What are project groups?
Project groups put you in control of organizing your jobs in CoConstruct.
While you can sort and report on projects in different ways, such as by status or by the person who could clear updates, you occasionally need something more specific so you can do more advanced reports, get fewer instant alerts, or tweak what shows up on your main menu.
That's where project groups come to the rescue.
Here are the many ideas for possible ways to organize your project groups:
- By Phase – Prospect, Design, Pre-construction, Construction, Warranty
- By Project Manager – Bob, Diane, Jake, etc...
- By Location or Development – Willow Hills, Old Trail, Belvedere, etc...
- By Project Type or Division – New construction, Remodel, Outdoor Living, etc..
- By Financial Structure – Fixed Price, Cost-Plus, Fixed Fee, etc...
Will project groups help me?
If you have a double-digit number of projects going at a time, or if you have more than one project manager, odds are that you'll want to use project groups.
To get your wheels turning, here are some examples of how your fellow CoConstruct users organize their project groups:
- A design/build firm in Michigan wanted to separate design projects from construction projects.
- A semi-custom builder in Alberta, who has over 100 homes in various states of prospect, design, and construction statuses, wanted its project managers to only see projects and get alerts for the developments they managed.
- A remodeler in Georgia, with a big geographic reach, wanted to view projects in certain locations so he could more efficiently schedule team members and trades on projects that are clustered together.
Customizing your groups
You will have a set of default project groups already loaded into your account, but since the possibilities are endless, you can customize these at any time! To do that, have your CoConstruct account administrator go to the Settings > Account and click on the "Contacts & Project Groups" tab.
There's a section for "Project Groups." Click on that, and you'll see the spot for adding and editing your group names.
Putting your projects into groups
You can add projects to groups when you set up a new project or by editing an existing project's Setup page.
In either case, you'll see the group option on the top left section of the page.
Also note that a project can be in multiple project groups at the same time.
Using your groups
Once you have projects assigned to groups, here are some of the ways you can use them.
Filter your projects on the Projects page
Your groups will appear in the filtering drop down list on the left side of the main Projects page.
Especially if you have a large number of projects, using your groups here will clear unneeded clutter from your screen.
Task Manager filters
The "Filter & Search" feature in the Task Manager has an option to look at projects within a certain group. Whether you want a list, calendar, or Gantt view, it's simple to see open tasks across just the projects you want.
Instant alerts
Stay in the loop with email alerts -- but only on the projects you want -- by going to your Personal Settings (located under your name) and scrolling down to the Instant Alert Preferences. You can pick to receive your alerts for only a given project group. That way, whenever a project is added to that group, you'll automatically get only the alerts you want.
