Projects
Learn more about:
- Projects
- Changing tools
- Adding multiple tools
- Removing multiple tools
- Inviting people
- Switching a team member to a client (and vice versa!)
- Settings
- Closing comments
- Turning a team into a project
- Using the directory of all projects
Projects
Projects are the heart of Basecamp. You can make projects for every major thing you have going on — like a marketing campaign, a new product launch, or a project for a client. Inside projects, you’ll post announcements, chat, organize and assign work, set deadlines, share files, and present ideas.
Add a new Project
To create a new project, click the button beneath your company logo or company name:
Give your project a name and add a description about it, or take a look at your project templates. You can also decide on the project schedule right away, and select if the project will be Invite-only or All-Access:
NOTE: Do the same sorts of projects over and over? Save yourself time by adding frequently-used messages, to-dos, files, and more to a project template. Learn more →
Click 'Create this project' to start the project. Once that’s done, you’re in!
Click the project and you’ll see the five tools that are part of every project by default: Campfire, Message Board, To-dos, Schedule, and Docs & Files. You can organize these in the order you want them in:
Change your tools
Personalize the tools you need to get your work done!
If a project doesn't need all of the project tools in it by default, you can turn them off. Click the Change tools link in the ... menu.
Any changes you make will be reflected to anyone else on the project. For example, if you turn off Automatic Check-Ins, it turns them off for everyone in the project.
Then toggle off the tool that you don't need it:
Need to add a link to an external service like Github, Zendesk, or Google Drive? You can add direct links to those services and more using Doors. Learn how to enable those here!
Below your tools, you'll find the activity timeline, where you can see all the updates that have been made to this project!
Adding multiple tools
You can add more than one of each tool to a project by clicking on + Add another :
This comes in handy if you'd like to to have different to-do tools for unrelated tasks, like marketing and bug reports:
A couple of caveats:
- Additional Campfire rooms will not include everyone in the project by default when they are created. Folks will have to choose to follow the Campfire, or be @mentioned in it in order to be notified about updates in it.
- Message categories are unique to each Message Board section. Additional Message Boards will include the categories that are configured in Adminland, but these can be edited from the project's
...menu.
- If you add multiple Schedule tools to a project, you can choose between events and assignments with due dates or just events. For example, you could have one Schedule just for events and another one set up for assignments with dates. Cool, right?
Here is how it works in more details:
Removing multiple tools
If you've set up multiple tools, you can remove them when you no longer need them. Be sure the tool is completely empty — if you had set up another To-Do tool, delete all the lists in that tool first.
Inviting people
When you’re ready for other people to join the project so you can work together, hit the Add some people button at the top of the page. If you've made the project All-Access, just send the URL of the project to your team member, and once they click it, they'll automatically be added. Read more about adding people to a project.
Switching team members and clients
Sometimes a client joins your organization, or a coworker is accidentally added to a project as a client user. It happens! But don't fret, there are ways to switch a user's type. The important thing to remember is that folks in Basecamp can’t be a team member in one project, but a client user in another. They can only be one type of user in the account.
An account owner or an admin will need to make this change in Adminland. If that's you, please follow the full guide on that here.
Settings
Click the ... toward the upper right corner to update the project’s name or description, change what tools are visible, or archive/delete it. We’ve got a couple of Developers’ Tools included there too.
Tip: If you'd like to assign a team or project lead, include that info in your project description. It will show up on that project's page, and on the project card.
Closing comments
Folks can close comments in content they created themselves, and account admins can close comments on anything in the account.
When comments are closed boosts are also disabled. You'll be able to see older boosts but not add any new ones.
When comments are closed or enabled, it will be logged in the item's change log:
Turn an existing team into a project
NOTE: The option to create a new team or convert an existing project into a team is no longer available as of 16 June 2022.
Have an existing team that would be better suited as a project? No problem! You can swap it over. Click in the ... menu to Edit project details.
Then you’ll see an option to switch it to a project.
Using the directory of all projects
Just above your pinned projects, click the link to view all projects:
You'll get to a view that includes all Active, Archived & Tashed, Client, or All-access projects. There are filters at the top of the page to see all of them alphabetically, see only your pinned projects, projects with clients only, All-access projects, or all the inactive projects — all the archived and trashed projects.
There's also a search bar at the top! When you start to type what you're looking for, our system will search for matches in the titles as well as the descriptions of your projects. You can search everything by clicking on A-Z, or narrow things down by choosing a filter in addition to your search terms.
In this example, these are all the results for the search term "gala" for all projects:
Your account will also remember what you last searched so if you find it useful to see your pinned cards in a list, you'll go right to the pinned section every time you return to the directory.
More on pinning the projects you want to see on your Home page can be found here:
Next up: Training your Team →
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