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Planview Customer Success Center

Distribute Project Permissions Based on Department

Many organizations require strict project segmentation: users from the Finance department can only see Finances projects and reports, users from R&D can only see R&D projects and reports, and so on. Those organizations want to set up project permissions such that members of Finance cannot see projects that belong to R&D, and vice versa.

Bird's-Eye View:

  • Create a project category that includes the Department field. The field may or may not be a required field. Also, you can decide whether you want the field to appear on the Create Project wizard, or if you want it to show on the project Details once the project is created.
  • Create a project template that is configured for the department. For example, select Finance in the Department field.
  • Add the user/group/unit that corresponds to the department/projects to the team of the project template, along with the appropriate permission profile. We recommend using hierarchy units to place users on the project team, that way, when new users are added to the unit, they are automatically provisioned for the projects that unit is assigned to.
  • Create a project based on the appropriate template

Note the following:

  • Admin must configure project category to include Department/Program field
  • User who creates project template must have Create Project permission
  • User who creates project template must be on Department team with "Create parent-child association with projects". Note that this must be set up for every department that is needed to appear in Department droplist.
  • If users who create projects from the template do not themselves have "Create parent-child association with projects" permission for the department configured for the project, make sure the Department field is not required. The department value will display as invalid and the user can clear the field in order to save the project. A user with the appropriate permissions will have to set the Department value at a later date.

Steps:

  1. Grant the user who will create the template permission to create a parent association between the department and the template project (if you are configuring for a category only, simply create the category instead of steps a-c):
    1. Go to the Department Team page.
    2. Choose Menu > New.
    3. Add the user to the Selected Users panel and check the box next to "Can Create Parent Relationship with Project"

dept_team_proj_perm.png

  1. Create a project template and configure it for a specific Department and/or Category.
  2. Identify the user(s)/group(s)/unit(s) you want to give access to projects that will be associated with the Department/Category you configure in step 1.
  3. Create the team profiles that grant the privileges you want to provision to these users for these kinds of projects. For example, maybe you want to give full edit/no delete permissions to one set of users, and maybe view permissions to others. 
  4. Add the group(s)/users(s)/unit(s) to the team of the project template, along with the corresponding profiles.

template_team.png

Now, each time you use the template project to create a project for the Department/Category you configured in your template (make sure you choose to copy the project team), the new project will automatically be staffed with the correct team of users and the correct permissions. (The Department field, if you are using one, will be onthe  Step 2 screen.)

create_from_template.png

When you onboard new people, you only have to add them to the group or unit and they will automatically get permissions to the appropriate projects.

Note that you can use this technique for project Category or the Division entity as well