How you can easily manage your projects in your organization.

1. Project Management
Release 10
Original version by Odoo
November 30, 2017
Contents
1 Introduction 3
2 Video Case Study 3
3 Manage your Projects Efficiently 3
3.1 Create an Internal Project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
3.2 Welcome to your Collaborative Board: your Tasks! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3.3 3. Create Projects from Templates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
4 Schedule your Projects 5
4.1 Log your Work Activities on Tasks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
4.2 Plan & Follow your Activities through Convenient Views . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
4.3 Delegate Tasks & Check the Work Done . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
5 Populate your Tasks from your Sales 7
6 Manage Issues on Projects 7
6.1 Manage a Support Project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
6.2 Escalate an Issue to the Next Level . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
6.3 Invoice your Working Time on Issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
7 Embed your Community in your Project Management 8
7.1 Let External Users Access your Project Portal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
7.2 Publish your Public Projects on your Website . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

2. 8 Analyze the Efficiency of your Project Processes 9
8.1 Analyze the Workload on Tasks .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
8.2 Highlight the Velocity to Close Issues .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
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3. 1 Introduction
The Project Management application will help you manage and follow your projects, tasks and issues
in Odoo in an agile, social and flexible way and in real time!
• Different views are designed to fit your own needs: work on tasks and issues using the kanban
view; schedule tasks in the gantt view; control deadlines in the calendar view.
• Incoming emails are integrated automatically to create new tasks and issues on the fly, allowing
you to collaborate easily with customers.
• Task Management with alerts to stay up to date with all that interests you, with collaborative writing to
work on the same task at the same time, with task delegation and a chatter to work together.
• Timesheets, Contracts & Invoice: Projects are automatically integrated with customer contracts
allowing you to prepare an invoice based on time & materials and to record timesheets easily.
• Issues Tracker: Single out the issues that arise in a project in order to have a better focus on resolving them.
Integrate customer interaction on every issue and get accurate reports on the performance of your team.
2 Video Case Study
Our company manages a lot of projects with people working around the world. We efficiently manage
tasks for customer projects as well as our support issues thanks to our Project Apps. By tracking
those data in the system, we can easily follow our operations and generate accurate statistics on
them (time to make a customer fully operational, etc.) in order to improve our processes continuously.
3 Manage your Projects Efficiently
A project is an activity processed by your employees. It can be internal or customer-oriented.
A task is something to perform as part of a project. You will be able to give different tasks to several
employees working on this project.
3.1 Create an Internal Project
• Start from Odoo.com and start a new instance with Project Management. If you are already
using Odoo, install the application from the Settings.
• Create a project.
• Add a project manager and some team members (users). Explain that team members can be
used in filters to limit the number of projects displayed.
• Do not set a customer since it is an internal project.
• Under Other Info, set the privacy to Internal Project.
• Set a start & an end date.
• Under Project Stages, customize the task stages by adding or (re)moving items.
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4. Note:
• Project Privacy:
– Public: everybody sees everything; if portal is activated, portal users see all tasks or issues.
– Portal: everybody sees everything; if portal is activated, portal users see the tasks or issues
followed by them or by someone in their company.
– Employees Only: employees see all tasks or issues.
– Followers Only: employees see only the followed tasks or issues; if portal is activated,
portal users see the followed tasks or issues.
• The end date on a project is its expiration date. If you combine both Project & Billing
applications, you can also check which contract (=customer project) has to be renewed if you
have put an expiration date on your project.
3.2 Welcome to your Collaborative Board: your Tasks!
Odoo Tasks are made to help you work together with your colleagues. This is as easy as it is useful!
• Create some related tasks.
• Assign responsibles & reviewers.
• Add a short description and tags in order to help you for quicker research.
• Under Extra Info, define a priority, a sequence number (will influence the way your list of tasks is displayed).
• Set starting/ending dates (Gantt view) and a deadline for the reviewer (Kanban & Calendar view).
• Drag & drop tasks from the Kanban view. You can also change the stage from the form view.
• Use the chatter to communicate with people involved (added as followers).
Tip:
• Odoo allows you to replace the task description field by an Etherpad collaborative note
(http://etherpad.org). Tick Use integrated collaborative note pads on task in your Project settings
to get it. It allows several people to work on the same tasks, at the same time. Every user has its
own color and you can replay the whole creation of the content.
3.3 3. Create Projects from Templates
• Set up a project.
