Projects, activities and project leads
Ask AI
Who creates projects and activities, what a project lead can do, and how to keep a project to its own people
Who sets projects up, who runs them, and who can log time to them.
How projects work
A project holds activities (named buckets such as "Code review", plus the General time bucket every project has) and people, each a Member or a Lead. Admins manage every project; a lead manages the projects they lead.
The Projects page
Time tracking → Projects (it used to sit under Settings; old links redirect) shows each person a different list:
- Admins see every project, with search, Lead, Issue source and Status filters, each project's activity count, and a Project rules link to the workspace settings.
- Managers see the same list, opening on Led by you.
- Everyone else sees Your projects: the projects they are on, the ones they lead first.
Each row opens the project's own page, so you can open it in a new tab, bookmark it or paste its link to a colleague (older links to a project still open it). The row's menu goes straight to its People or Activities.
New project appears for whoever the workspace lets create projects. It asks for a name, and optionally a code, a colour and a project to copy activities from (Copy activities from a project…). Creating it opens the new project on Activities. If the copy fails, the project is still created: use Copy from project… there to try again.
A project's page
A project's page has the tabs Details, Activities, People and, for some people, Time:
- Details is where the project is edited, in place. Whoever may edit it changes the fields and then picks Save changes (or Discard). Leaving the page or the tab with unsaved changes asks first. Everyone else sees the same details as text.
- Activities and People are described below.
- Time shows the project's hours by activity or person over the last 4 or 13 weeks, with Export CSV. Admins, managers and the project's leads see it; a manager who does not lead the project sees only the people they manage.
Make default, Archive project and Reactivate project are in the ... menu beside the project's name, shown only to the people who may use them. The way back to the list is the Projects link above the name.
What a lead can do
On a project they lead, a lead can:
- edit its name, code, colour and description on Details, and archive or reactivate it;
- add, rename, archive and reactivate activities, or Copy from project… another project's;
- add people as Member or Lead, change their role, and remove them;
- choose Who can log time and link teams (below);
- see everyone's hours on the project on its Time tab.
Only an admin makes a project the workspace default, sets its issue tracker or default time category, or sets an activity's category; a lead sees those on Details as text. Admins name a project's first lead; a manager who creates a project leads it. Once a project has an active lead, only an admin can remove or demote the last one.
Workspace rules
Settings → Time tracking → Projects and activities (admin only) holds two settings, each applied as soon as it is picked:
- Who can create projects: Admins, or Admins and managers (the default). Managers means people with the Manager role.
- Who can add activities: Admins and project leads (the default), Admins, leads and project members, or Anyone who can log to the project.
Whoever may add activities can also do it from the time picker (Create activity); anyone else is told who leads the project, or to ask a workspace admin.
Members-only projects
On the People tab, Who can log time is Everyone (the default) or Only its people and teams. A members-only project takes new time only from its members and leads and from everyone in a team linked under Teams. Below the Manager role nobody else sees it; managers and admins see it but cannot log new time there unless they are on it. Someone taken off it keeps their entries and can still lower or clear them. The workspace default project always stays open to everyone.
Worked example
Northlake keeps the default rules. Marta, an admin, makes Tomasz a lead of "Platform v2". Tomasz copies the activities of "Maintenance & support" into it, adds "Code review", and adds Aleksandra as a member. Platform v2 is now the first project in Aleksandra's time picker. When she picks it and types "Release notes", the picker tells her that Tomasz leads the project and can add activities.