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Chapter 15 — Project Management and Field Service

Module code: PM Features: pm_projects, pm_project_admin Home: /pm/

15.1 What the module is for

Project Management organises work that has a beginning and an end: an installation, a software rollout, a building fit-out, a customer service contract. Work is broken into tasks, tasks move across a board, and time spent is recorded against them.

The field service part serves teams that work at customer sites: a daily list of today's jobs, start and stop timers, and a worksheet the customer signs off.

15.2 Concepts

Concept Meaning
Project A body of work with a customer, a manager and a team
Task One piece of work inside a project
Stage A column on the project's board — To do, In progress, Review, Done. Stages belong to a project, so each project can have its own workflow.
Milestone status The underlying state a stage maps to: to do, in progress, blocked, or done. This is what reports group by.
Timesheet Time recorded against a task
Worksheet A structured job report completed at a customer site

Stages against status. A stage is what your team calls a column; the milestone status is what the system understands. A project can have five columns of its own naming, and cross-project reports still work because every column maps to one of the four statuses. When you create a project with no stages, four sensible defaults are created for you.

15.3 Projects

/pm/                             dashboard
/pm/projects/                    project list, grouped by tag
/pm/projects/new/                create a project
/pm/projects/<id>/               project workspace

Creating a project

  1. Go to /pm/projects/new/.
  2. Enter: - Name. - Customer — a partner (Chapter 5). Optional for internal projects. - Project manager. - Team members — who may work on it. - Start and end dates. - Tags — how the project list is grouped. Keep the tag list short or the grouping stops helping.
  3. Save.

The project workspace

/pm/projects/<id>/ is the project's home: its details, its key figures, and a chatter panel — a comment thread with attachments, so the project's discussion lives with the project rather than in email.

15.4 Board columns

Screen: /pm/projects/<id>/task-stages/

  1. Open the project and choose Board columns.
  2. Add a column with its name, its milestone status, and its position.
  3. Reorder by dragging.
  4. Mark a column folded to collapse it into a narrow rail — useful for a Done column that would otherwise dominate the board. Cards can still be dropped onto a folded rail, and the board does not jump when you do.
  5. Delete a column only when it holds no tasks.

Changing a column's milestone status updates every task currently in it. That is usually what you want, but it is a bulk change — check what is in the column first.

Anyone who can open the project may view the columns. Only the project manager, a team member, or a PM administrator may add, rename, reorder or delete them.

15.5 Tasks

/pm/projects/<id>/tasks/        the project's board
/pm/tasks/                      all tasks across all projects
/pm/tasks/<id>/                 task detail
/pm/tasks/export/               export tasks

Creating a task

  1. Open the project's board and select New task, or use quick-add on a column.
  2. Enter: - Title and description. - Assignee. - Stage — which column it starts in. - Priority. - Planned dates and estimated hours. - Customer location, for field service work.
  3. Save.

Working the board

Drag a card from one column to another. The task's stage and its milestone status update together.

The global board at /pm/tasks/ shows every task you can see across all projects, in four rollup columns by milestone status. Dropping a card there resolves to the right stage inside that task's own project, so a project's own workflow is respected.

Task detail

The task page carries:

  • Full details and the ability to edit them.
  • Attachments — upload at /pm/tasks/<id>/attachments/upload/.
  • Comments.
  • Dependencies (/pm/tasks/<id>/dependencies/) — tasks that must finish first.
  • GPS breadcrumb (/pm/tasks/<id>/gps/) — for field work, the route recorded while the task was being carried out.

Bulk actions

/pm/tasks/bulk-action/ applies a change — reassign, move stage, set priority — to many selected tasks at once.

15.6 Task templates

/pm/task-templates/              list
/pm/task-templates/new/          create
/pm/task-templates/<id>/use/     create a task from it

For work that repeats identically — a standard installation, a routine service — create a template once with its checklist and estimates, then generate tasks from it. This is how you stop the quality of a job depending on which engineer remembered which step.

15.7 Field service

Today's work

Screen: /pm/field-service/today/

The technician's screen. It shows today's assigned tasks, work currently in progress, and anything overdue.

For each task:

Action Effect
Start Begins the timer. The task shows as in progress wherever it appears.
Pause Stops the clock without finishing
Resume Restarts it
Complete Finishes the task and stops the timer

A running timer makes a task show as in progress everywhere — on the board, in the list, on reports — regardless of which column it sits in. What someone is actually doing right now beats what the board last recorded.

Starting a task that already has a running timer does nothing rather than starting a second one.

Timesheets

/pm/field-service/timesheets/            list
/pm/field-service/timesheets/new/        add an entry by hand
/pm/field-service/timesheets/<id>/edit/  edit

Timers produce timesheet entries automatically. Add entries by hand for work done away from the system, and review the list before billing.

Worksheets

/pm/worksheet-templates/           templates
/pm/worksheet-templates/new/       new template
/pm/worksheet-reports/             completed worksheets
/pm/worksheet-reports/new/         complete one
/pm/worksheet-reports/<id>/        view one

A worksheet template is the structured job report for a class of work: the checks to perform, the readings to record, the parts used, the customer's sign-off. Build it once with the template builder.

On site, the technician completes a worksheet report against the template. The completed report is the record of what was done, and the document a customer query is answered from.

15.8 Customers and locations

/pm/customers/                                   customers used by PM
/pm/customers/<id>/edit/                         edit
/pm/customers/<id>/locations/options/            their service locations

Field service customers carry service locations — sites, buildings, units. Tasks are assigned to a location, which is what makes routing and the GPS breadcrumb meaningful.

15.9 Reports

/pm/tasks/report/         task report
/pm/tasks/analytics/      analytics
/pm/tasks/export/         export to CSV
Question Where
What is open, and who has it? Task report
Are we hitting our dates? Analytics
How much time went into this project? Timesheet list, filtered by project
What did we do at this site? Worksheet reports

15.10 Permissions

Capability Needs
Use the PM portal pm_projects view, or pm_project_admin view
Create projects pm_project_admin create
See all projects, not just your own pm_project_admin view
Configure board columns Project manager, team member, or PM administrator

A technician normally needs only pm_projects view, which gives them their own tasks, the field service screen and the timers.

15.11 Routine

Daily — technician
  [ ] Open /pm/field-service/today/
  [ ] Start the timer when work begins; complete it when it ends
  [ ] Fill in the worksheet at the site, not afterwards

Daily — project manager
  [ ] Review the board; clear anything blocked
  [ ] Check overdue tasks on the field service screen

Weekly
  [ ] Review timesheets before billing
  [ ] Review the task report for stalled work
  [ ] Update planned dates that are no longer realistic

15.12 Troubleshooting

Symptom Cause Fix
A project has no board columns Defaults are created on first use Open the board, or create the columns yourself
A card will not drop into a column The column is deleted, or you lack rights Refresh; check your project role
Board columns cannot be edited You are not manager, team member or PM administrator Ask to be added to the team
A task shows in progress in the wrong column A timer is running on it This is by design; stop the timer or complete the task
Start does nothing A timer is already running on that task Check the field service screen for the running task
A project is missing from the list You are not on its team and lack pm_project_admin view Ask to be added
A worksheet cannot be completed No template exists for that kind of work Create the template first
Time is missing from a timesheet The timer was never started Add the entry by hand and start the timer next time