• Set this project as a template by clicking the dedicated button.
• Create a new project based on this template and set it up by adding a manager, team members,
a customer, etc.
• Create tasks within this project.
Tip:
• You can generate tasks automatically from a template. Assign tasks to a project template and
they will be duplicated for all the new projects created from this template.
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5. 4 Schedule your Projects
Odoo’s Project Management provides you with a variety of tools that can easily be adapted to your
own project management system in order to optimize your time in a simple and professional way.
4.1 Log your Work Activities on Tasks
Now that your projects are running, people can start working on them and record the time they spend on each task.
Odoo allows you to easily compare estimations with the time spent in order to find out the status of your projects.
• Tick Manage time estimation on tasks and Log work activities on tasks in Project settings.
• Choose your preferred working time unit for time estimation.
• Then, add time estimations for your tasks.
• As the task responsible, encode work activities on tasks and have a look at the progress bar
(time spent/planned time).
• Show the list view by user.
Tip:
• Work activities can generate timesheets in your Human Resources application. It allows you to
embed those activities in the revenues/costs analysis, in your contract invoicing, etc. To do so, tick
Record timesheet lines per tasks. Each project can be retrieved as an analytic account in HR and
Billing/Accounting applications. Have a look at those chapters to learn more about timesheets.
4.2 Plan & Follow your Activities through Convenient Views
Work on tasks using the Kanban view, schedule tasks in the Gantt Chart and control deadlines in the
Calendar view.
1. The Kanban View
It is a “post-it”-like view to quickly take actions and to rapidly detect any bottleneck in your project
flows. The Kanban view allows you to:
• easily drag & drop your tasks from one stage to another;
• add colors to your tasks to improve your work structure;
• change the grey button (in progress) into green (ready for next step) or red (blocked) colors;
• put priority on your tasks; the highest priority will be the first in the list;
• check the remaining time on each stage, each task, each project.
2. The Gantt View
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6. This is a view to see your project planning and adapt it according to new factors or people’s agendas.
This chart shows you:
• the starting & ending date of each task, arranged by projects;
• the time estimation of each project (this is an addition of the time estimation of each task
belonging to this project);
• the remaining work time for each user thanks to the filter.
3. The Calendar View
It helps you to manage the deadlines of each task.
• Explore the Kanban view advantages: drag&drop, easy stage management, priorities, status
button, colors, etc.
• Encode the starting and ending date for the Gantt view and check the chart.
• Change dates by moving items from the Gantt view.
• Add deadlines to tasks and check the calendar.
• In Kanban or List view, group by Responsible and filter on tasks that should be finished before
the end of the week (deadline). That way you can easily find out timing issues.
So many useful ways to work on your tasks and time estimation for each project!
4.3 Delegate Tasks & Check the Work Done
If an employee takes a week off, he will delegate his task to one of his colleagues. After delegation, there
are two different tasks: the first one with the new responsible, and the second named “CHECK” with the
previous responsible. Show that on the tasks there is a follow-up with parent and delegated tasks.
• Tick Allow task delegation in Project settings.
• As a project manager, delegate a task of someone on holiday to another person (from the Delegation tab).
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7. • Change the title of the delegated task (duplicate of the original task) and set the planned time
(the remaining time by default).
• Update the validation task (original task) which is meant for the first responsible to check the
work done by the new responsible.
5 Populate your Tasks from your Sales
The Project Management app is fully integrated with other applications. Here, we will discover how to
generate tasks from sales order lines. This is really useful, because it makes you save precious time.
• Tick Generate tasks from sale orders in Project settings.
• Create a product with the following information:
– Product type = Service;
– On the Procurements tab, tick Create Task Automatically.
• Create a sales order with this product.
• Choose the right project (or contract linked to a project) if you are using the Contract
Management app (cfr Billing chapter).
• Retrieve the task within the project once the sales order has been confirmed.
Note:
How to get the task in the right project?
• In your product form, when Create Task Automatically is ticked, you are able to link the product
to a generic project.
• From a quotation, you are able to select the Contract/Analytic and the task will be created in this project
when the quotation is confirmed. Pay attention that when you add a project in the product form and then
choose another project in the quotation, the task will be created on the project entered in the product form!
• Make sure you have created a real Project, either from the Projects menu, or from the Contracts
menu where you tick Tasks to automatically create a project.
