Build an activity template

Before you start

You need Templates: Action page access to create, edit, publish and duplicate templates. With Templates: View you can open every template, but only to read it. See Page access.

• The list of activities, and any sub-activities, with a duration for each in whole days.
• The order: which activity has to finish before another can start.
• The team that does each activity. Every team in User Management is offered.
• What each activity's owner has to do: upload documents, tick a checklist, fill in fields, or check or approve someone else's document.
• If any activity collects documents, a published document storage structure to file them under. See Set up document storage.

Create the template

1. Open Activity Templates. It is in the left menu under Templates.
2. Choose + New template. A form opens above the list.
3. Fill in the form. Give it a Template name (required, up to 100 characters, and not used by another template), a Short description and a Type — one of the six project types. Leave Start from on Blank, or pick Duplicate: <name> to copy every activity, sub-activity, predecessor and task of an existing template.
4. Choose Create. The editor opens on your new template. It is a Draft: nobody can start a project from it yet.

Add activities, order and teams

Every change you make in the editor is saved as you make it. The top of the page shows Saving… and then ✓ All changes saved. Only the template's own name, type and description wait for a Save button.

1. Choose + Add activity. A new row opens at the bottom of the table.
2. Fill in the row. Type the name, a Duration in whole days (at least 1), any predecessors (+ Add predecessor for more than one, each with a lag in whole days) and the Team, and tick Non-mandatory if the activity is optional. Choose ✓ Add, or press Enter. ✓ Add stays off until the name, duration and team are set.
3. Add sub-activities where you need them. Choose +Sub on an activity's row. An activity can have up to 10 sub-activities, and a sub-activity cannot have its own. Once an activity has sub-activities, its team and tasks are set on them, and its duration becomes their span: from the earliest start to the latest finish, not their sum.
4. Change a row in place. Click an activity's name to rename it, or its duration, team or predecessors to change them. In the predecessor editor, choose ✓ Save.
5. Move a row if you need to. → indents an activity under the one above it; ← turns a sub-activity back into an activity. The activity gets a new ID, and a dialog lists every predecessor that will point to the new ID. Choose Confirm & proceed, or Cancel — revert to change nothing.
6. Delete a row with ✕. Srishti asks first. Deleting an activity removes its sub-activities and their tasks too, and if other activities wait on it, the dialog names them and the delete also removes it from their predecessors. There is no undo.

Predecessor rules

• Every link is finish-to-start (FS): the activity starts when its predecessor finishes, plus any lag.
• The first activity, and that activity's first sub-activity, cannot have a predecessor. "First" means the row at the top now, not the one numbered 1.
• An activity and its own sub-activity never depend on each other, and a chain cannot loop back on itself.
• A non-mandatory activity is not offered as a predecessor. To make an activity non-mandatory, first remove it from the predecessors of every activity that waits on it. Marking a parent non-mandatory marks all its sub-activities too.

The Duration (CPM) figure on the left is the template's length along its critical path, and a CP tag marks the activities on that path. See Schedule, float and the critical path.

Link document storage and add tasks

Every activity without sub-activities needs at least one task: the task is what its owner does to complete it. An activity has either sub-activities or tasks, never both.

1. Pick the document storage template first. Choose it in Document storage template at the top of the editor. Only published (Active) structures are listed. Until one is picked, the editor shows Select a Document Storage template before configuring Document Upload tasks.
2. Open an activity's tasks. Choose + Add tasks in its Tasks cell, or click one of its task chips. A panel opens on the right: Configure tasks.
3. Choose + Add task. Pick the Task type, give it a Task name and fill in what that type needs (see the table below).
4. Choose Add task. The task is saved at once. If the button stays off, the hint beside it says what is missing.
5. Remove a task with its bin icon. A task cannot be edited once added: remove it and add it again. An upload task whose documents another task reviews cannot be removed until that review task is gone.

On a mandatory activity, every Checkbox and Field Input task needs at least one Mandatory item, so the task cannot be completed without doing anything.

Who sees uploaded documents

Visible to

The teams, besides the uploader's own, that may see the documents. Pick teams, or All teams — which includes teams added later.

Visibility trigger

When the chosen teams see each document: On upload, On check (once a Check / Reject task has passed it) or On approval (once an Approve / Reject task has passed it — add that task too).

Uploader's own team

Always sees the document from the moment it is uploaded. With no team chosen under Visible to, the trigger is off and only the uploader's team sees it.

On a project, someone on a chosen team sees the documents only if they are assigned to an activity there. The project's PM always sees every document, and can share documents with other people from the project's Documents tab.

Review tasks

• A Check / Reject or Approve / Reject task reviews a mandatory document that an earlier activity's Document Upload task collects. "Earlier" means linked to this activity through predecessors.
• A document can have one Check / Reject task and one Approve / Reject task, and the check comes before the approval.
• On rejection is either Go back to a specific activity (hardcoded) — then pick the Rejection target activity: the one that uploads the document, or one before it — or Task owner decides at runtime.

Publish, then keep it current

1. Check the footer. No tasks and Team missing count the activities that would stop the template being published.
2. Save the details. Name, type and description are edited in the form at the top of the editor and kept with its Save button. Publishing is refused while they have unsaved changes.
3. Choose Publish template, then Publish. If anything is missing, a notice — This template can't be published yet — lists every problem at once. Fix them and publish again.

A template is published only when all of these hold:

• It has at least one activity.
• Every activity without sub-activities has a team and at least one task.
• Every Checkbox or Field Input task on a mandatory activity has a mandatory item.
• The first activity, and its first sub-activity, have no predecessor.
• No non-mandatory activity is a predecessor.

Edit after publishing

Publishing is one way: an Active template never goes back to Draft. Its creator can still change everything in it — details, activities, predecessors and tasks. Changes reach only projects created afterwards; projects already created keep their own copy.

If an edit leaves the template incomplete — for example a new activity with no task yet — the editor shows Not usable for new projects until this is fixed: with the problems listed, and no new project can pick the template until they are fixed.

Duplicate a template

Anyone with Templates: Action can duplicate any template: with the duplicate icon on the list, or the Duplicate button on an Active template. The copy is a new Draft that you own, named after the original with (copy) added, and it carries the activities, predecessors, tasks and document storage choice. The original does not change. This is how you adapt a template someone else created.

The creator can also delete a template with the bin icon on the list. The confirmation says how many projects used it; those projects are not affected, but the template is no longer offered for new ones.

What happens next

• The template shows as Active on the list and is offered in step 3 of project creation, with its activity count and total duration. Draft templates are never offered.
• When a PM picks it, the project copies the activities, durations, predecessors, teams and tasks. The PM then gives each activity an owner from its team and can adjust the schedule.
• The project files its documents under the template's document storage structure, and its Documents tab shows them in those folders.
• Your later edits to the template change only projects created after them.

What can go wrong