Learning about projects

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, project members create and share information in a permissions-based, secure manner.

When you click the Projects tab, a list of projects is displayed, along with tabs for project categories and groups. All public projects are listed in alphabetical order. A project summary is displayed to the right of the project name and, if assigned, a category is also displayed.

If you have permission to suggest new projects, a Suggest a new Project link is displayed on this page. If you have permission to create a new project, a link to the Start new project page is displayed. To filter the list of projects displayed on this page, enter filter criteria in the Filter this list field.

Projects and sub-projects

Click the name of a project to view the project's home page. To join the project, click the Join this project link. From any page of this project, you can click the links in the left navigation pane to work with project tools. Project tools include the following:

• Project members
• Mailing lists archives
• Source code
• Issues logged for the project
• Project documents and files
• Project announcements.

If you find the project interesting but are not ready to join, you can monitor the project from your start page.

To monitor a project:

1. Click the Projects tab.
2. Click the link for a project that you want to monitor.
3. Click the Watch project link.
4. Click the confirmation button.
   The project is added to My start page. It appears in a section titled My watch list.

Projects can exist as a hierarchy of projects and sub-projects. You can view the relationships between projects from the project list page.

To see if a project is a parent or child of another project:

1. Click the Projects tab.
2. Click the View subprojects checkbox at the top of the project list page.
   When this checkbox is checked the Path field will appear, showing the relationship to all projects on this page. Parent projects are listed at the Root level. Subprojects are listed with their parent project.

Categories

The Categories tab provides a list of all public project categories on the site. Each category is listed with its summary and the number of subcategories and projects associated with it.

Categories enable projects to be cataloged by type, making it easier to identify a project that is of interest to you. For instance, your site may have a category "games" in which all projects involving gaming may appear. You can look for the games category on the Category page to see how many projects are associated with this category. Click the category name to view its home page. The category home page displays a list of the associated projects.

To show the subcategory relationships, check the View subcategories checkbox. To filter the list of categories, enter filter criteria in the Filter this list field.

Project groups

The Project groups tab will appear if you have permission to view project groups. The primary purpose of project groups is to allow administrators to take action on a group of similar projects simultaneously.

Each project group is listed with a summary and the number of subgroups and projects associated with the group. To show the subgroup relationships, check the View subgroups checkbox. To filter the list of groups, use the Filter this list field.