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Using the Project Activity Feed

By Jennifer Goodsell | Updated
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Note: We're updating the look and feel of several areas of our application—Timesheets, Your Dashboard, the Activity Feed, and more! You may notice some inconsistencies as additional changes take place.

Overview

Located in a project's Activity tab, the Activity Feed displays communication, uploaded documents, and the latest updates within a project. There are numerous actions you can perform in the Activity Feed, such as:

  • Creating a post
  • Approving or rejecting timesheets and expense reports
  • Marking invoices as paid
  • Linking files to a task
  • Replying to a post
  • Pinning a post
  • Tagging a team member
  • Filtering and sorting
  • Create a status report with the Project Status Report Agent (Kantata AI must be activated on the account and you must have the Access Group permission)

Project Activity Feed.png

Creating a Post

You can quickly communicate with your team members by creating a post in the Activity Feed. For example, you can create a post to ask a question, provide a project update, upload a file, and more. Other members can then view and respond to your post, which promotes more team collaboration and transparency on how the project is doing. Alternatively, you can create a private post that will only be visible to you and the team member you tag by.

To create your post, type your message in the Create new post box. You also have the option to @mention a user, link to a task, and upload a file in the post.

Create_a_post.png

Note: There is a 10,000 character limit for each Activity Feed post.

If your project posts are public by default and you want to make the post private, click the Public button. The button changes to Private, and you can now select the users you’d like the post to be visible to.

  • If the post is Public, it will be visible to everyone in the project and notify all participants via email.
  • If the post is Private, you can choose who will see your post and receive an email notification.

Make_a_post_private.gif

Note: Project posts can be set to Private or Public by default either on a project-by-project basis in Project Settings or globally in General Settings.  You cannot link private tasks to public posts, nor can you link them to private posts that include client participants as recipients.

If you want to include bold, italics, lists, links, lines, and/or emojis, you can add markdown formatting to your text or use the text formatting options under the text field.
formatting_bar_.png

Editing, Deleting, or Pinning a Post

To edit or delete a post after it’s created, hover over the post in the Activity Feed and click the Actions icon. Alternatively, you can click the Pin icon to make sure the post always remains pinned at the top of the Activity Feed.

Post_actions_and_pin.png

Note: Account Administrators can delete any public post or private post they are able to view in the Activity Feed.

Tagging and Replying

You can direct a message to a particular person using @mentions, where you type the "@" symbol followed by the person’s name. Using an @mention will send the person you mentioned an email with your post. You can also type @all to notify and send emails to all project participants.

A member can reply to a post in the project workspace by clicking Reply or by responding to their project post email notification.

Reply_to_post.png

Creating a Status Report

Use the AI-powered Project Status Report Agent to create status reports that can be shared in Kantata or shared externally. Select the Generate Status Report button below the Create new post box to get started.

select generate status.png

status report assistant start screen.png

Note: Kantata AI must be activated on the account and you must have the Access Group permission to use the Project Status Report Agent.

For more information, see the Project Status Report Agent Overview article.

Managing Timesheets

Once a team member submits a timesheet for approval, it appears as a detailed post—visible to the user who submitted it and members with View Financials (or higher) Project Permissions—listing the total billable and non-billable (if enabled) hours for that workweek.

Timesheet.png

If you are an Account Administrator, a manager responsible for entering time for others, or a designated time approver on the project, you can approve or reject the timesheet submission directly from the feed.

Note: You cannot approve timesheets you have submitted unless you have Access Group permissions to approve your own timesheet submissions.

Reject_timesheet.png

Tip: If you manage approvals across many projects and have Project Lead (or higher) Account Permissions, you can also approve timesheet submissions from the Time Approvals page.

Managing Expense Reports

Once a team member submits an expense report for approval, it appears as a post—visible to the user who submitted it and members with View Financials (or higher) Project Permissions—showing the total amount and number of items in the report.

team member's expense report in activity feed2.png

A member with Edit Financials (or higher) project permissions can Approve or Cancel their own expense reports directly from the project’s Activity Feed.

approving my own expense report in the activity feed2.png

Tip: If you manage approvals across many projects, you can also approve expense reports from the Expense Approvals page

Managing Invoices

After a team member creates an invoice, a post displaying the invoice details appears in the Activity Feed. From here, team members with Project Lead account permission (or higher) can mark the invoice as paid, edit it, or cancel it.

New_invoice_in_activity_feed.png

You can click the invoice title link below the post to be taken to the invoice details page.

Invoice_details_link.png

Uploading Files / Attaching Google Drive Files

You can upload a Google Drive file from the project’s Activity tab and post it to the Activity Feed. Keep in mind that if you uploaded a file to a private message, only users who have access to that message will be able to see and download the file.

Upload_files.png

All files and Google Drive files that you attach to a post can later be accessed in the Project Files tab.

Note: You need to enable the Google Workspace integration in order to attach a Google Drive file.

Linking a Post to a Task

When uploading a file or associating a Google Doc to the Activity tab, a good rule of thumb is to link it to a task in your project’s Task Tracker by clicking on Link to Task beneath your post and selecting the appropriate task. This helps your project participants know the attachment is for a specific task.

Note: You cannot link private tasks to public posts, nor can you link them to private posts that include client participants as recipients.

link_to_task.png

Sorting and Filtering Posts

When a project has a lot of posts in the Activity Feed, you can use the Sort and/or Filter options—located in the top-right corner of the feed—whenever you want to narrow down the list and quickly find a specific post.

  • Sort—You can sort Chronologically or by Newest Reply.
  • Filter—You can filter by Messages with attachments and Linked with deliverables.

Sort_and_Filter.png

If there aren’t any posts that have attachments or are linked to deliverables, these options will be grayed out when you click the Filtered drop-down arrow.

filter_grayed_out.png

TIP

You can enable notifications in Notification Settings to get notified when the project status, start and due date, or budget changes.

 

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