Many
activities in
Teamwork.com involve
working with
cross-sections of
your
organization. Teams has been
designed
to bring a new
level of alignment to
your processes and
help
you work as
efficiently as
possible. From better people
management to some
time-saving
enhancements, Teams
will
help streamline your
workflow and how you
interact with your
projects' main
stakeholders. | What's
New with
Teams |
---|---|
◑ Understanding
Teams | |
◑ Changing your existing
structure | |
◑ Default projects | |
◑ Dynamic
assignment | |
◑ Comments and
messages | |
◑ Bulk editing | |
◑ Filtering | |
◑ Project
templates |
Understanding
Teams
With the introduction of the
Teams
feature, you can easily replicate
your
organization's structure and group
people on your site based on their
position or
contribution.
Depending on
your
organization's needs, you may
have
different people who take up
multiple
roles. This can easily be
mapped
with
the Teams feature as
individuals
can
exist
in multiple teams.
Any site
administrator
or
user with permission to manage people
& companies can create and manage
teams on your site via the People area.
The feature
breakdown for
Teams will vary depending on your
Teamwork.com subscription
plan.
Each team you create can be
given a meaningful name,
handle
(more
on that later!), and custom
logo,
making them easily
distinguishable. Using the
enhanced
people picker, you can select
the
relevant
people to add as members of
the
team.
In the Advanced tab, you can
associated the team with a company,
meaning
only members of that company can be
added
to
the team. Client users can only be
added to company teams associated with
their own company.
Note: Company level teams
are
available on per-user Premium/Grow
plans and
above.
Subteams
While all of the work on a
project
might be associated with all
team
members overall,
a particular task, message, or
other
project item may be directly
relevant
to just a few people.
Note: Subteams
are
available
on per-user Premium/Grow plans
and
above.
You can achieve a deeper
level of granularity by
further
splitting out your teams into
subteams. With the added layer
of
subteams, you can do
things
like
send
a message to the entire team
updating
them on the project schedule,
while
only assigning your developers
to
a
bug that needs to be
fixed!
Below, you will see a few
examples of team/subteam
structures.
Depending on how you operate,
you
may
decide to structure one team
based
on
role, while another is based
on
location. It's entirely up to
you!
Parent team | Marketing | Support | Product |
Subteams | -
Design | - Cork
support | -
Frontend |
-
Website | - Belfast
support | -
Backend | |
| - PR | - Support
content | - API |
| - Product
marketing | -
Designers | |
| - Digital
marketing | | -
Testing |
When adding members to a
subteam, they will automatically
become members of any teams above them
in the team's hierarchy. You will
still be able to mention and assign
the subteam independently.
Project
teams
Now that you have seen how you can
map your organizational structure at
site-level, let's explore how project
teams
can help you become even more
efficient.
As we touched on previously, people
can be members of multiple teams. A
great
benefit of this is that you can place
people
into their company role, while also
positioning them for individual
projects
they're working on.
Project teams allow you to be more
detailed about the relevant work and
responsibilities by creating informal
teams
across projects. Rather than
cluttering
your
site-level team structure with
short-term
team
needs, you can leverage project teams
to
organize the work in front of you at
any
given
moment.
Changing
your existing
structure
For existing users of
Teamwork.com,
the introduction of
Teams
brings with it some tweaks to
existing
functionality, designed to
enhance
your experience.
Companies
You may have been leveraging
the existing Companies feature
to
represent departments in your
organization. You can easily
replace
these
companies with new teams, if
you
wish.
While viewing a company, go
to
the People tab
and
select the checkboxes to the
left
of
each user. The bulk edit
toolbar
will
appear where you will first
need
to
click Move
company.
This
is an important step if you
are
intending to delete the
current
company the users are in, as
each
user
on your site must be
associated
with a
company.
Once the people have been
assigned a
new company and added to a
team,
you
can then delete the
company itself if you
no
longer need it.
Note: If you
delete a company that has
existing
members, those users will also
be
deleted from your site.
After you have moved the users to a
new
company, select the users again and
then
choose Add to
team from
the
bulk edit toolbar. You
can then either add the users to an
existing top-level team, or create a
new team to add them to.
Roles
The scope of the Teams feature means
that what you could previously achieve
with
project roles can now be done using
project teams.
Any existing roles on your projects
are automatically converted to
project-level teams for you. Going
forward,
you can simply create project teams
when
the
need arises. Roles are no longer
supported.
Default
projects
When creating or editing
teams on
your site, you can add one or
multiple default
projects to the team. This
means
that
any future members of the team
will
automatically be added to
those
default projects once they are
added
to the team.
Note: Default projects
are
available on per-user Premium/Grow
plans and
above.
Dynamic
assignment
One of the greatest benefits
of Teams is the added
efficiency
it
can introduce to your workflow
in
the
assignment of project items.
You
can assign various items
based
on team or
company.
Dynamic assignment can be
utilized in the following
ways:
- Assigning tasks and
milestones.
- Setting privacy on project
items.
- Adding followers to project
items.
Assigning an item
to a team/company acts as a
dynamic
assignment. This means that if
more
members are added to that
team/company
in the
future, they will automatically be
assigned to the item. Likewise,
they
will be removed from the
assignment if
they are removed from the
team.
One thing to note
is that for tasks assigned to
a
team/company,
you won't be able to generate
separate
tasks for each team/company
member
via
the Create a task for
each
assignee option.
Comments
and
messages
Another time-saving benefit
to
using
teams is the ability to notify
specific teams or companies in
one
go
on
comments and messages.
Rather than searching
through the people picker and
selecting the relevant people
one
by
one, you can now select the
associated
team or company. Any current
team members will then be
notified.
If individual users were
already set to be notified and
you
then select to notify a team
where
they are a member, their name
will
be removed from the notify
list as
they will already be counted
as
part of the team.
You can also quickly direct
your comment or message at a
particular team/company by
mentioning
them in
the message itself.
Note: When you mention a
top-level parent team, subteam members will
also be notified.
Bulk
editing
Bulk edit options in
Teamwork.com
have become more
powerful
with Teams.
Teams
While viewing a team at
site-level, you can select
each of
its associated members, or
a
subset of the team, and
bulk
update their profile
permissions such as
administrator
rights or
the ability to manage
people
&
companies.
You can also go through
this process while viewing
a
project team on an
individual
project. Instead, you'll
be
able
to set project-specific
permissions such as the
ability to
add tasks, view
milestones, or
log
time.
The bulk update bar at the top of
the screen will also allow you to
remove
the
selected user(s) from the team or
delete
them
from the site. For
project level teams, you can also
remove
them from the associated
project.
People
You can also bulk set profile
permissions, delete, or add users to a
team
while viewing the overall list of
people
on
your site in the main People
area.
Companies
When viewing the list of companies
on your site, the bulk edit toolbar
gives
you
the option to bulk delete the selected
companies.
Filtering
Improved filtering options
have
also
been introduced with Teams.
While
filtering the various task
views
by
assignee, you can now choose a
particular team or
company.
When filtering by team or
company,
you
will see all tasks dynamically
assigned to the entire
team/company,
as well
as any tasks that individual
members
of that team/company have
assigned
to
them independently.
Project
templates
Project templates have become
even
more
powerful with Teams. When creating
project
templates, you can maximise the
usefulness
of dynamic assignment by assigning
items
in the template to teams or
companies.
You can also add entire
teams as members of the project
template, meaning that when the
template is used to populate a
project, any of those teams'
members will automatically be
added to the project.
Note: Teams
can be used with templates on
per-user Premium/Grow plans and
above.
For more information, see: Teams help
docs