Top 10 tricks/tips for ProjectSpaces

5 Aug 2008 in Support, Usability

Here are 10 tips and tricks you may/may not have not known about for using ProjectSpaces.

10. RSS – Due to popular demand, we have added RSS links to virtually each different section of ProjectSpaces.  You can view the RSS for a particular type of content in one of your projects (i.e. the Documents feed from one of your projects), or look at the feed for all content across all of your projects.  This can keep you up to date on current activity within your ProjectSpaces account, without ever having to login.

9. Turn tabs on/off – Both individually, and for your entire ProjectSpaces account, you can make tabs inactive, so that your users will not even see those areas.  For instance, if you are using the “Workplan” tab, it probably does not make sense to have the “Tasks” tab turned on as well (or maybe vice versa).  As a project’s administrator, you should try to make your project as easy for your team to use as possible, so as to promote adoption.  To do this go to either the specific project administration area (by clicking the manage: “this project” link) and make tabs inactive by clicking the “Change Tab Display” link, or go to the site administration area (by clicking the manage: “all projects” link) and clicking the “Customize” link and then the “Tabs” link.

8. Adding content from one folder to another folder – You can always edit a document by clicking its edit icon, and then change which folder that document is connected to by checking (or unchecking) the check boxes for each folder in the right sidebar.  You can select for a document to be in more than one folder by checking more than one folder if you wish as well.  See more information here.

7. Hide content blocks on the homepage – You can select for your projects’ homepages to not display recent activity lists for different areas of content (i.e. Documents, Events, Announcements, etc.).  To do this, click the manage: “all projects” link, click the link to “Customize” and then the “Tabs” link.  Here, uncheck the box to no longer “Display on Project Home” if you don’t want that piece of content to display there.  See more information here.

6. Full text search – You can use the search field in the upper right portion of your ProjectSpaces account to search for content within your project.  This search is actually full-text, which means that it even searches uploaded files’ text added to your ProjectSpaces account.

5. Key folders to highlight content – You can specify for a folder to be a “Key Folder” by clicking the check box for this, found directly beneath the “Description” field when adding a folder (note you can always edit a folder and check this box as well, by accessing the folder and then clicking the edit icon to the next of the folder’s name towards the top of your page).   This puts this folder above the folder list in the Documents section of a project, and adds quick links to all the folder’s documents in the sidebar.  See more information here.

4. Using the welcome text for a project – You can add any links or important information in the Welcome text for a project, so that it displays prominently on your project’s homepage.  This text displays above all the content recent activity blocks on a project’s homepage, and we’ve also added a WYSIWYG editor to this area as well, so you can easily add links here.  You can even embed a video or another piece of content there by editing the source code.  To edit this area, click the manage: “this project” link, and click the link to “Edit Project Details.”

3. iCal – You can use the iCal link in the Calendar section of any of your projects to add all events from your project into an external calendar application (e.g. Gmail or Outlook 2007).  To do this click the iCal link at the bottom of the Calendar area in one of your projects and save that file to your computer and then add that file to your external calendar.

2. Add multiple files at once – You can add multiple files to your ProjectSpaces account by using the “Quick File Upload” link.  This allows you to get a bunch of documents added to your project quickly and all at once.  To do this click the “Quick File Upload” link in the Documents tab, browse for a file and add it.  Then do the same for another document before clicking the “Upload Files” button.  See more information here.

1. Clone projects – When setting up a new project, you can clone a previous one and decide which areas of content from that project you wish to clone at that time (i.e. Documents, Announcements, Events, etc.).  This is particularly useful if you set up a “shell” project with a basic folder structure for documents, specific Workplan tasks and activities, a welcome announcement, etc. and continue to clone this project when creating new projects.  To do this click the manage: “all projects” link and select the button to “Clone Project.”  Select the project and exactly which pieces of content you wish to clone, and click submit.  See more information here.

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