Stages are the status values or gates that your projects, bookings and tasks may step through at any particular time whilst they are being worked on at your company.

You can define as many stages as you like, and you can name them as you like.  This lets you create a fully customized workflow for your projects.

Typical Project Stages

Typical stages that a project may step through may be Bidding, Budgeting, Awarded, Ready, In Progress, Change Order and Completed.

Typical Booking Stages

Typical stages when booking staff or resources in a project may be Requested, Approved, Rejected and Extended.

Typical Task Stages

Typical stages that tasks within a project may step through may be Ready, In Progess, Pending Review, Client Review, Client Sign Off, Client Hand Over, Change Order and Completed.

Assigning Stages To Projects

After creating your stages in Projectal, you can then assign them to your projects.  To do this, go to the Edit Projectal screen.  On the Edit Project screen, there are two places to assign stages:

• Setting the project status. You can select the corresponding stage that relects the current status of your project (e.g. Bidding).
  
• Setting the possible task stage values.  You can add the set of possible stage values for this project.  This restricts tasks within this project to being one of these stage values.  Also, you can set the order of the stage values, and the order is displayed in the project's kanban board.

Assigning Stages to Bookings and Activities

After creating your stages in Projectal, then you can assign them to bookings and activities in the Staff Planner and Resource Planner.  This lets you track the status of bookings and activities for staff and resources.  On the Edit Booking screen or Edit Activity screen, select the stage for the booking or activity.

Assigning Stages To Tasks

After creating your stages and creating a project in Projectal, you can assign stage values to your tasks in your project.  To do this, go to the Edit Task screen.  On the Edit Task screen, you can set the Stage value for the task.

Note: The list of possible stage values that can be assigned to a task is defined in the project via the Edit Project screen.

Using Stages To Control Syncing With Your Other Tools 

Stages can be useful for triggering updates to your other tools.  For example, when a project is in the early stages of conception (e.g. bidding, budgeting or planning stages), you may not want the project to be synced with your other tools since it may be too early and may confuse staff using these tools.

Connectors can be created by the Projectal team using Projectal's Python library, API and webhooks to take advantage of these stages so that they fit exactly how you want your company's workflow to operate.