Projects: grouping tasks that belong together
A project gathers tasks, computes its own progress, and is tracked on a kanban, on the map, or in statistics.
A task answers "what to do". A project answers "where do we stand".
It's a container: you put tasks that belong together into it — the season opening, a sector rebuild, a grant to account for — and Sentinel computes the progress, the time spent and the workload split from whatever is inside.
A project isn't a category: a task belongs to exactly one project at a time, or to none.
Where: left navigation bar, under General → Projects.
The list
The project list.
- 1Projects are grouped by status, in their life-cycle order.
- 2The gauge shows progress — the completed task count and the percentage.
- 3The options button carries a dot when a filter is active.
Projects are grouped by status, always in the same order: New, Ready, In progress, On hold, Done. Within a group they're sorted by name.
Two things to know about what you're seeing:
The list only shows the current activity. As everywhere else in Sentinel, switching activity changes the list.
Search matches on the name and runs on the server: it waits until you've stopped typing, and it searches across every project, including done ones if the option is on.
The status computes itself
This is the most important point in the section, and the one that surprises most: you don't choose a project's status. It's recomputed every time one of its tasks moves.
| The project becomes | When |
|---|---|
| New | No task is ready, in progress or done |
| Ready | At least one task is ready or done, none in progress |
| In progress | At least one task is in progress |
| Done | Every task is done |
There's no "95 % is close enough": moving to Done requires the last task to be done. A project at 24 tasks out of 25 stays In progress.
The one exception is "On hold". It's the only status you set by hand, and it freezes the calculation: while a project is on hold, its tasks can move without its status changing. That's what you want for a suspended job — waiting on a permit, a budget, the thaw.
One detail to know: the "Set this project on hold" switch lives in the mobile app, in the project's edit page. On the web, the page preserves the state without letting you change it.
To take a project off hold, turn the switch off: the status recomputes immediately from the tasks.
Following a project
A project opens on three views, switched from the header.
A project's header.
- 1The circle shows progress, and beside it time spent over time estimated.
- 2The three views: kanban, map, statistics.
- 3The menu holds edit, Excel export and delete.
The kanban is the default view: the project's tasks in their status columns, dragged from one to the next. It's also where you add existing tasks to the project, by dragging them in from the side panel.
The map shows those same tasks at their real positions. It's the view that answers "is my job grouped, or spread over ten kilometres?" — which is to say "how much driving will this cost".
The statistics are the accountability view.
The assignee filter in the header applies to all three views at once.
Time
The 42h / 60h in the header is time spent over time estimated. Both come from the tasks: the estimate is the sum of the estimates, the spent is the sum of the time entries. You don't estimate a project, you estimate its tasks.
A project with no estimate at all doesn't show that ratio.
The statistics
A project's Statistics view.
- 1The four headline numbers, including unassigned tasks.
- 2How the tasks break down by status.
Five charts, all computed on the project's tasks:
- by status — where the work stands;
- by priority — is what's left urgent or incidental;
- by type — the nature of the work, useful for a grant application;
- workload by assignee — who carries what, by status;
- hours per user — the time actually logged per person.
The Unassigned tasks figure in the header is the one to look at first when a job starts: that's the work nobody has picked up yet.
The Excel export
The ⋯ menu offers Export project: an Excel file of every task in the project. That's the format funders and end-of-season reports expect.
The entry is greyed out while the project has no tasks.
In the field
Mobile isn't for building a project, it's for following it and working on it.
A project on mobile.
- 1Two gauges: tasks completed, then hours worked against hours estimated.
- 2The bottom bar switches between the three views.
The page shows the project's name, the two gauges, then its tasks. The bottom bar gives you the same three views as on the web — map, list and kanban — and the last one you used becomes your default: the next project you open will open on it.
You can create and edit a project from mobile — and it's the only place you can put one on hold.
A project's page is readable offline if you've opened it before: it's read back from the cache when the network is missing.
Who can do what
Projects fall under the Projects right in the activity manager.
- With read: see the list, open a project, browse its three views and export.
- With read and write: create, rename, assign a lead, add or remove tasks, delete.
So read access is enough to produce a report — deliberately: someone who has to account for a grant doesn't need to be able to touch the job. See roles.
Three pieces of advice
A project must have an end. "2026 season opening" finishes; "Routine maintenance" never does, and its progress means nothing. For continuous work, filters do the job better.
Name a lead. It's the column everyone reads in the list, and the only one that says who to ask.
Put it on hold rather than letting it drift. A blocked job that stays "In progress" pollutes the list; on hold, it leaves the noise without disappearing.