About project workflows
Projects are used to organize and manage your work within Upchain. They enable you to easily track item statuses and due dates, assign work and review documentation, while having all your information in one place. Projects can contain one or more products to be delivered to a customer.
There are three project types in Upchain:
- Engineering – for tracking engineering activities and CAD design throughout a product’s entire project lifecycle.
- Build to Print – for managing and producing products according to a customer’s exact specifications.
- Design Project – for designing products from scratch and tracking all the changes.
You may also create your own custom project type. Once you have created a custom project type, you must contact Autodesk support to add your new project type to the project type picklist. After this is done, you may then proceed to create a workflow for the custom project type.
A project may be in one of four statuses: Draft, Active, Closed, and Archived. The progression of a project through these lifecycle statuses is managed using workflows. Out of the box, Upchain provides you with a separate workflow for each project type. These workflows are exactly the same as each other, but provide you with a base to modify each one as you see fit.
Before you start
Before you start modeling workflows in Upchain, we recommend that you already have a process in mind. Mapping this process out in a diagram application gives you a solid base from which to start.
Things to consider include, but are not limited to:
Who will be creating and activating projects?
Do you plan on archiving and/or closing projects?
- Do you want to be able to re-open a project if it has been closed/archived?
What project attributes must be filled in before it can be activated?
What version of mechanical/electrical CAD do you intend on using?
Are there any additional actions that should occur at each step? (notifications, status updates, etc).
For example, you may want to add in reminders to confirm that you have added specific users to your project team or added documents before you activate it. You can use the workflow to check that the correct CAD version has been selected, you have set the correct drawing sizes and standards, or that your project number is in a specific format.
The steps to creating a project might be:
PM creates the project, choosing the project type, setting project number, name, description, etc.
PM chooses to use SolidWorks 2020 and American Standard drawings
PM adds a second project manager, a lead mechanical designer, and a lead electrical designer.
PM adds all template documentation they want to use in the project.
PM begins the project activation workflow.
- Workflow checks that the project number is entirely numerical.
- Workflow checks if the version of Solidworks chosen matches a chosen version.
- Workflow checks that you have filled out all project attributes.
- Workflow generates a task to remind the user to confirm if they have configured their project team.
- Workflow generates a task to remind the user to confirm if they have added all documents they want to.
- Workflow presents the PM with an Activate button.
When the project is finished (but may be returned to later), the user chooses to Archive it. The workflow can be configured such that this allows you to reopen it later if you want.
When the project is completely finished with no chance of returning to it, you can choose to Close it. The workflow can be configured so that this cannot be undone.
Make sure to include all the steps in your ideal process (happy path) as well as any possible roadblocks (exception path) that may occur. In the preceding example, it might be the case that you have forgotten to add team members and you want to cancel out of the workflow to do so before it is active. You should ensure this process is built into your workflow.
To help you in your planning, read through the list of available primitives to get a sense of what is possible.