How to work with project templates

Using project templates will save your team a lot of time. No more repetitive work and you also streamline the way your organization works, making sure the structure of your projects is coherent.

Let us have a look at how you can set up project templates in OpenProject.

Create and remove project templates

In OpenProject, only administrators can create and remove project templates. That way, there is a handful of people ensuring consistency and overseeing the amount and structure of templates.

To set up a new project template, you do the same as creating a new project.

You name your project that will become your template.

Pour faire de ce projet un modèle, accédez aux paramètres du projet et cliquez sur le menu à 3 points pour choisir Sélectionner comme modèle et faire du projet un modèle.

In case a project template is not relevant anymore and should not be used any longer, this is also the spot where you can remove it from templates.

Project templates example case

We will demonstrate which modules you can set up to make best use of project templates.

Let us use the example of organizing a conference. This is something that can occur frequently, e.g. quarterly or annually. In order to not having to start from scratch every time and also to help in case different colleagues are organizing conferences, a template can be very useful to save time and build on past experiences.

Naming your template

When you create your project template as described above, consider adding template to its name, making it easy to distinguish it from your normal projects. Your project template will appear e.g. in the project list so that you would want to be able to see which of the projects serve as templates.

Modules template

Activate the relevant modules for your template und project settings. This way these modules will always appear and can be used straight away.

Work package template

Set up the work packages needed to manage your project from initiation to closing. Thereby include relations and hierarchies to make it quick and easy when you start a new project from your template.

Of course you can also customize your work package form in the template to include all relevant information for your organization. Every time you open a new work package, you will then see the attribute list that you had set up.

Agile boards template

If you are using the boards view to get things done with your team, set these up, too. Configuring the lists of action boards will provide you with prefilled boards as they automatically draw input from your work packages.

Members template

Consider setting up your members for your project templates. Either the whole team will always be the same or you set up the core members that will for sure be part of a project like this. Define roles and permissions, rates and groups.

Custom fields template

Creating custom fields in your project template allows you to have it available for all future projects based on this template. We created for example an approval field so that managers can approve artworks or merchandise or the likes. Veuillez noter que si un champ personnalisé est activé globalement, il sera automatiquement affiché dans un modèle de projet.

Modèles d’attribut de projet

Si vous souhaitez afficher des attributs spécifiques sur la page de présentation du projet, vous pouvez créer de nouveaux attributs de projet pour votre projet modèle.

Sélectionnez un modèle pour un nouveau projet

We showed only the most relevant modules to give you an idea about the benefits of project templates. D’autres modules tels que Meetings ou Wiki peuvent bien sûr être configurés pour votre modèle.

Lors de la création d’un nouveau modèle, vous pouvez désormais choisir le modèle que vous avez créé et sélectionner les modules que vous souhaitez copier.

Important 

Veuillez noter que pour des raisons de complexité, les modules Budgets et Temps et coûts ne peuvent pas être copiés pour le moment. Please do not set these up in your template as when you use the template, these modules will appear empty in your newly created project.

Pour en savoir plus sur les modèles de projet et consulter d’autres questions relatives à OpenProject, consultez notre documentation.