Create a New Project

Overview

Projects are the foundation of any services organization, and Kantata provides all the tools you need to create a project designed for success.

To create a project in Kantata, hover over Projects on the left navigation and select the Add (“   ”) icon. Alternatively, you can select Projects from the left navigation, and then click the Add Project button on the following Projects page.

If you have the QuickBooks integration, you can quickly create a project by clicking the Create from QuickBooks Estimate button at the top of the page.

The Create a New Project page is broken up into sections that allow you to configure your desired details for each project component. If you need to make any changes to these fields after the project has been created, click the Actions (“   ”) icon in the project workspace, and then select Settings.

This article is split into sections that reflect each section found on the Create a New Project page:

• General
• Privacy
• Organizations
• Template and Template Preferences
• Estimate Preferences
• Resource Plan
• Provider Team
• Financials
• Approvals
• Groups
• Additional Tabs
• Custom Fields

These sections are provided to you so you have more options and flexibility whenever you want to expand the scope of a project. Because of this, feel free to skip to a specific section that’s more applicable to your project specifications by clicking the section link on the right-hand side of the page.

General

You’ll start by entering a project name, which is a required field. This name will be visible to anyone you invite to the project.

If the project is in an earlier stage where you are building an estimate or making financial projections for later work, select the Start project in Estimate stage toggle. For information on project stages, see Project Stages Overview.

In Kantata, there are two sides (i.e., teams) to every project: the Provider and the Client. Select your team for this project.

• The Provider is the team providing the service. For Enterprise and Premier customers, the provider sends invoices and creates time and expense entries.
• The Client is typically the requester of the service. For Enterprise and Premier customers, this is the team that receives invoices and pays for the services rendered.
  Note: Teams, Premier, and Enterprise customers are able to customize these project team names, but they are initially filled in based on your account team names.

Next, you can enter the Start Date and Due Date of the project, as well as add a Description.

If Project Colors are enabled in General Settings where the default color is set by an Account Administrator, you can change the color of the project by selecting a new one from the Project Color drop-down menu.

In the Task Status Set field, you can select which status set to use in this project.

The task status set is a collection of default and custom task statuses that will be available to use in the project.

Just below the Task Status Set drop-down are two toggles that you can turn on or off:

• Include archived tasks in percentage complete—This setting determines whether archived tasks are included in the overall project completion percentage shown as % Done in the Project List page and Global Gantt chart.
• Include non-billable time on invoices—This setting determines whether invoices for the current project can include non-billable time entries. Note that the default state for this setting is configured in Kantata's Invoice Settings. This setting can be turned Off or On at any time, but will only affect current or future invoices; previously-generated invoices remain unchanged. If the setting is turned On when you create or edit an invoice, you can select both billable and non-billable time entries. If the setting is turned Off when you create or edit an invoice, non-billable time entries will not appear in the Time Entries table on the Invoices page.
  Note: This setting similarly affects invoicing with the QuickBooks integration.

Privacy

In the Privacy section, use the Who Can Participate drop-down menu to give account members the ability to access projects while limiting others from joining voluntarily. In the Who Can See Communications drop-down menu, choose whether you want to make posts in the project's Activity feed public or private by default.

Organizations

In the Organizations section—which appears only if Organizations are enabled on your account—you can select the organizations based on department and/or geography.

Template and Template Preferences

You can create a new project from a template by clicking Select a Template in the Template section. Once selected, the Template Preferences section appears and you can provide individual project details, such as relative dates and whether weekends are treated like workdays (i.e., the task duration will include weekend days).

You'll also have the option to map unnamed resources to specific account members, automatically inviting and assigning those account members to the appropriate tasks.

Estimate Preferences

When creating a new project from a legacy estimate, the Estimate Preferences section appears. To create allocated hours based on your estimate, you’ll need to map hours to your unnamed resources. 

In the Assign Resources area, you will see the Roles that were defined in the selected scenario. If you know which person you want to allocate to the project for a role, you can select them from the Assign A User drop-down menu. The Role of the user chosen for the project will default to their Account Role; this can be changed later in the project’s Rates & Roles page.

Resource Plan

In the Resource Plan section, you can select each unnamed resource you would like to add to the project team by selecting Add Unnamed Resource. Once selected, you can fill out the following details for your resource:

• Resource—This is the account role of the unnamed resource you need on this project. For Premier and Enterprise plans, only resource roles that are associated to the rate card selected in the Financials section will appear in the drop-down menu.
• Resource Label—This is the project role of the unnamed resource on this project. Each Resource Label name must be unique. For example, if you need four engineers to complete work on a project and you have only one Engineer account role, you can name them “Back-end Engineer”, “Front-end Engineer”, “Full Stack Software Engineer”, and “Senior Software Engineer”.
• Start Date—This is the date the resource will be scheduled to start work for this project.
• End Date—This is the date the resource will be scheduled to stop working on this project.
• Days—Based on the start and end date, this is the number of days you want the resource to be involved in this project. If you adjust the number of days, the Hours column will update appropriately.
• Allocation %—This is the percentage of time you want the resource to spend working on this project. If you adjust this percentage, the Hours column will update appropriately.
• Hours—This is the number of hours you want the resource to work on this project. If you adjust the number of hours, the Allocation % column will update appropriately.

Provider Team

In the Provider Team section, you can select each named resource you would like to add to your team from the Select a Resource drop-down menu. You appear by default as the Team Lead. If desired, you can select a different user to be Team Lead and you can adjust project permissions for each user by selecting an option from the Permission drop-down in-line with their name. The options available in the drop-down will vary because a user can’t have higher project permissions than their account permissions allow.

Financials

Available for Enterprise and Premier plans, the Financials section allows you to set a project budget and configure other financial settings, such as whether or not to include billable expenses and additional invoice amounts in the project's actual fees calculation.

This section also contains financial approval settings that you can toggle to On or Off depending on your project preferences.

Approvals

In the Approvals section, you can designate the Project Approver(s) that will approve proposed budget or schedule changes. If there is do not select a designated approver, Project Administrators on the provider-side of the project must make the needed financial approvals.

Groups

In the Groups section, you can select the Primary Group that the project will be associated with. Doing this will enhance your custom reporting in Insights even further, such as by calculating hours or placing the primary group in tables.

To learn more about groups and primary groups, see the Groups article.

Additional Tabs

In the Additional Tabs section, you can add valuable supplementary information to the project by selecting a form or dynamic dashboard to appear directly in the project workspace. 

Custom Fields

Available only for Enterprise and Premier customers, the Custom Fields section allows you to select which additional value fields you want added to the project and project tasks.

To learn how to add new custom fields in your account, see the Custom Fields Overview article.

How to Create the Project

After providing all the necessary information, click Create Project. Alternatively, you can choose to Create and Clone (“   ”) the project, which allows you to quickly create and customize similar types of projects without having to re-enter all of the same information.

Now that you've created a project, it’s time to add a few tasks to build out your project plan.

From here on out, you'll be able to manage your project settings by selecting Settings from the Actions (“   ”) drop-down menu located to the right of the project name.

Related Articles

• How to Create a Project from a Template
• Tasks Overview
• Invite Users to a Project
• Project Settings Overview
• Privacy Settings for Projects in Kantata OX
• How to Set Up Team Names
• Guest Access
• Custom Fields Overview
• Forms

Kantata OX API

• Workspaces 
• Participations  
• Status Reports  
• Workspace Allocations  
• Workspace Baselines  
• Workspace Groups  
• Workspace Invoice Preferences  
• Workspace Resource Skills  
• Workspace Resources  
• Workspace Status Changes