dotProject Version 2.0.

2 Basic User Manual

Section 2: Project Elements – Company, Contact, Users

De Bortoli Wines

Table of Contents
Setting Up Project Elements............................................................................................................................ 2
Company Structure...................................................................................................................................... 2
The Companies Module.......................................................................................................................... 3
Sortable Columns............................................................................................................................... 4
Selecting a Company / Viewing Details..............................................................................................4
Detailed Company Display......................................................................................................................4
Company Tabs................................................................................................................................... 5
Creating a Company............................................................................................................................... 5
Editing / Deleting a Company..................................................................................................................8
Create a Department...............................................................................................................................9
Editing / Deleting a Department.............................................................................................................. 9
Contacts and Users................................................................................................................................... 11
Contact Module Listing..........................................................................................................................11
Creating Editing and Deleting Contacts........................................................................................... 13
Users, Roles, Permissions and Access Accounts..................................................................................... 14

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Section 2: Project Elements – Company, Contact, Users

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Setting Up Project Elements

Setting up a Project involves the set up of a number of different elements all of which come together to form
the total Project Management environment. This section of the manual covers the setting up of Companies,
Contacts and how Users then interact throughout the system.

Company Structure
The Company record is the central component of dotProject. In some cases, the term “Company” can be
misleading as it is possible to use the company record to reflect internal departments, associate
organisations, companies, community groups or any other “entity” under which you would like to group
Projects, Users, Contacts and other dotProject Elements.

Once a company record has been established, it can have as many users, projects, contacts etc.
associated with it as required. A contact, however, does not need to be associated with any company (it
can just be an item on its own), whereas Projects and Users must be associated with a Company. You also
need to keep in mind that whilst one Company can have many elements associated with it, each individual
user and project can only belong to one company at a time.

Illustration 1: Our
Company

Illustration
Illustration
2: Project
3: Project
Four
One
Illustration
Illustration 5: Project
4: Project Three
Two

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Section 2: Project Elements – Company, Contact, Users

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The Companies Module

The Companies Module is used to manage all company records.

As per standard dotProject layout you'll notice This filter is automatically set to the person who is
that this screen is divided up into tabs – based logged in. It means that the only company records
on Company Type shown are those that belong to this user.

There is also a search function included here which will search within the module for any string that you
enter.

Keep an eye on your filter settings throughout dotProject. It is the most common cause for
people thinking that data within their system has gone “missing”. The filter on companies
for example, automatically sets to show only those companies that belong to the logged in
user. There could be lots of other entries that you will not see until you change your filter
setting.

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Section 2: Project Elements – Company, Contact, Users

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Sortable Columns
As you can see from the above example, the company listing is broken down into specific columns of
information. You can click on those column headings to change the sort from ASCENDING to
DESCENDING (toggles between the two orders).

Sort order are not retained for when you next login.

Selecting a Company / Viewing Details

To display the details of any company in your listing, click on the company name and dotProject will take
you straight to the detailed company display.
Detailed Company Display
The detailed company displays shows all the information recorded for a particular company record.

The display is broken into two sections down the screen - the header showing the Details and Description of
the company and then the Tabs listed at the bottom of the screen.

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Section 2: Project Elements – Company, Contact, Users

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Company Tabs
The standard tabs that are displayed in the Company listing are:

Active Projects Lists all of the projects associated with this particular company.

Archived Projects Lists all of the archived (active flag turned off) projects that belong to this particular
company.

Departments Lists all of the departments that have been generated for this company.

Users Lists all of the users who are associated with this Company.

Contacts Lists all of the Contacts associated with this Company.

Files Lists all of the files that have been associated with the Company.

As with all displays, wherever practical there are links directly to the listed elements, for example, if you
click on any of the project names in either of the Project Tabs then the Project Detail Screen will be
displayed showing that project.
Creating a Company
A company record can be created from:

➢ - new item - > Company

➢ Companies Module > new company button on the top right

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All of these fields should be self-explanatory with the exception of the URL – this is used to record a
relevant web address for the company you are generating. It may be their home website address, an
internal link to your ERP/CRM system or similar reference point.

You will also notice that the Company Owner field is automatically set to the person who is creating the
entry. You can change that to any other dotProject user if you wish.
Editing / Deleting a Company
You can edit the details of any existing company record by choosing the Company and Displaying the
Company Details. There is an option in the breadcrumbs on the right hand side of the Company Detail
screen: edit this company. Select that option and you will be taken straight into the edit screen.

