Projects: grouping tasks that belong together
A project gathers tasks, works out its own progress and status, and is tracked on a kanban, on the map or in statistics, on the web as on the phone.
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 has a name and a person in charge (a member or a group). It has no start date and no deadline: its state comes entirely from its tasks.
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, with completed projects included.
- 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 completed projects are included.
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. Each row shows the number of tasks, the person in charge and the progress gauge.
Two things to know about what you see:
The list only shows the current activity. As everywhere else in Sentinel, switching activity switches the list.
Search works on the name and queries the server: it waits until you've finished typing, and it searches every project, completed ones included when the option is on.
The Create project button asks for a name and, if you like, a person in charge. The project opens right away, empty, ready for tasks.
Status computes itself
This is the most important point of the section, and the one that surprises people 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% means done": reaching Done requires the last task to be done. A project with 24 of 25 tasks done stays In Progress.
The only 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 worksite — waiting on a permit, a budget, the thaw.
The Edit project screen on mobile.
- 1The switch that puts the project on hold, and takes it off.
- 2The person in charge, a member or a group.
One detail to know: the "Set this project on hold" switch lives in the mobile app, on the project's edit screen (the Edit button). On the web, the form keeps the state without letting you change it.
To take a project off hold, turn the switch off: the status is recomputed from the tasks immediately.
Following a project
A project opens on three views, which the header selector toggles.
A project open on its kanban.
- 1Tasks completed, and hours worked against hours estimated, each with its progress circle.
- 2The three views: kanban, map, statistics.
- 3The ⋯ menu holds editing, the Excel export and deletion.
The kanban is the default view: the project's tasks in their status columns — New, Ready, In Progress, Done, On Hold — dragged from one column to another. In a project, the Done column keeps its tasks visible: that's where the ground covered shows.
The map shows the same tasks at their real location, with the trails that carry them in colour. It's the view that answers "is my worksite grouped, or spread over ten kilometres?" — and so "how many trips will it cost".
Statistics is the accountability view.
The Assigned to filter, in the header, applies to the kanban only: it narrows the cards to the tasks of the people you pick. The map and statistics always show the whole project.
The conversation button next to it opens the project discussion: a thread of its own, separate from its tasks' threads.
Time
The 42h / 60h in the header is time worked over time estimated. Both come from the tasks: the estimate is the sum of the estimates, the worked time 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 this ratio.
Adding tasks
The header's Add button offers four entries:
- An existing task — opens the panel of tasks that don't belong to any project yet;
- Create a new task — the usual form, with the project already filled in;
- Task from an image — the photo supplies the location when it carries one;
- To-do — a task with no location, like a to-do list.
The Tasks panel, opened by Add → An existing task.
- 1Search, filters and the count of tasks shown.
- 2The panel's tips: drag, double-click, select several tasks.
- 3Free tasks, ready to be dragged into a column.
In the panel, drag a task onto the column you want: it joins the project with that status. A double-click adds it as New, and Shift + click selects several at once. While you drag, the panel fades out to free up the columns.
Turning a filter into a project. In the Tasks section, once a filter is applied, the toolbar's ⋯ menu offers Create project with the number of tasks involved: you give it a name, and every task in the filter goes in. It's the fastest route for a cross-cutting job — all the pruning, all the drainage of a sector.
Statistics
A project's Statistics view.
- 1The four headline figures, including unassigned tasks.
- 2Tasks broken down by status.
Five charts, all computed from the project's tasks:
- by status — where the work stands;
- by priority — is what's left urgent or minor;
- by type — the nature of the work, useful for a grant application;
- workload by assignee — who carries what, by status;
- hours by user — the time actually logged per person.
The Unassigned tasks figure in the header is the one to check first when a worksite starts: it's the work nobody has picked up yet. It turns orange as soon as it isn't zero.
Excel export
The ⋯ menu offers Export project: an Excel file of every task in the project, with a second sheet for their time entries. The file is named after the project. It's the format funders and end-of-season reports expect.
The entry is greyed out while the project has no tasks.
In the field
The mobile app isn't for setting up a project, it's for following it and working in it. A project opens from the Field screen's list, where projects come first.
A project on mobile, List tab.
- 1Two gauges: tasks completed, then hours worked against hours estimated.
- 2The project conversation, and sharing a link to the project.
- 3The bottom bar switches between the three views.
The List tab shows the project name, the two gauges, the Conversation and Share buttons, the person in charge, then the project's tasks grouped by status. The + button of the "Project tasks" strip creates a task already attached to the project.
The Map tab.
- 1The project name and its percentage; tapping the header unfolds the gauges.
- 2The project's trails stand out in colour, the others turn grey.
The Kanban tab, one column at a time.
- 1The column's status, its task count and the page dots.
- 2The column's tasks; drag one to another column to change its status.
The bottom bar gives access to the same three views as on the web — map, list and kanban — and the app remembers the view project by project: the one you follow on the kanban reopens on the kanban, the one you check on the map reopens on the map. The kanban also remembers the column you were on. On mobile it has one column per status, Done included, swiped through with a finger.
You can create a project from the Field screen's + button and edit it from mobile — it's actually the only place where you can put it on hold.
A project's page is readable offline if you've opened it before: it's read back from the cache when there's no signal. Creating, editing or deleting a project needs the network, though.
Who can do what
Projects fall under the Projects permission in the activity manager.
- Read: see the list, open a project, browse its three views.
- Read and write: create, rename, name a person in charge, add or remove tasks, put on hold, delete.
Dragging a task from one column to another in the kanban changes its status, so it also needs write access to Tasks. Without it, the project's kanban stays read-only, but you can still add or remove tasks.
Export project depends on the Export switch, separate from the Projects permission: someone who has to account for a grant can produce the file without being able to touch the worksite. The project discussion follows the Conversations switch. See roles.
Three tips
A project should have an end. "2026 season opening" ends; "Routine maintenance" never does and its progress means nothing. For ongoing work, filters do the job better.
Name a person in charge. It's the column everyone looks at in the list, and the only one that tells you who to ask.
Put on hold rather than let it drag. A blocked worksite left "In Progress" muddies the list; on hold, it drops out of the noise without disappearing.