Project Management¶
MatStream includes project management as a built-in solution — Projects with Milestones, Tasks, People, Documents, recorded time and the commercial trail that led to them, all built on the same entity and category model as the rest of the platform. Unlike PLM (which manages a single part's lifecycle), Project Management manages the initiative that wraps many parts, deliverables, dates and costs together.
What is project management in MatStream?¶
A Project is a folder category with the special Project behavior. Anything created underneath a project — parts, tasks, milestones, sub-folders — can always be traced back up to the project it belongs to. This is what lets features like backward scheduling (planned for a future release) work: MatStream can walk from any item up to its owning project automatically, without you having to tag things by hand.
What MatStream manages in a project context¶
Projects¶
The Project category (seeded by the Setup Wizard) carries:
| Property | Purpose |
|---|---|
| Title | The project's name |
| Description | Free-text summary |
| Project Number | Your own reference for it |
| Client | A link to a Company entity |
| Customer Contact | The person you deal with there |
| Client PO Number / SO Number | Purchase and sales order references |
| Project Manager | Who is running it, picked from workspace members |
| Project Type | Fixed Price, Time & Materials, Internal or Warranty |
| Priority | Low, Normal, High or Critical |
| Start Date / Due Date | When it runs |
| Progress % | The project manager's own judgement, not a calculation |
| Project Currency | The currency it is contracted in |
| Contracted Revenue | What it is worth |
| Forecast Comment | Why the numbers say what they say |
| Shipping Address | Where deliverables ship to |
Projects follow their own lifecycle: In Preparation → Work in Progress → On Hold → Closed / Cancelled.
Note: Progress % is a field somebody fills in, not a roll-up. It exists so a project manager can say what they believe when it differs from what the task list implies.
Note: Projects are not numbered automatically. Project Number is an ordinary property you fill in — there is no numbering scheme on the Project category. Quotations and opportunities do get numbers allocated for them.
Milestones¶
Milestones are dated checkpoints on a project — "Design Freeze", "Delivery" — each with a responsible owner and a status (Planned, At Risk, Reached, or Missed). See Tasks — Milestones for the full detail.
Tasks¶
Standard work items — due dates, assignees, status — tracked against the project the same way tasks attach to any other entity. See Tasks.
People and Documents¶
- The People tab links Company and Person contacts to the project — who's involved, who to call.
- The Documents tab holds project-related files — quotes, specifications, correspondence — separate from engineering drawings attached to individual parts.
Activities¶
Calls, meetings, emails, site visits and notes logged against the project, dated by when they happened rather than when they were typed. See Opportunities & quotations.
Where a project comes from¶
A project can be created directly, or it can arrive from the commercial side: a Company you are selling to, an Opportunity you are pursuing, a Quotation you offered, and — once the customer accepts it — a project carrying the client, the contact, the currency and the contracted revenue across.
The project records which version of the quotation it was sold on, not just which quotation. Quotations get revised after they are won, and a project that pointed at "the quotation" would silently start describing a document nobody agreed to.
See Opportunities & quotations.
Time and cost¶
People record hours on a weekly timesheet and pick the project — or a task, which fills in its project for them. Once a week is approved, each entry is priced from the hour rate that applied on the day the work was done, and the cost, the sale price and the currency are copied onto the entry.
That is what makes a cost report stay still. A rate card edited next year cannot restate what last year's hours cost, because the figures are on the entries rather than joined at read time.
The hours by project report totals approved hours and their cost across a date range. It counts approved hours only — draft hours are somebody's intention, and a report that included them would move when nobody had done any work.
See Time tracking.
Note: Where a project has an hour with no rate behind it, the report shows no cost rather than a partial total. A figure that quietly omitted the hours it could not price would be too low and look complete.
Seeing the whole portfolio¶
Two views sit over every project in the workspace:
| View | Shows |
|---|---|
| Project Portfolio | Every project, with number, client, manager, type, priority, state, dates, progress and contracted revenue |
| Active Projects | The same, minus anything Closed or Cancelled |
Both are live views rather than saved reports, so they always show what is true now. Open them from the folder tree like any other folder.
A Company also gains tabs listing its projects, quotations, opportunities and purchase orders — everything that points at it, in one place.
Setting up project management¶
The fastest way to get a working Project setup is the Setup Wizard:
- Open the workspace in MatStream Manage and go to Setup.
- Check Engineering Project → Engineering Project Configuration.
- Leave Engineering Project Sample Data checked to seed a worked example (a sample project with milestones, tasks and a real piping BOM already in place), or uncheck it for the configuration only.
- Apply.
See Workspace setup for the full wizard walkthrough.
Who uses MatStream in a project context?¶
| Role | How they use MatStream |
|---|---|
| Project manager | Creates the project, sets milestones, tracks task progress, judges Progress % and forecast |
| Team member | Completes assigned tasks, records hours on the weekly timesheet |
| Approver | Reviews and approves other people's weeks — never their own |
| Sales / commercial | Runs the opportunity and quotation, turns an accepted quotation into the project |
| Finance | Reads hours by project, and maintains the hour rate cards |
| Administrator | Configures the Project category, lifecycle, properties and permissions |
Getting started with project management¶
- Run the Setup Wizard — check Engineering Project → Engineering Project Configuration (leave Engineering Project Sample Data checked if you want a worked example).
- Create your first project — give it a Title, a Project Number, a Client and a Project Manager. The Company library that Client points at is set up for you as part of the same option.
- Add milestones and tasks — use the Milestones and Tasks tabs on the project to track what needs to happen and by when.
- Enter an hour rate — create an Hour Rate in the Library with an Effective From date and approve it, so approved hours have something to be priced from. The sample data seeds one to start from.
- Record some time — open Timesheet, put hours against the project, submit the week, and have somebody else approve it.
Next steps¶
- Workspace setup — the Setup Wizard and what the Engineering Project configuration seeds
- Tasks — Tasks and Milestones in detail
- Categories — how the Project category and its behavior work under the hood
- PLM — managing the parts and assemblies a project might deliver
- Milestones - dated checkpoints on a project
- Time tracking — timesheets, approval and hour rates
- Opportunities & quotations — the commercial trail that produces a project