Adding Projects – RealtimeCRM

What are Projects and why are they useful?

Projects are usually created when you win an Opportunity. Once an Opportunity has gone through all the stages in the Sales Pipeline it will be assigned to a Project. Although this will not happen if you mark the Opportunity as ‘Lost’.

Projects in RealtimeCRM allow you to track your ongoing business endeavours. Allowing you to add stages within Projects to show you how near to completion the Project is. You can even specify different Project Types that have their own unique set of stages. This is of great value in moulding RealtimeCRM around each specific customer’s needs to fulfil a Project.

What are Project Stages?

Stages are the stages that must be followed by your Projects in order to reach completion. An example of a stage could be an ‘Inception’ stage in which you gather all the information you need to begin working on your Project in the first place.

Once the fact finding mission with your client is complete you can then move the Project forward onto the next stage, in this way you organise and standardise the way the you attack Projects in order to most effectively complete them.

What are Project Types?

It is highly unlikely that all Projects will follow the same format for example you may have two very different products you’re developing that require different stages on the road to delivery to your Customer or you may offer a service and a product with the service requiring a much longer Project and as such RealtimeCRM allows you the flexibility to account for as many different Project types as you require. In the example below we have two different Project types; a Standard Project type which has four Stages and a Consulting Project Type which has three stages:

**Note**: Each circle represents an individual Project. You can create as many Project Types as you wish with as many different Stages within each one. The point is to allow you to tailor RealtimeCRM to most accurately reflect your Project management structure. We will go over how to create a new Project type later on but first we’ll go over the basics of Projects in RealtimeCRM.

Adding a Project

Although Projects are usually created after going through RealtimeCRM’s Sales Pipeline. You can go into Projects and create one without going through the in-app Sales Process. This is useful if a sale happens outside of RealtimeCRM, and you haven’t recorded it as an Opportunity inside RealtimeCRM.

Click on the Projects panel on the left hand sidebar
Once you’re on the Projects page click the Add project button
A new dialog box will open within which you can enter the details of the Project including its name, value, custom field information and which member of your team will be primarily responsible for overseeing the Project. You can also create the associated Company and Contact from this form as well if they have not already been created
It also allows you to link the Project to the relevant Company and Contact inside this form and it will appear automatically on the Company record after you have completed the Project creation form
Once you have completed the form click Create and you will be ready to use your Project

Note: To assign staff to a Project they must be registered as Users on RealtimeCRM.

Duplicating a Project

Sometimes we run more than one project for a Client, or an Opportunity that we win is delivered through more than a single Project path. To help minimise data entry you can Duplicate an existing project simply by clicking Duplicate Project .

Once you confirm the warning dialog box a new Project will be created for that Client or Contact and given the same name with (2) after it. You can then modify any details that need to be modified before starting to deliver it.

Adding a Stage to a Project type

Click on your Username in the top right corner
From the drop-down menu select ‘Settings’
Then click on the ‘Configuration’ panel
Once on the Configuration page scroll down until you see the ‘Project Types’ heading
Then look for the Project type you wish to add a Stage to
In this example we will be adding a Stage to the ‘Standard Project’ type
Next to the relevant Project Type you should click the Add stage button
A new dialog box will open within which you can enter the name and a brief description of this new Stage
Once you are happy with the details simply click ‘Create’ and your new Stage will be ready to use
You can also change the order the stage appears in by clicking and dragging the symbol

Removing a Stage or Project Type?
To remove a Stage simply click Delete button to the right of its name
To remove a Project Type simply click the Delete button next to the Project type’s name