panel for formatting:

Using the editor will help you to make the notes clearer.

Issues

This section contains customer issues and suggestions, which arise in the course of the project implementation. After adding a issue, you can track the progress of its execution.

Files

Each team member can view project documents as well as add his own. For convenience, you can distribute documents of the same type in different folders.

The documents can be displayed in the Tile or List view.

When you click on a document, there is additional information on this document displayed in the window on the right:

• size and type of file;
• by whom and when created;
• by whom and when changed;
• you can also view or download this file.

Lists

This section is not displayed by default. It needs to be set up through the List application.

Find out more: How to install Lists application.

A section is a set of columns that can be fully customized by a user. They can be used to create a list of contractors or suppliers, maintain a record of contracts, incoming and sent correspondence.

Note that: For the convenience of working with the project, customize the order in which the internal and external tabs are displayed. Just drag the tabs to another place, both main and internal ones.

Chat 

Each project has an individual chat and includes all the team members, as well as the project manager. When you add a new user to the project team, he will automatically join the project discussion. If you didn't create a chat during the project creation, you can still create a chat after it by clicking on the following button: