How to create and manage projects in Nippy
Projects are the constructive elements of campaigns. While campaigns allow for planning and orchestration of integrated marketing, for creating workflows and execution, campaigns need projects and tasks.
An example of campaigns are PR, lead generation, thought leadership, or a major event. A combination of projects like media outreach, social media ads, or content production make up the campaign. Projects in turn can consist of multiple tasks that ensure high quality projects and campaigns execution.
Nippy Manager provides a complete set of tools to manage projects for best in class marketing implementation.
In this article you will learn:
- Project elements
- How to create projects in Nippy
- How to launch projects in the team workflows
- How to pause and relaunch projects
- Complete a project
- Save projects as drafts
- Save project as a template
- How to reuse a project
- How to change projects periods in Nippy
- How to add projects to a campaign
- How to add budget and manage costs of a project
- How to add tasks to a project
- How to assign project manager
Project elements
In every campaign you can define following elements:
- Project Name (required field) - the name of the campaign. Try to make it short and clear.
- Description - add short and clear description of the campaign.
- Budget - the budgeted amount in the chosen currency for this campaign. This amount includes all internal and external costs. If this cell is red, than the sum of the budgets of the projects under this campaign is higher than the budget of the campaign.
- Client budget* - the budget, approved by the customer.
- Internal budget* - the budget set by your organization.
- Costs - these are the actual project costs.
- Start date - the date on which the work on this project needs to start. This is a required field to launch a project.
- End date - the date until the project must be completed. This is a required field to launch a project.
- Project manager - this is the accountable for the project.
- Tasks - the list of tasks under this project.
- Notes - free text field for notes and files about this project.
- Save button - this saves the project as a draft and closes the dialog box.
- Launch button - this saves the project and pushes it in the workflows for all responsible for the tasks under this project.
*Available in Nippy Agency.
Types of projects in Nippy
Depending on your marketing workflows you can determine and manage the following project types in Nippy:
- Draft projects - these are the projects that are not launched/active and not part of the Nippy algorithms and not visible in My Marketing Day dashboard. These projects need to be launched to become part of your workflows.
- Active projects - these projects are launched. This means that the projects are part of the team's workflows and they appear in the user's My marketing day dashboard.
- Projects in progress - projects might be active/launched but its actual execution might not have still started. The system will set a project to be in progress the moment a team member starts work on a task, part of the project by clicking the play button.
- Paused projects - any project can be worked on, paused, and restarted multiple times. Paused projects and its tasks are removed from the My Marketing Day dashboard. They can be restarted by the launch button.
- Project templates - these are projects saved as templates that can be reused and saved as drafts or launched as new projects.
Different types of projects can be located and managed in the My manager/Grid.
How to create projects in Nippy
Nippy Marketer provides many easy opportunities for project development and management.
You can access the project form from following places:
- The Power button
always visible in the header row of Nippy. Click on the button and choose Project. Fill-in the fields in the dialog box. If you want the campaign to be launched, click LAUNCH (campaign dates are required fields); if you want to save as draft and launch in the future, click SAVE.
- Create a project in My marketing day dashboard. Go to My marketing day and Click the plus icon above the projects column. Add the information in the form and click SAVE or LAUNCH.
- Go to My manager/Grid. Click to select a campaign row. Click Add in the table bar and fill in the data. This will add a project under this campaign.
- Open a new or existing campaign form. Go to Projects list and add as many projects as you need. The added projects in a campaign form will assume as end date the launch date of the campaign.
Launch a project in team's workflows
To push a project in your workflows and assign it and its tasks to a manager and team members, you need to LAUNCH it. When launched, the projects and their tasks are recognized by Nippy algorithms and they appear in assignees' My marketing day dashboards.
To launch a project, you need to fill-in the required fields Name, Start date and End date. If a project is not launched, it stays saved as a draft and you can edit it and launch it anytime from the button in the form or when you see the launch icon in Grid or GANTT.
- Open the project form to create a new or a draft project. Fill-in the required fields Name, Start date, End date and press the LAUNCH button when it is active.
- You can launch a project from Table. Go to My Manager/Grid, filter the table for drafts or use the search box to locate the project. Click on the three dots next to the project's name and then click launch, always labeled as a rocket
.
If the project is part of the campaign, when you launch the campaign, you will automatically launch all projects under this campaign. More on how to launch campaigns here.
Pause and relaunch projects execution
You may decide to pause the work on a project. You can pause a project through the pause
button. The pause button is easily accessible on the projects' cards in My marketing day dashboard. When paused, the project and its tasks disappear from the responsible team members' dashboards.
Paused projects can be relaunched like new project - from project's form, table, or GANTT. When relaunched, all activities under this project appear in the responsible for the activity's dashboards.
You can locate paused projects in Table. When a project is launched, this will show the pause icon. When paused, will show the play button.
Complete projects in Nippy
Even if all tasks under a project a completed, you need to manually complete a project. Nippy will notify you if the tasks under a project a completed to complete the project.
You can complete a project from anywhere where you see the complete icon , including the Marketing Day dashboard, the project form, the Grid or GANTT.
When you complete a project, all tasks under this project, regardless of their status, are also marked completed.
Edit projects in Nippy
You can easily edit projects and their elements in Nippy.
- Wherever you have a project name, you will see the edit
icon. Clicking on this icon will open the project's form, where you can edit any of the project's elements. To save your changes, click UPDATE. If the project was saved as a draft, it will be saved again as a draft. If it has been launched, it will stay launched.
- You can edit a project's elements in Table. Go to My manager/Table. Double click on the cell in the project's row or select a project row and click Edit. Enter the date you need. To easily distinguish them, every project has the project icon
next to its name.
Duplicate and reuse an existing project
You can easily reuse a project of you think it is very similar to a new project you want to create or if you believe that the project was successful. When you duplicate a project the new campaign is exact copy of the original one and will open the new project's dialog box. Then you can edit any elements of the new project.
You can duplicate a project when you see the duplicate
icon. Clicking duplicate will create a new project with same parameters of the old one. You can not save or launch an exact copy of another project. You need to make a change.
Save projects as templates
A project's template is a recording of the exact state of a project that has been identified as a best practice that needs to be available in the organization.
When you reload a project template, you can edit any of its elements and launch it in the marketing workflows.
When you change the dates of the new project, all activities under the campaign assume new dates while preserving their relationships from the original project.
You can further modify template projects and its elements before launch. You can locate templates in Table or GANTT.
When a project is saved as template, it will be marked with the violet star 
.
Change projects periods
Project periods are critical for project management in Nippy. They consist of two dates: start date and end date. When you change an existing project's period, the tasks under this project assume new dates also, while they preserve their relative "distance" from the start and end date of the project.
There are multiple ways to manage project periods in Nippy:
- Open to edit the project's form. Edit dates and click UPDATE.
- Go to My manager/Table, find the project to be edited (next to the project's name can see the project icon , double click on the date cell, change date and press ENTER.
- Go to My Manager/GANTT. Find the project row. You can drag the colored bar that to a new period. This will change both start and end dates, while preserving the project's period.
Add projects to a campaign
You can add projects to a campaign in the following ways:
- Add a project to an existing campaign in the project's dialog box. Open the project's dialog box. Go to the campaign selector and use the dropdown to choose an existing campaign. Click UPDATE.
- Add new projects under existing campaign. Open a campaign's form and type any number of projects. The added projects will assume the start and end date of the campaign. More on managing campaign here.
- Add existing projects under new or existing campaign. Go to My campaign creator, open existing or create new campaign, expand the Projects field on the right to see the projects templates and drag and drop any project template in the whiteboard. More on managing campaigns in My campaign creator here.
Manage project's budget and costs
Every project has a budget. This is the planned for the execution of the project amount in the chosen currency. Every projects has also costs - these are the actual costs accrued during the project's execution. Nippy allows for smart management of both.
- You can set the project budget in the project's dialog box when editing existing or creating a new project. Open the project's dialog box and fill-in the Budget field.
- In Nippy Agency you have the option to set two types of project budgets: Client budget and Internal budget. The former is the approved by the client budget while the latter is the internally set campaign budget.
- A project's budget can also be set in the Table. Go to My Manager/Table. Locate the project, click on the budget cell and enter the amount. If you don't see the budget column, you might check if it was not hidden in Columns.
Add tasks to a project
Projects are the constructive elements of a campaign. In marketing terms these could be communications tactics - email campaign, press release outreach, digital campaign or anything requiring a sequence of activities - content production, ad production, information materials, landing page, etc. A campaign must include at least one project as projects consists of the specific tasks the marketer needs to execute.
That is why in Nippy we have made it very easy to add and manage the projects' tasks:
- You can create or remove tasks in a project's form anytime. Open to edit the project's form, scroll to the Tasks section and add any number of tasks. The added here tasks will assume the Start and Due dates of the project.
- To add tasks in Table, go to My manager/Table, select the row with the project, click add button and enter the task's data.
Assign project manager
At any time during the creation and campaign management you can assign a project manager. When the project is launched the project manager will see the campaign and all its elements in their workflow and will be notified by the system. You can assign project managers from the list of active marketing team members as determined in your marketing team database.
You can assign campaign managers in several ways in Nippy:
- Assign campaign manager in the project's form: open the project's form and from the dropdown menu under Project manager choose your team member. Click UPDATE to save the changes.
- Assign project manager in Table. Go to My Manager/Table, locate the project, click on the project manager cell and choose the project manager from the available team members. Click away from the cell or ENTER to save the changes.
- Assign project manager in Campaign Creator. Go to My Campaign creator, load the campaign, of which the projects is part of. Expand My team and drag the team member over the project that you need them to manage.