Creating a New Project

A project is a container for all of the issues, source code, emails, announcements, and other elements that people work on together to produce a result. In the CollabNet environment, you can define a project, add members to it, configure the way in which project members will track project issues, and allow everyone to share information in a permissions-based, secure manner.

The following paragraphs describe the basics of creating a new project and configuring the project home page.

About project configuration

When you create a new project, you are prompted to provide information such as a name, a description, and so on. The following paragraphs describe the information that you must provide when you create a project.

Project Name - The project name is used throughout the project to organize and distinguish project content. For example, all project mailing lists have the project name as part of their address. This allows users to quickly tell which project a message comes from. Choose a project name that will uniquely identify the project to current members and to potential participants. Rules for project names:

• A project name should be a single string of characters that include letters (a-z) and digits (0-9). Any uppercase letter will be converted to lowercase. You can use hyphens, though not as the first or last character.
• The project name should not exceed sixty three (63) characters.
• Do not use accented or non-roman characters.
• Do not use punctuation, spaces or underscores.
• Do not use local language characters or non-English characters. For example, even if you set the language settings in your web-browser or keyboard to Chinese, you will still not be allowed to give a project name with characters in Chinese.

Once a project has been created, you cannot change the name.

Parent project - If you have permission to create subprojects, you can make the project a child of another project. Creating a child relationship will help you and potential project members to identify projects of interest and to follow the requirements of larger projects.

Summary - Enter a description of your project, sixty four (64) characters maximum, in plain text. HTML and formatted text are not supported. The summary is displayed next to the project name in the list of available projects. You can edit this field at any time.

Description - Information that you enter in this field is displayed on the project home page. Use the description field to communicate to project members and potential members. For example, you can enter your project's mission, background, methodology and tasks. You can include HTML, as long as it conforms to HTML coding conventions for areas of the application that use an XSS filter. Simple, unformatted text will have a faster loading time. You can edit the description by clicking the Edit project link from the project home page. If you enter a description and check the Use project index.HTML checkbox, the index.html file takes precidence. However, if the index.html file is empty, the text in the Description field will be used instead of the html file.

Public project - Public projects are visible to all users of the domain. While this allows anyone to view your project, you may find that you would prefer to run your project in a private mode. Users can request roles in any public project, but must be invited by the Project owner, to join any private project.

Use project index.html - If the Description field does not provide enough flexibility for adding content to your project's home page, you can set the default home page for a project to an index.html file that resides in the www directory for the project. You can customize the project home page by editing the www/index.html file. You can add any type of content that is accessible in HTML format, and "build out" the home page by linking to other files in the www folder. Note that the more complex your home page is the longer the load time end users will experience. This setting can be changed at any time. If you enter a description and check the Use Project Index.HTML checkbox, the index.html file takes precidence. However, if the index.html file is empty, the text in the Description field will be used instead of the HTML file.

Choose a content repository template - This option is only displayed if project templates exist and have been enabled by a domain administrator. If this option is present, you can now select from one or more templates that another user or administrator has created. Project templates provide content and structure for a project. A template consists of a set of html files in the www/templates folder in the version control repository for the project-templates project. For instance, you may be able to choose a template for a project home page that provides links to all the critical documents in a project. If you choose a project template, the files in the template directory of the project templates project are moved to the www directory for this project. Your new project's index.html file is replaced if an index.html was created in the templates folder, and the other template files from the project-templates project are also added to the www folder of the new project. Note that choosing a template is only available during project creation. Also, note that this feature requires the project-templates project to use Subversion for version control.

Note: Project templates that use CVS as their versioning component cannot use non-english filenames. For example, if you have a Japanese, Korean or Chinese filename for one of your files in your project template, when CVS is the versioning option in the template.properties file, then the template cannot be used.

Project categories - This field will appear only if categories have been created on the site. Categories are used to organize projects by type. For instance, a game category allows all projects relating to gaming to be grouped together. Categories make it easy for potential project members to identify projects that match their interests. You can assign your project to as many categories as you think are useful.

Project language - This feature will only appear if localization is active for this domain. You can select a default language for email generated by events in your project. For more information see About the default project language.

Tracking component - The tracking component refers to the tool you use to monitor basic project elements such as Defects, Tasks, Requirements documents, and so on. You can select Project Tracker or Issue Tracker:

• Issue Tracker tracks issues (defects, tasks, and so on) entered against your project
• Project Tracker enables you to define what is tracked and the method of tracking. Using Project Tracker, you can define any type of project element, such as a defect, a request for enhancement, a test plan, and so on, and you can define the rules by which project members are permitted to use each type of project element.

  NOTE: The Project Tracker feature of a new project may experience some delay while the database is initialized. Once your project is created, wait a few minutes before accessing the Project Tracker component to avoid this delay.

Artifact code - Only used with Project Tracker, the Artifact code is a unique identifier for all artifacts entered in this project. The Artifact code can be one to four alphanumeric characters in length and cannot contain any numbers, spaces, underscores or other punctuation. Sub-projects can have the same Artifact code as their parent project and top level projects can use the default Artifact code.

Project owner - While this field defaults to your username, you can add or edit project owners based on the needs of the project. The project owner maintains and administers the project, invites and approves new project members and member roles, assigns mailing list monitors, approves announcements and project documentation and files, and monitors disk space usage.

Configuring the project

You perform basic configuration when you start a new project.

To configure a new project:

1. Click the Projects tab.
2. Click the Start New Project link.
3. Complete the prompts, as described in the previous paragraphs.
4. When you are done, click Create project.
   A confirmation page is displayed.
5. Click the link to the project home page on the confirmation page.

Note that it may take a few minutes for your project to become available for editing. Once it is available, you can customize it. The domain administrator has set defaults for all new projects which you can review and customize through the Project tool configuration page.

Adding content to your project home page

You may want to add content to the home page for your project, such as pictures or instructions for project members. You may also want to build out the project home page. For example, you may want to add links to project documents, plans, spreadsheets, and charts. As with any set of html files, a project home page can be extended to be an entire web site.

You can add content to the project home page either by entering plain text or html in the Description field on the Edit Project page, or by modifying an index.html file that resides in the www directory for the project. The more content you want to add to the project, the more useful the index.html file will be.

If an administrator or another user has created a template for your projects, you can make use of the template files to add structure and content to your project home page and the pages that link to the home page. The option to use a template must be enabled by a domain administrator, and more than one template must exist for this option to appear. Note that you can only select a template during project creation.

To add content to the project home page during creation

1. Click the Projects tab and click the Start New Project link.
2. On the Edit Project page, click the Use Project Index.html checkbox.
3. Optionally, if the Choose a content repository template option is available, you can choose a content template.
   If you choose this option and you have also checked Use Project Index.html, the index.html file from the template folder is used if one exists.
4. When you are done, click Create project.
   A confirmation page is displayed.
5. Click the link to the project home page on the confirmation page.
6. Click Version Control in the left navigation pane.
7. Click the link to the www directory.
8. View the contents of the www directory.
9. Use your version control tool to check out the files in this directory, edit the files, and check them in using the version control tool.

To add content to the project home page after initial creation

1. Click the Projects tab.
2. Click the link for the project that you want to configure.
3. On the Edit Project page, click the Use Project Index.html checkbox.
4. Click Submit Changes.
5. Click Version Control in the left navigation pane.
6. Click the link to the www directory.
7. View the contents of the index.html page, modify and extend it, and add files that link to it, as required by your project.
8. Use your version control tool to check in changes to the contents.