First steps of project manager

How to manage and coordinate projects

Welcome to Aptien. We will guide you through the basics of project management. You will learn what is possible in the system and what is not, where it will help you, what it will facilitate and where its limits are. 

Above all, Aptien will help you in project team collaboration and coordination of project activities, tasks, minutes and documentation. It will help you to manage tasks, assign, coordinate and control work on them, create project meeting minutes or share basic project documents. It's not a system where you can plan a project, create a gantt chart or plan the associated financial flows. However, Aptien is great for managing and collaborating project teams, coordinating project tasks and activities, recording project team meeting minutes, or sharing basic project documents such as plans, project documents, or any other documents. You can record contracts with customers or subcontractors, or even manage the work of subcontractors.

What is Aptien?

It is an application for collaboration and communication of people within the company, keeping various operational company records, company administration, task and work management. It is not just a system for project records, but it is a kind of electronic filing system beyond just project records. Aptien is also a company intranet where people can communicate with each other, a company bulletin board and a shared desk for all the people in the office. It's a bit like combining Facebook with order, project, contract or asset management software. Information from different areas are linked and traceable from one single application.

Unlike traditional apps, Aptien is very flexible, customizable, and can link projects to tasks, allowing you to attach notes and other information so you no longer have to write it on different sticky notes and papers. All this in one pleasant environment.

How will you work as a project manager in Aptien?

In particular, Aptien will help you:

• Keep a clear record of projects including all necessary information about the project, collaborating parties and suppliers
• Keep track of project deadlines (project milestones, contractual deadlines, etc.)
• Keep project documentation (including minutes from project meetings) in one place and share it with the project team
• Assign project tasks to responsible researchers, monitor and supervise their execution

In your project manager workspace, you see organizers specific to your role. As a project manager, you will work primarily with those relating to your projects. 

• Projects - is an organizer designed for larger jobs and projects that require more information and are classically project-driven. In it, you can see all the projects that your company has given you access to
• Contracts - is an organizer for contracts or smaller projects
• Companies - is a directory of companies, i.e. individuals and legal entities. From this shared organizer, you can assign contractors, suppliers, etc. to the registered projects
• Contacts (people) - here is a directory of people outside your company, for example, external collaborators. You can then see them in the entries or share selected information with them via the extranet (see below)

Maintaining basic project information 

For each project, you keep basic information such as its objective, project team, completion date, project milestones, or overall budget. The scope and structure of project information is set according to best practice. If for some reason it does not suit you, your administrator can change it according to the practices in your company.

Project documentation management

You can also attach and share project documents such as contracts, project plan or other documents such as reports, project documentation, handover reports, acceptance documents and so on across the project team. In short, any document that you need to keep with the project or share with others.

You give project documentation in the form of attachments that you either upload directly to the system or add them in the form of links to other organizers. 

You can further sort the attachments, the documents, into folders. You can set permissions for these - who can or cannot access which folder. 

Monitoring project milestones and sending alerts

If you need automatic notifications for project milestones, you can set up a watchdog for them. Important deadlines can also be set in tasks.

Managing project work with tasks

Over each project, you can create tasks for your project team. All tasks are automatically attached to the project and you can always find them there. You no longer have to email people or track down tasks set for each team member, you know who is working on what and how they are progressing with their specific tasks.

>How to do it

Keeping project minutes 

What applies to tasks also applies to minutes. For each project, you keep all the project minutes that are automatically attached to it. So you can find everything in one place. 

>How to do it

Personal or shared project notes

When you want to add a personal note to your project, you can create one in the notes tab. Only you can see it. Even if other people see the projects, your note is invisible to them.

Managing the work of project subcontractors 

If you need to manage your subcontractors other than by email or need to share selected information or minutes with them, you can activate each project's extranet page and invite subcontractors to it. This will streamline your communication with them - not only will you be able to share selected project documentation using this page - where you determine what you do and don't want to share, but you will also have one place to manage your subcontractors with tasks.