TABLE OF CONTENTS
- How to add a Project Update to a Project in Rocketlane?
- Customising Project Updates from your Projects
- Adding Dynamic Sections and Formatting the Text in your Project Updates
- Adding Custom Task Sections to your Project Updates
- Adding Collaborators and the Conversations Section
- How to Publish a Project Update?
With the assistance of Project updates, you can deliver regular updates about your project to keep your team on track. These updates include task related information and the status of the project.
Stakeholders can identify and keep a tab on the project's tasks, milestones and approvals by receiving updates at regular intervals. Sharing Project Updates can help you to identify bottlenecks early on and prevent them or to identify where the team is running ahead of time and shift project timelines accordingly.
Project updates help you to automate the process of keeping all team members in a project updated. You can customise your updates according to what you want to focus on. You can choose from a range of dynamic sections to share the project's tasks, milestones and approvals.
You can choose the team members who will receive updates and it will be shared via email on their registered email ids. The data for the dynamic sections will be auto-populated according to your project.
How to add a Project Update to a Project in Rocketlane?
- Go to Projects and select the project that you want to add the Project update for. Click on the Project updates tab to add a new update, edit draft updates or view sent updates.
- You can view All, Sent as well as Draft Project Updates from this page.
- Click on New update to add a new Shared Project Update.
- To add a new Private Project Update, click on the dropdown arrow and select 'New Private update'.
- The following are the ways in which you can add a shared/ private Project Update to your Projects in Rocketlane:
- Create a Project Update from scratch using a blank Project Update
- Add a Project Update template
Note: Private Project Updates are only visible to your organisation's team.
Customising Project Updates from your Projects
The Project update Panel is structured in an email-like layout to help you better visualise and customise your Project updates. You can edit the Project updates from this panel before sending them out.
You can edit the following sections for customising your Project Update email:
- Subject: Add the subject line for the Project Update email that will be sent out.
- To: Select the recipients of the project. The default selection is 'All project members' which includes team members from your as well as your customers team in case of a shared project update and only your team in case of a private project update.
By using the edit button here, you can choose the team members explicitly from the drop-down menu. - CC: By adding the email addresses of stakeholders who haven't been added to the project, you can use this option to share project updates with them.You can even invite these people to the project before sending out the project update to them. This step is optional.
- Add Status: You can choose to include the current status of your project in the Project update. This is optional. Choose from the following options: on track, Ahead of time, Running late, At risk.
Adding Dynamic Sections and Formatting the Text in your Project Updates
By adding your own text and dragging and dropping sections from the Highlights panel on the right, you can customise the information shared in the body of your project updates.
The sections in the Highlights panel include Tasks, Milestones and Approvals that get dynamically populated based on the filters that you apply to each of these sections.
These filters let you choose the Tasks, Milestones and Approvals based on their status as well as the time period.
For example if you want to share updates about upcoming tasks for the next two weeks, you can customise the Tasks section by selecting Upcoming in next 'two weeks'.
You can drag and drop this section into the document after customising it. You can do the same for Milestones as well as Approvals.
There are basic formatting options available for editing the content in the Project Update are headings, formatting styles, Text colour, bullets and numbering. You can also add images and tables in the text message as a part of the project update email.
You can share supporting files by adding attachments to the project update email as well.
You can delete the project update draft by clicking on the 'Delete' button from the tool bar at the bottom of the screen.
Adding Custom Task Sections to your Project Updates
With the 'Add tasks' option in the Project Updates, you can choose whether to add existing tasks from your project or to create new tasks in the project. On the basis of the criteria you wish to group them for, you can create a custom tasks section.
Place the cursor where you want to add the task section and click on the 'Add tasks' button from the tool bar at the bottom of the panel.
An untitled task section will be added where the cursor was placed. You can choose to either add an existing task or create a new task in the project from this task section itself.
You can rename the new tasks section. After adding tasks to a task section, you can update the assignees and the due date of the tasks.
Adding Collaborators and the Conversations Section
By adding collaborators to your project update, you can invite them to collaborate on your Project update drafts. This dropdown will show you the list of team members from both your team as well as your customers team in case of a shared project update. 
The Conversations section can be accessed by clicking on the conversations icon from the navigation bar on the right. 
In case you mention any team member in the conversations section, you will be asked if they can be added as a collaborator as only collaborators can view your drafts.
How to Publish a Project Update?
A project update can be published by clicking on the Send button from the tool bar at the bottom of the panel.
The following screenshot shows how a project update email looks like. 
You can click on the 'Open Project update' button to view the project update in your Rocketlane instance and also view the tasks mentioned in the update.
Whenever someone responds to the project update email, the message is added to the conversation section in the project update.
Hey! Here's hoping that this support document was useful. You can write to us at care@rocketlane.com in case of any queries.