A project is any initiative that helps drive a business, and they come in many different varieties. This dialogue allows you to begin a new business project or edit an existing one.
Location: Project Manager, Project List or Project Manager, Edit Project Details
Overview
Setting up a new project is an easy task: only base details are needed. A project becomes developed by your use of it: you and Business Administrator are constantly adding material to it.
Project Profile: project types are forms of template on which to develop a project. The type you choose largely controls the Q&A that follow, and it is dependent on what you wish to do. When you give the project a name, those Q&A will follow.
Parent project: by selecting a project here, you effectively make the new project the daughter of another. Using this, you can create massive project with lots of smaller projects.
Exposure: you may want only selected people in your business to be able to view or use the project: Setting the exposure defines the range of people that can use the project.
Allow non-Marketable Contacts: it should be rare that you choose to Allow non-Marketable Contacts, but the situation may arise, if, for example, it were a staff-focused project.
Referencing: when you write to contacts, you may want a reference on the letter identifying either the letter, the contact, or something else. There are three options: None, Identical and Sequential. If you choose None, then no referencing will be offered. If you choose Identical referencing, then every contact in the mailout will have the same reference number – but chosen reference number will be based on the relationship between a contact and that project. In the following field you can enter the reference you want – it can be alphabetical letters, numbers, or both.
If you choose Sequential referencing, then each contact is given a new serial number. If you send out a large number of contact letters then this might provide a route to referring back to the original letter or event. You are also offered the option of adding a Prefix and/or a Suffix. Number of Digits is the difference between 123 and 000123. You can also include slashes in the reference for example JP/0014567/JT as opposed to JP0014567JT. You cannot change the actual numbers in the middle – they are sequential and controlled by Business Administrator. A serial number is based on the relationship between a contact and a project: a contact could have several serial numbers, but each of them applies to only one project. In this way you can clearly home in on why they responded to you.
Budget: many business projects should be controlled by a budget, the amount of money you wish to set aside for it. If this is set, if it’s above zero, then Business Administrator can alert the project owner when the budget limit is being approached.
Also, in Project Manager, there is a mode that reports on the budget state of a project: this report only applies to the selected project, and not to any daughter projects. Likewise, when you enter a value for the budget here, it should specifically be for the new project, and it should not cater for any daughter projects that come to pass.