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Projects user guide

Updated

Overview

Projects is your full project management workspace. Plan projects, break them into tasks, track milestones, log time, collaborate with your team, and give clients their own branded portal to see progress and approve work.

Projects adapts to your industry. Pick an engine — MSP, construction, agency, software, church, association, legal, or accounting — and the terminology, workflow stages, and templates change to match how you actually work.

Key Features

  • Projects — create, archive, duplicate, set budgets, track expenses, health scores, baselines, timeline, calendar view
  • Tasks — full task list with assignees, due dates, subtasks, dependencies, custom fields, watchers, activity log
  • Milestones — key dates with approval workflow, check-ins, and hill-chart progress visualization
  • Sprints — agile buckets with burndown charts, start/complete flow
  • Time tracking — log hours against tasks, approve time entries, run billing reports, summaries by person or project
  • Team assignment — add members to projects, control roles (admin, manager, member)
  • Project Rooms — dedicated meeting room per project with video, pages, and whiteboards
  • Industry templates — apply a pre-built project structure in one click
  • Client portal — branded self-service portal where clients can view progress, comment, approve, and submit intake requests
  • Goals / OKRs — link projects to company goals, track progress over time
  • Portfolios — group related projects, see profitability and rollup health
  • Check-ins — scheduled standup prompts, auto-aggregated into team summaries
  • Meetings — AI-generated agendas, meeting notes processing, automatic action items
  • Intake forms — custom request forms that can auto-create projects
  • Workload heatmap — who's overloaded, who has capacity, rebalance suggestions
  • Critical path + dependency graph — Gantt-style view showing what blocks what
  • Custom fields — add any data column to tasks or projects
  • Automations — if-this-then-that rules (e.g., "when task marked done, post comment")
  • Approval workflows — request approval on tasks, documents, milestones
  • THEO AI — task breakdown, risk analysis, status update writer, blocker detection, sprint planning, daily brief
  • Marketplace — share templates with other teams, install community templates

How To: Create a Project

  1. Go to Projects > Projects
  2. Click New Project
  3. Name it, pick the client, and choose an engine (MSP / Construction / Agency / etc.)
  4. Optionally start from a template
  5. Set start date, end date, and budget
  6. Add team members and click Create

How To: Add and Assign Tasks

  1. Open the project
  2. Click Add Task (on the board, list, or timeline view)
  3. Enter a title, due date, and description
  4. Pick an assignee and priority
  5. (Optional) add subtasks, custom field values, and dependencies
  6. Press Save — the assignee gets notified

How To: Track Milestones

  1. Open the project
  2. Go to Milestones tab
  3. Click New Milestone, enter name, due date, and owner
  4. As work progresses, open the milestone and drag the hill-chart marker to show where you are (uphill = figuring it out, downhill = executing, top = ready)
  5. Use Add Check-in to post status updates
  6. When done, click Approve to officially close it

How To: Log Time

  1. Open a task (or go to Projects > Time)
  2. Click Log Time
  3. Enter hours, date, and notes
  4. Mark Billable if applicable
  5. Click Save
  6. Approvers review under Time > Pending Approval

How To: Build a Sprint

  1. Open the project
  2. Go to Sprints tab
  3. Click New Sprint, give it a name and date range
  4. Drag tasks from the backlog into the sprint
  5. Click Start Sprint
  6. Watch the burndown chart on the sprint dashboard
  7. Click Complete Sprint when done — unfinished tasks go back to the backlog

How To: Give a Client Access to Their Portal

There is no invite to send and nothing emails the client. The Hub Client Portal has no Invite Client User control and no Send Invite button, and there is no invitation email and no invite to resend — an active customer contact signs in themselves.

