× Table of Contents Clients and Projects Introduction to Clients and projects Selecting a client, a project, or a folder Moving Projects, Clients, and Folders Archiving Clients and Projects Deleting Clients and Projects Clients & Projects Dashboard Clients Dashboard Projects Dashboard This is an old revision of the document! Clients and Projects The Clients and Projects dimension lets all Business Organizations whose activities revolve around Client Services or Projects to manage their information centered on their most important entities. In this sense, Clients and Projects are one of the most typical dimensions used on the Professional Edition, and thus, the default dimension when you set up a brand-new Feng Office Professional Edition. Clients and Projects (along with folders, workspaces, and other concepts) help you organize and manage information, and control user access and working rights. Note: The Community Edition does not count with this module. Introduction to Clients and projects Most Professional Services and Project-centered Firms will find Clients and Projects to be the best structure to organize its Client information. Most information in Feng Office will be classified in a Client or a Project. Here are some facts about how the Clients and Projects dimension works: You can create as many Clients and Projects as you need. Projects can be either 'general' (not withing a client) or belong to a client. You can create folders to organize groups of clients, groups of projects, or groups of information inside a project. Clients can contain projects and folders, but not other clients. In other words you can build hierarchies of up to 10 levels.1) (But be careful: Many levels or a complex structure bear the potential of putting information into the wrong place, which makes it invisible for the intended audience or even accessibly for unauthorized users.) Clients are different from folders in that respect that you can not only see what's inside a Client but also what's inside all sub-elements of that Client. That's the reason why Clients and Projects are much more like filters than like folders. Clients and Projects are used to control permissions in Feng Office. You can grant a user the right to work with a certain Project and hide another Project completely from him. There are even more detailed permission parameters (which are discussed in more detail on the permissions page). Selecting a client, a project, or a folder The most obvious way for selecting a Client or a Project is to have the left sidebar open and to click on the Client or Project. As long as you don't hide your sidebar, this is the preferred method. Moving Projects, Clients, and Folders If you want to move a Project to a new or different client or folder, you can do so by: Going to the left panel Spot the project you want to move Click on the project you want to move Click on the 'edit' icon that shows to the right of the project you want to move On the 'Child of' tree, select the client or folder into which you want to organize this project Save changes Archiving Clients and Projects From the 2.1 version onwards, you may archive projects, clients or folders you do not need right now. Select the client, project, folder, workspace, etc. you would like to archive on the side bar on your left Click on the 'Edit' button Select 'Archive' Deleting Clients and Projects From the 2.1 version onwards this could be done the following way: Make sure the project doesn't have any information that you want to keep. Go to the 'Overview' tab Click on 'Show as list' on the top right corner of this tab Select all of the objects you may wish to delete by clicking on the first checkbox of the list Click on 'Send to trash' icon above or classify them through drag and drop somewhere else. If you sent them to the trash Access the 'Trash' through the bottom left corner icon, and delete the objects from there as well. You should also look into 'Archived' objects as well in case there are any. Select the client, project, folder, workspace, etc. you would like to delete on the side bar on your left Click on the 'Edit' button Select 'Delete' This process may be a bit long right now, but its behaviour is due to extra security measures as there have been users deleting information they forgot they had there. Clients & Projects Dashboard The dashboard (located under the Overview tab) is the very first screen you see when you access a Client, a Project, a Folder or a Workspace. It provides you with the most recent and most urgent information from all modules. For example you can see at a glance what tasks and milestones are due, what messages and comments have been posted recently, or what documents have been uploaded. However, Clients, Projects and Folders have their very own Dashboards with some particular widgets which will be explained below. Clients Dashboard This is the information shown as soon as you go to the Overview tab, while standing in a Client: Some of their widgets will be explained below. Client Status This is something very important to look at! Clients should be the most important thing in a business…because if we have no clients, we cannot have a business! Please bear in mind we call them Clients and not Customers because there actually is a difference between these two terms: clients are those people/organization which are loyal to our business and are considered very important and work hard to retain them as such, whereas a customer could be someone who may perform negotiations ones business once or from time to time, but it may also do the same with ones competitors (i.e.: when one goes to a grocery store, when you usually do not mind where do you go to). There are many factors that can alter what we call a Client Status, and it is very important for every organization to find out which ones are those. First and foremost, being polite and respectful with them is very important, but in case there are projects involved, their status are greatly related to the client status, such as if it is on track or it is delayed, if things are being done right or not, etc. If you would like to change its status to be displayed, you would have to edit the Client and select a different one. Projects List The Projects List will quickly let us see the projects and their status within the Client we are at, as shown below: We may also add projects by inputting its name and clicking on 'Add', or we may click on the 'More»' button to add further information about it. Client - Tasks Chart This chart will quickly let us know the status of the tasks that belong to this client, without having to look one by one. In the picture above you may notice the different categories Overdue: Amount of tasks that should have been completed before the current day. Upcoming: Tasks that are still pending but the due date has not been reached yet. Today: Tasks which must be completed within the current day. Completed: Tasks that have already been completed. Projects Dashboard This is the information shown as soon as you go to the Overview tab, while standing in a Project: Some of their widgets will be explained below. Project Statistics Here you may find the Project Status (similar to the Client Status), which will let you know how it goes. You may modify it by editing the project. On the other hand, you may also see the Tasks Status of those tasks that belong to the project. Overdue: Amount of tasks that should have been completed before the current day. Upcoming: Tasks that are still pending but the due date has not been reached yet. Today: Tasks which must be completed within the current day. Completed: Tasks that have already been completed. Estimated Time VS Executed Time Chart This chart is very important!! You will easily be able to know something that worries almost every company: having a clear and fast vision of the estimated time of a project and its actual executed time. If the executed time is higher, something has gone wrong and you are counting losses, whereas if it is the same or less, then you are making profit. There are two kind of charts: Line chart: it is shown when all tasks of the project count with a due date. Depending on what you are looking forward to achieving, we suggest using this one when possible as it provides a time reference, so you must make sure all your tasks have a due date. Vertical chart: it is shown when there are some tasks within the projects which have no due date. Line Chart: Vertical Chart: Note: You may have noticed in the bottom of the charts, that the system will let you know if there is missing information that may lead to a not accurate chart, such as the following: In case there are completed tasks with no registered time In case there are charts with no estimated time 1) http://forums.opengoo.org/index.php?topic=258.msg1099#msg1099 Log In