6 Manage Issues on Projects
6.1 Manage a Support Project
An issue is a problem that occurs within a project and needs to be solved and followed up. With the
Project Management app, you are able to link an email address to a project. This will allow the system
to create an issue or a task for each email received via the referenced address.
• Apply Track issues and bugs in Project settings.
• Create a project to manage issues.
• Set an email alias and opt for generating Issues for incoming emails.
• Create an issue manually or by sending an email.
• Assign to someone, add some tags and mark the issue as a priority.
• Use the chatter to discuss with the contact.
• Update the issue stage.
• As soon as the issue is closed, have a look at the statistics under Extra
Info. Once again, Odoo software is there for you to make work easier!
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8. 6.2 Escalate an Issue to the Next Level
Issues can be managed at different levels in Odoo. For instance when people from level 1 are not
able to fix the issue, they can escalate it to the second level, and so on.
• Create 2 projects for which you handle issues. Assume the second project is the project
escalation of the first one. You can set up escalation in the project form of the first project, under
Other Info > Miscellaneous > Project Escalation.
• Escalate an issue that needs to move to the next level.
Note:
• The project manager of the escalation project (as well as all the project followers) is added as a
follower of this issue, so he gets warned in his message box.
6.3 Invoice your Working Time on Issues
Just as for tasks, you are able to invoice your issues working time. As every project is linked to a contract,
you can choose to invoice the customer based on timesheets, fixed price and/or charge expenses.
• Tick Invoice working time on issues.
• Make sure Contract Management is installed too.
• Open a customer project and click the Contract link.
• In the contract, apply the invoicing based on timesheets, select the default pricelist and set the
invoicing ratio to 100%.
• Add some worklogs for an issue of this project.
• Then, go to Project > Invoicing > Invoice Tasks. Here you retrieve the timesheets recorded from both
issues and tasks that have to be invoiced (Invoicing on Timesheets applied to the related contract).
• Select the timesheets to invoice and click Create Invoice from the pull-down menu More.
• Select the details to show in the invoice and generate it.
7 Embed your Community in your Project Management
7.1 Let External Users Access your Project Portal
The Project Portal is installed by default. As soon as you send a message to a task/issue’s follower, this person
can access the portal thanks to an embedded link in the notification email. The portal allows external users to
have a look at the public history of all the tasks/issues they are following (expect for Internal projects). Internal
notes are not included in this public history (only automatic notifications and messages).
• As the contact of the created issue, connect to your portal from the email received from Odoo.
Be sure to connect from a browser session not connected to Odoo.com yet.
• Once logged in, have a look at the history of the issue and send a message to the followers from the chatter.
• Have a look at the other records you have access to.
7.2 Publish your Public Projects on your Website
If you have created a website with Odoo, you can publish your public projects easily, in order to share
its content and inform your community about the real time status.
• Install the Public Projects addon from the available modules list.
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9. • Set the project privacy to Public.
• On your website, click Projects in the footer to retrieve your public projects in a public Kanban view.
8 Analyze the Efficiency of your Project Processes
As a manager, you need to keep an eye on the tasks and issues from the different projects in order to drive
your company. The Reporting section enables you to perform accurate analysis on your business data.
8.1 Analyze the Workload on Tasks
The Reporting tool for tasks will help you find out the bottlenecks in your projects in terms of
resources and stages, the most efficient workers, the average delays, etc.
• Go to Reporting ! Project and discover the multi-dimensional analysis, the measure items and
the favorite searches.
• Make appropriate searches to find out:
– the planned hours and the remaining time by responsible;
– the most loaded responsible in terms of number of tasks and remaining hours;
– the most critical bottleneck in terms of tasks in delay (Overpassed Deadline = amount);
– the best responsible in terms of progression (%);
– a trend in terms of time to accomplish tasks;
– the stage in which the delay is the most important.
Note:
• Cumulative Flow: allows a workload analysis per stage and per Kanban status (In Progress /
Blocked / Ready for next stage).
8.2 Highlight the Velocity to Close Issues
Regarding issues, the metrics project managers want to estimate are about the time needed to fix problems, etc.
Find out:
• the average working hours to close an issue;
• the number of current issues to solve in priority;
• the quickest operator to close issues.
Note:
• The working hours used to compute such statistics are based on the Working Time defined on
related projects, under Other Info. You can set it up as soon as you apply Invoice working time
on issues in Project settings.
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