How To Create and Set up a Project Pipeline Board

Modified on Fri, 6 Jan, 2023 at 4:56 PM

Project Pipelines allow you to create a project at any stage from a board. Whether it be new project requests, change requests, or enhancements, you can capture the entire process from idea to execution. Simply set up your project pipeline board and design it to capture your business process from beginning to end.

User role requires to create a pipeline board: Project Administrator

Speak to your Project Administrator to help you set up your Board. As an owner of the board, you can still customize and edit all normal board functions. The project administrator needs to set the project creation rules and default project status settings to apply the standard business operating procedures. They will also need to assist you in configuring the project detail data fields to best match the project fields set up in the Project Module.

In this article, we will show you how to create and set up a project pipeline board.

Step 1. Create a New Board

To create a pipeline board, click on the Create button in the top navigation bar and then select New Board.

You will be presented with the board settings page to set up your pipeline board.

NOTE: The Project Pipeline Icon will only be seen by Project Administrators.

Step 2. Set up your Pipeline Board

When setting up your Pipeline Board, think of your approval process and how your request flows from idea to execution.

Start by setting the title, owners and members of the board:

IMPORTANT: Board members/owners will have the ability to create projects from the pipeline board even if they do not have project submission or project administrator roles.

Board Title	Use a board title that will help users identify the board easily.
Board Owners	Owners can edit the board settings, edit any board tasks and create projects. Note: Only a board owner with project administrator role can edit the project pipeline related properties (i.e enable columns to create projects field and create project and default project status properties for board columns).
Board Members	Board members can create/edit tasks and create projects, but they cannot edit the board settings.
Board Viewers	Board viewers can only read/view board tasks. Board permissions per role include: Board Owners: Owners have manage/edit/view rights to a board and can create projects. Board Members: Members have edit/view rights to a board and can create projects. Board Viewer: Viewers have read/view only rights to a board and cannot create projects.

Next, you will set up your project pipeline settings.
Select Project Pipeline and your settings page will change as per the below image:

NOTE: Project Pipelines are always set up as Kanban Boards.

Next, will be to set if you want your status columns to create projects and how you would like your board to receive requests:

Set board columns to create projects

Projects can be created from the task dialog at any stage by a board owner or member.

However, you can also flag some board columns to automatically create a project when a task status changes to the flagged status column. To do so, turn the Set board columns to create projects feature on. You will then be able to set which column should create a project in the Columns section.

Allow Work Requests

This feature allows you to set how you would like requests to be captured to your board.

Ask yourself who you would like users to submit requests directly to the board? Anybody, or just a limited set of users? See below to help select the correct option:

Owners & Members Only: Only board owners and members can send requests to the board.
Limited Work Request: In addition to board owners and members, you can explicitly list users who can send requests to the board.
Community Requests: Any member of the organisation can send requests to the board.

Please ask your application administrator if you do not see this option, as the work request feature has not been turned on if this is the case.

Next you will need to set the task types of project requests that this board will handle. E.g., New project, New Program, Small Enhancement, Change Request)

Once you have set the task types, you need to set up the properties needed, that:

- will capture the information about the new project requests (E.g. this is the form that the requestors will submit).

- will record the approval process (these properties are the properties only visible to the owners and members of the board)

- you would like to pre-populate to the project when the project is created from the board. When a project is created, the creation process will try to set as many project properties as possible based on the task properties.

Points to remember when setting up the properties to be used in the project settings:

- The property name needs to match the naming convention in the project workspace. 
- The options provided need to match the same options provided at set up in the metadata. 
- If the data type is an option, then it needs to be set as an option in the Project settings.

To understand more on how these properties will be used to create the project, Click here.

To learn more about how to create task types and custom properties, click here.

Step 3. Final steps for your project pipeline set up

The final step in setting up your board is to set up your status columns and the settings that control the project creation.

If you have selected Yes for the project columns to create projects, you can set which column should create a project.

Create Project - turn this on for the column status that you would like set to automatically create the project when a task is dropped into that column. You can select more than one column to create projects, as some requests are approved at an earlier stage than other requests. Using this setting, you can set up project creation according to your various approval processes.

What should the project status be - Set the project status value that the newly created project's status should be set to. Note that this option is only available if the column is set to create a project.

NOTE: A member/owner of the board will still be able to create a project from the task tile at any stage, regardless of the task status. When a project is created from a status that isn't flagged to create a project, the project creation process will always set the project status to the default project status as set up in the Administration Console.

Your project pipeline board is now set up, and ready to go!

This article focused on the board settings that apply to project pipeline boards only. To learn more about how to customise your board further, navigate to the managing a board folder for more articles.