Working through a Project

So, you've Started a New Project or you've been invited to participate on a Project. Lets step through all the features of a Project depending on your role.

Authors

The Author role is a predefined role that the system generates. The author role is a basic role with Access to a Dashboard and Projects. The Author is the user who first starts a Project, by clicking the '+New Project' button. 

Throughout the Project Management process the Author is able to keep an eye on various status' through the Author Dashboard widgets and the Projects view. 

In the event that a Contributor has provided comments following an endorsement, approval or rejection of this information will be made available in the comments section. The Author will be notified that there are comments available via email.

All projects you are Author on are viewed in the My Projects tab of the Projects page.

This is a simple list view of all projects in your account. 

The Projects table includes

• Actions
  • Open
  • Edit
  • Archive
  • Delete
• Project name
• Project description
• Project status
• Project last updated date

Once you have found the project you want to work on, you can click the name to launch the Project, or alternatively the click 'Actions' and then 'Open'.

Project

A Project will contain the following properties. 

• Project name
• Project status
• Project description
• Created by
• Steps (each as their own tab)
• Documents
• Contributors
• Audit logs

The Project that you created has been built using a Project Template, and that template determines the workflow steps and approvals that will be required to deliver the project. 

Project - Steps

To start working through the Project you simply need to click 'Open' in the first step, this will immediately direct you to the form questionnaire.

You will also be able to see the Status of each step with a glance in each step's tab, any in-progress or finalised documents, and the status of any contributions from users who have had the step shared to them.

Project - Documents

Once a document is produced via one of these steps, you as the Author will be able to review it from the Documents tab (as well as from each individual step). If a step has not yet been approved, the document will be in draft. Once approved, the document will be complete.

Document Version History

This allows a user to download each version of the documents created during the process of finalising a Step. A version is created for each user and project stage. If you have multiple submissions during a particular stage (say during the Draft stage), the most recent submission at that stage will be available for download.

You can access the Version History of a document through the actions menu for a document in your Project. 

Project - Sharing

As a part of this process, you might want to invite other users to help provide data on a Project Step. This is easily done by clicking on the Action menu and clicking 'Share', or by clicking the Share button in an open step.

You will then be presented with a modal which sets out the conditions for the contributor's contribution to the project.

Invite as:

Initially you will be presented with the following two options: 

• Invite User: Allows you to invite registered users of your tenant portal from a list.
• Invite Guest: Allows you to invite any unregistered users.

Role:

There are currently two approval types which are defined by the role. They will change some of the workflow buttons in the form:

• Review: An approval set when the status of a document is still 'Draft'. This is for reviewing a change by a contributor within a step, and editing if required.
• Approve: An approval set when the status of the project step is 'Published'. This is for approving the entire step, and finalising the document. You cannot edit the step with this role.

For more information on these roles and how they relate to the Project Status and Workflow, take a look at this article.

Once you have selected which users you want to invite, you will be asked which form pages you would like them to contribute on. As the Author you will simply need to select which pages you want them to be able to access.

How is the contributor notified, and how do they access the form? 

Contributor Email

When a user is invited to contribute to a Project Step they will be sent an email. This email will show them who has invited them, to which project they have been invited to, and to which Project Step their contribution is required. In addition, an Author will have the ability to add their own free text to the email.

There is also a quick link in the email, which when clicked will redirect the user to the form. Registered users will be requested to login while Guest users will be redirected directly to the form. 

Contributor Dashboard

When a registered contributor has been added to a Project, not only will they be notified by email but they will also see the invite in their dashboard in the 'Waiting on you' widget. 

This widget will display the following information to the user;

• Organisation: the Author's associated organisation
• User: the name of the Author who provided project access
• Email: email address of the Author
• Role:
• Project name: name of the project you are being invited to
• Project Step: the step in the process you are being invited to
• Status: the status of the Project Step
• Action: what the Author is asking you to do, for example: Endorse or Approve
• Time: when the request was made  

Contributor Sharing Log - Resending Invite

Authors have the ability to resend an invite should the nominated user not receive their invite. They can do this by accessing the relevant Action menu in the Contributor Sharing Log, and selecting 'Resend Invite'.

Contributor Sharing Log - Editing Access Parameters

Editing the share settings for a contributor is similarly achieved by accessing the relevant Action menu in the Contributor Sharing Log, and selecting 'Open'. This will open the sharing modal.

Contributor Sharing Log - Access

When a user is invited to a Project they will be given a temporary access token which will expire after 4 days. 

These access tokens will also expire under the following conditions:

• If an Author decides to revoke access to the Project, by clicking on the relevant Action menu in the Contributor Sharing Log and then disabling the Access toggle.
• If a Contributor has Approved, Rejected or selected to Cancel their contribution.

If access is required after it has been revoked for any reason, the Author can re-enable access by enabling the Access toggle in the relevant Action menu.

Project - Audit Logs

The audit logs capture all the status's a Project had gone through up to this point.

On each entry you can see the project status, date of change, and user who made the change. By clicking any entry in the log, you will be able to review the data as of that change. New or updated fields will have a plus sign before their field name.

Contributors

Contributors on a Project will be granted temporary access to a project by an Author via a system email. Depending on the status of the Project step the contributor may be asked to provide data and approve their data, or they might be invited to a Project solely as an approver. In each case a contributor has 3 options;

• Approve: provide their approval for a Project Step
• Reject: reject a Project Step
• Decline: tell the Author they cannot approve or reject

Contributors can see a list of all the Project Steps they have been asked to contribute on in the Projects Shared With Me tab of the Projects page.

Declining must be done from the Actions menu of the Project Step in the Projects Shared With Me table.

Approving or Rejecting must be done after the contributor has at least reviewed the Step in question.

In all options the contributor will be invited to provide comments to the Project Author if they wish. 

Projects Shared With Me

On the Projects page, projects that a user has been asked to contribute on can be accessed from the Projects Shared with Me tab. The only actions available per shared Project Step will be Open and Decline.

Creating a Project from an Existing Project - Coming Soon!

SYNTAQ's platform will soon allow a user to reuse data from an existing project when starting a new Project. When an Author has selected '+ Start New Project' they will be presented with two options:

• Create new Project: This will create a new Project with no historical data. 
• Create a new Project from an established Project:  This will allow the Author to pick a Project from a list of their Projects that can be used to populate the new Project.

Look out for this in a future release!