  1. Open the client's company in the Hub Portal (the client's Hub Portal tab in CRM)
  2. Click Add Portal User
  3. Enter their email address and name, and pick their role
  4. Save, then tell the client to open your portal address and click Email me a sign-in link instead — or to sign in with their password, or with Continue with Microsoft 365 if you enabled it for their organization
  5. What they see is controlled by the Portal role you picked — Viewer, User, or Admin

How To: Set Up Intake Forms

  1. Go to Projects > Intake > Forms
  2. Click New Form
  3. Add fields (text, dropdown, file upload, etc.)
  4. Choose whether submissions create a project automatically or land as requests
  5. Publish — the form gets a shareable URL you can embed on your website or send to clients
  6. Review submissions under Intake > Requests

How To: Apply a Project Template

  1. Click New Project
  2. Choose Start from Template
  3. Pick a template (yours or from the Marketplace)
  4. Name your project and click Create
  5. All tasks, milestones, and default team roles are copied in

How To: Create an Automation

  1. Open a project
  2. Go to Settings > Automations
  3. Click New Automation
  4. Choose a trigger ("when task status changes to Done")
  5. Choose an action ("assign user X," "post comment," "send webhook")
  6. Click Test to dry-run, then Save to go live

How To: Run a Project Room Meeting

  1. Open the project
  2. Click Room tab
  3. Click Start Video — a new meeting opens in a side panel
  4. Invite team or clients via the participant list
  5. Use Pages for shared notes, Whiteboards for sketching
  6. Click End Meeting — notes and whiteboards stay saved in the room

How To: Ask THEO for Help

THEO is your AI assistant inside Projects. Common prompts:

  • Task Breakdown — paste a big task and get suggested subtasks
  • Risk Analysis — click on a project to get a risk report
  • Status Update — auto-drafts a weekly project status email
  • Sprint Planning — suggests what to include in the next sprint
  • Blocker Detection — finds tasks that are stuck

Find these under the THEO button on any project.

Frequently Asked Questions

Which engine should I pick?

Pick the one that matches your primary business. MSP for IT service providers, Construction for trades, Agency for creative, Software for product teams, Legal for law firms, Accounting for CPAs, Church for faith orgs, Association for member orgs, General for everything else.

Can I switch engines after creating a project?

Engine is per-project. New projects can pick a different engine. Existing projects keep theirs.

How many projects can I have?

Starter: 10 projects. Professional: unlimited. Enterprise: unlimited with API access.

Does the client portal cost extra?

No. There is no separate portal-seat charge — client portal access is part of your plan, not an add-on you buy per seat. Users at your client companies are billed on your plan's per-user line, the managed end-user unit at $10 per user per month, which is where client portal access (and THEO AI in the user portal) is delivered.

Can clients see financial data?

No. The client portal shows tasks, milestones, comments, updates, and approvals — never your budget, expenses, or time entries.

How is profitability calculated?

Revenue (from PSA contracts or manually entered) minus time cost (hours x cost rate) minus expenses. Set cost rates under Settings > Users.

Can I bill clients from Projects?

Not directly. Projects connects to PSA which handles invoicing. Time entries flow over automatically.

What's a Portfolio?

A grouping of related projects (e.g., "All client X projects," "Q2 strategic initiatives"). Portfolios roll up health, budget, and profitability.

Can I import tasks from another tool?

Yes, via CSV. Go to Project Settings > Import.

Does the critical path auto-update?

Yes. As you add task dependencies and durations, the critical path recalculates automatically.

Troubleshooting

Client can't log in to the portal There is no invitation email to check and no invite to resend — the portal never emails an invitation. Check that the contact's email address is on an active portal user record for that client (the client's Hub Portal tab in CRM), then have them open the portal sign-in page and click Email me a sign-in link instead.

Tasks aren't showing in the Gantt view Gantt requires both a start date and a due date on each task. Add missing dates.

Time entry won't save Every entry needs a task and a duration. Make sure you've picked a task before logging.

Automation isn't firing Open the automation's Runs log to see if it attempted to run. Common issue: the trigger condition didn't match. Use Test to dry-run.

Approvals stuck in "Pending" The approver hasn't acted. Check Notifications on their account or assign a different approver.

Sprint burndown looks flat Burndown tracks story points or task counts. Make sure tasks have estimates set.

Client portal shows wrong projects Open the portal user and adjust which projects they can see under their permissions.

Budget says "over budget" but I spent less Budget tracks time (hours x rate) + expenses. Check Settings > Users to confirm cost rates are set correctly.

Room video won't start Make sure your browser has camera and mic permissions. Chrome and Edge are best supported.

Custom field values missing after import Custom fields must be created before importing. Define them first, then map them in the import wizard.