If you wish to delete the company record you have displayed, go into edit and on the right hand side of the
screen there will be a delete option:

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You can only delete a company if there are no other dotProject elements associated with
it. This includes Active or Archived Projects, users, contacts, departments and so on. If
there are any associated elements then the delete company option may not even be
displayed.
Create a Department
Departments are sub-sets of Companies which can be used to further group projects, users etc. The only
catch with the use of departments is that as of dotProject 2.0.2 there is no way that you can control access
to elements down to departmental level as you can with Companies. You will also notice that the ability to
filter at the departmental level is minimal at present. If, however, you want to create a department against a
company you can use the new department link on the Department tab in the Company Detail display. This
will then allow you to create a department:

You can actually group departments under departments as per the Parent link on this screen if you want to.

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Section 2: Project Elements – Company, Contact, Users

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Editing / Deleting a Department

As with all other dotProject options, to edit a department, find the department name under the relevant
company, click on the name to take you to the main departmental screen and you will have a breadcrumb
option to : edit this department

Deleting is done via edit department screen with the same proviso as for companies – if you have any
elements attached to a department you will not be able to delete it.

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Section 2: Project Elements – Company, Contact, Users

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Contacts and Users

In dotProject terminology, a User is somebody with login access to dotProject. They can have a contact
record associated with their username and password or login record. A contact is not somebody who can
login to dotProject, but has an address “card” recorded. Contacts can be attached to projects and/or tasks
to receive general updates, but they cannot be assigned to actively work on any tasks. Users can be
assigned to work on tasks as they have access to dotProject and can manage their workload.

In recent versions of dotProject we have been gradually working to correct some design difficulties which
resulted in completely separate records for Contacts and Users. Because of this you may find that users
who were created in older versions of dotProject will not have an associated contact record.

Any users that are created in recent versions automatically have the option to generate a contact record for
them, but as user maintenance is a system administration function we have not included any further details
on how this is done in this manual.
Contact Module Listing
The main contact module listing shows all of the contact records in your system:

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You will see from the above example that there is an edit option beside each contact. There is also a
(Projects) option which will be displayed beside a Contact that has been associated with any Projects. Click
on that link to take you straight to a project listing. You will also notice that the email addresses for the
contacts are highlighted in blue. Clicking on any of those links should automatically open an outgoing email
address (provided your email client is set up correctly).

At the top of the screen there are some search and display options:

The search
option will
automatically
match
whatever
The alphabetical listing at the top of the screen provides a quick link to characters
filtering the contact listing. Click on any of the alpha characters to you enter
show only those contacts with a last name that starts with that letter against all
(you will notice that some options are highlighted in blue to indicate contact fields
that there are matches).

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Section 2: Project Elements – Company, Contact, Users

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Creating Editing and Deleting Contacts

Creating a new contact is done via:
➢ -new item - > Contact
➢ Contact Module
➢ Contact Tab on Project Detail Screen

All of the fields on this screen should be self explanatory with the exception of the [use in display] links. The
Display Name field in this record is used to stipulate how to format the contact name on the screen,
alternatively you may want to use a nickname or similar. If after entering the first and last name of the
contact, you click on the [use in display] option after the last name field then dotProject will automatically set
up the Display name for you. You can, alternatively, enter the name yourself. If you use the [use in display]
beside Company (after you have selected the contact's associated company), then the Display name will be
set to the company name.
a vcard option for importing standardised address records is included as is a CSV
export to extract a copy of all contact details.

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Section 2: Project Elements – Company, Contact, Users

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Users, Roles, Permissions and Access Accounts

dotProject uses a concept of user roles and extra layers of permissions to provide everyone with access to
all areas of dotProject and the details within the database.

Roles are established by your system administrator and applied for all users as necessary. The general
user of dotProject has no control over the permissions that they have been granted, but we think it is
important that you have a fairly general understanding of how they work.

The role and permissions that you have been assigned will be visible to you via your MyInfo option, the
Permissions and the Role tab.

Firstly the role, roles are named by your System Administrator so it could effectively be called anything. In
general we suggest that you create roles that reflect the work type being performed by the team members.
You may find that you have been assigned a role of “project worker”, it may be that there are roles like
“Company ABC representative”. Ultimately the purpose of a role is to set up the dotProject software
modules that you are allowed to access. You can see which role has been assigned to you via your MyInfo
tabs, but the specifics of what that role grants you are not viewable.

Secondly, permissions. Over and above roles, specific permissions can be granted to manage access
within modules. Normally permissions are applied to grant you access to specific Companies or Projects,
etc. You will be able to see the applied Permissions via the MyInfo Tabs again.

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