Project Team Overview

6 minutes
9 months ago

Project Team Overview

Your company may have various departments, and may deal with multiple AECO firms. You may deal with many contacts from each department and firm. The Project Team activity center enables you to create a unique team for each project based on who participates in each project. It enables you to assemble and manage a team for each project, divide the team into smaller groups, generate project team reports, and view the active items and historical activity associated with each team member.

Project team information is used by activity centers throughout Project Center. When assigning project items or transferring files, you can choose which team members to assign or send the project items or files to using the Choose Project Team Members dialog box.

Current user

The current user is name of the user currently logged into Project Center. The current user does not have to be a member of the project team to view, create, or edit project items in Project Center. Use the Join Project Team dialog box to join the project team. You can edit the current user’s information in the Edit My Profile dialog box.

Adding team members

Newly created projects have no project team members. They need to be added if they are going to benefit from activity centers and file sharing. You can add them directly in the Project Team activity center.

Adding team members from Microsoft Outlook

Project Center provides several other ways to add project team members:

  • You can add project team members by dragging and dropping contacts from the Microsoft Outlook Contacts tab into the Project Team activity center.

  • You can add team members from the Project Center contacts database when creating Project Center items, or when sharing files.

Internal vs. external project team members

Project Center automatically manages the status of the project team members (whether they are internal or external).

  • Contacts who have logged into Project Center automatically become internal project team members.

    • The internal project team is composed of contacts from a company who are Project Center users connected to that company’s Project Center Server. The company may also have an Info Exchange Server. Internal project team members can send and receive file transfers to and from the Info Exchange Server via Project Center.

  • Contacts added to the project team who have never logged into Project Center are automatically added as external team members. (Project Center automatically changes them to internal team members when they first log into Project Center.)

    • The external project team consists of any contacts who work on a project with the company, but are not Project Center users. External project team members who have been provided with login credentials to the company’s Info Exchange Server can send and receive file transfers using the company’s Info Exchange Server via their web browsers.

Note the following differences between internal and external project team members:

Internal

  • Internal team members can see everything on Info Exchange.

  • Info Exchange email notifications for internal team members contain hyperlinks to Project Center items that open Project Center to the related item’s activity center.

  • Internal team members receive periodic reminder email notifications for overdue and coming due project items.

  • Internal team members can subscribe to all communication sent by a selected set of external team members. See Subscribing to an external team member below.

  • Internal team members are indicated by the icon.

External

  • External team members only see project items on Info Exchange that they are involved with. They do not see the full file transfer or contract management logs. The visibility of individual project team members on Info Exchange can be controlled by the Member Visibility on Info Exchange setting in the Modify Project Team Member dialog box.

  • Info Exchange notifications for external team members do not contain links to Project Center items. They only have links to Info Exchange URLs. Info Exchange notifications for external team members contain links to the related items on the Info Exchange website.

  • External team members do not receive daily email reminders for overdue or coming due items. However, they do get email reminders when an Info Exchange file transfer, contract management item, or project folder that they have not yet downloaded is about to expire.

  • See Info Exchange Workflow Examples for External Users for guidelines on how external project team members might use the Info Exchange site.

  • External team members are indicated by the icon.

Visibility on Info Exchange

The Member Visibility on Info Exchange setting in the Modify Project Team Member dialog box allows internal project team members to determine which team members get listed in the Project Team page of the Info Exchange website. This is important since some internal members such as partners or administrative staff may want to join the team but not allow external members to see their contact details on Info Exchange. Additionally, there may be external project team members you may want to hide from one another (such as competitors on a bid package you are working on).

Additional information

Project team groups

Project teams can be further defined into groups. You can combine project team members (such as members of a department) into groups to simplify communication.

You can drag and drop a distribution list from Microsoft Outlook into the Project Team activity center. The distribution list is added as a new group, and all of the contacts in the distribution list are transferred to the group.

Discipline

The project team member Disciplines field allows you to assign one or more disciplines to individual project team members. This enables both internal and external team members to more effectively communicate with team members on specific topics.

Project Team reports

There are two types of project team-based reports:

  • The Projects by Member Report lists each project that the currently selected team members belong to. This is done by selecting a contact, then clicking Create a Projects by Member Report from the Tasks panel of the Project Team activity center or the Project Center Administration activity center Contacts tab.

  • The Project Team Report is used to create a project team roster including all contact fields that are currently displayed in the Project Team activity center. This is done by clicking Create a Report from the Tasks panel of the Project Team activity center.

Subscribing to an external team member

An internal project team member can register to receive notifications when a file transfer, transmittal, or contract management item is logged from an external project team member the internal team member has subscribed to. The Project Center user who logs or receives the file transfer, transmittal, or contract management item will be prompted to send a notification to all subscribed project team members. To subscribe to an external project team member, click Subscribe to External Communication from the Tasks panel of the Project Team activity center.

Any team members that are currently subscribed to by the current user will have a mailbox icon next to their names in the Project Team activity center.

Project Teams Mobile app

The Project Teams Mobile app is available for the iPad, iPhone, and Android® Smartphones. Refer to Newforma Mobile Apps to get started.