Projects

Creating and managing projects

Projects are the core unit of work in Dashly. Everything - budgets, risk, NPV, milestones, and team assignments - belongs to a project.

Project fields

When creating or editing a project, you can set the following fields:

Field	Description	Required
Name	The project title - shown on cards and in all reports.	Yes
Owner	The person responsible for the project. Free text - does not have to match a workspace member.	No
Details	A longer description of the project scope and objectives.	No
Status	Current lifecycle stage. See status definitions below.	Yes
Priority	Urgency level: High, Medium, or Low.	Yes
Scale	Time horizon: Short-term, Medium-term, or Long-term.	Yes
Start Date	When the project officially begins.	No
Duration	Expected length in months.	No
Budget	Approved or estimated total spend for the project (in your workspace currency).	No
Actual Costs	Costs incurred to date - used in cost variance calculations.	No
Expected Revenue	Projected revenue or value created by the project.	No
Notes	Free-text notes - visible only to workspace members.	No

Project statuses

Status reflects where the project is in its lifecycle. Choose the one that honestly reflects the current state.

Draft

The project exists in Dashly but work has not started. Used for ideation, scoping, or pipeline tracking.

Planning

Active planning is underway - defining scope, budget, team, and milestones. Not yet executing.

In Progress

Execution has started. The project is actively being delivered.

Paused

Work has temporarily stopped - due to resource constraints, stakeholder decisions, or external blockers.

Complete

The project has been delivered and formally closed. All outputs have been handed over.

Cancelled

The project has been stopped before completion and will not be resumed.

HEALTH IMPACT

Status affects the Dashly Sense health score. Complete adds 15 points, In Progress adds 10, Paused deducts 5, and Cancelled deducts 15. Choose status accurately - it shapes your health score.

Priority levels

Priority signals urgency and resource allocation. It is also factored into the Dashly Sense health score.

Priority	Meaning
High	Requires immediate attention or has strategic significance. Adds 10 pts to health score.
Medium	Important but not urgent. Adds 5 pts to health score.
Low	Routine or background work. No priority bonus to health score.

Scale (time horizon)

Scale	Duration	Meaning
Short-term	1 – 3 months	Tactical, quick-to-deliver initiatives.
Medium-term	4 – 12 months	Standard project horizon. Most organisational projects.
Long-term	> 12 months	Strategic programmes, infrastructure, or multi-phase initiatives.

Milestones

Milestones mark key deliverables or checkpoints within a project. They are tracked on the project detail page.

Adding milestones

Open the project detail page and click Add Milestone. Set a name, target date, and optional notes. Toggle it as complete when the milestone is reached.

Milestone progress bar

Project cards show a progress bar when milestones exist. It displays completed/total milestones and fills to the completion colour when all are done.

Linking financial tools

Dashly tools (NPV Calculator, Risk Calculator, Wastage Calculator) can be linked to a project. When you save a calculation and link it, the result is written back to the project and updates the health score.

Tool	What gets linked	Health impact
NPV Calculator	NPV value in currency. Positive NPV = strong financial return.	Positive NPV adds up to 30 pts. Negative NPV deducts up to 10 pts.
Risk Calculator	Risk score (0–100) and black swan score.	Low risk adds up to 25 pts. High risk (>70) deducts 15 pts.
Wastage Calculator	Wastage % and monetary cost of waste.	Feeds into operational health signals in Dashly Sense.

HOW TO LINK

On any tool page, select your project from the Link to Project dropdown before saving. Dashly will save the calculation and automatically write the result back to the project. The project health score updates immediately.

Project detail page

Click any project card on the dashboard to open the project detail page. The page is split into two columns - the main content column on the left and a context sidebar on the right.

Left column (in order):

About - project description and internal notes (if set)
Milestones - full milestone list with completion toggles and progress bar
Tasks - lightweight action items within the project: title, status, assignee, due date
Team - assigned members with their workspace roles
Financials - budget bar, actual costs, budget variance, NPV, and expected revenue
NPV Sensitivity Analysis - tornado chart (visible when NPV data is linked)
Risk Decomposition - radar chart and factor breakdown (visible when risk is linked)
Resource Allocation - allocation chart (visible when resource data exists)
Documents - Files tab (uploaded documents and images) and Links tab (external URLs with title and category)
Notes & Decisions - threaded comments for the project

Right sidebar (always visible):

Details - Priority, Status, Scale, Duration, Start date at a glance
Dashly Sense - health score ring, dimension breakdown, and AI recommendations
Analysis Tools - quick links to NPV Calculator, Risk Calculator, Wastage Calculator for this project
Alerts - configurable rules that notify you when project health, budget, or activity crosses a threshold
Business Portfolio - opens the Business Portfolio page

Action bar

The top-right of the project detail page contains the action bar. The primary actions - Share, Edit, and Delete - are always visible. A More button (three dots) reveals secondary actions:

Share - generate and manage a public read-only link (DASHMASTER and DASHKEEPER only)
Edit - open the project edit form
Delete - permanently delete the project (DASHMASTER and DASHKEEPER only)
More → Save as template - save this project as a reusable company template
More → Duplicate project - create an identical copy and navigate to it immediately
More → Export PDF - download a PDF report of the project

Documents and external links

The Documents panel on the project detail page has two tabs: Files and Links.

Files

Upload any document, image, or file to a project. Files are stored in your workspace storage and visible only to workspace members. Accepted formats include PDFs, images, Word documents, and spreadsheets.

Sharing a project publicly

Click Share in the action bar. A panel opens where you can toggle the public link on or off. When enabled, Dashly generates a unique, read-only URL. Anyone with the link can view the project summary without logging in. No Dashly account is required.

IMPORTANT

Public share links expose the project's details to anyone with the URL. Only share links for projects where public visibility is appropriate. You can revoke a share link at any time by toggling it off in the Share panel - the link stops working immediately.

Bulk operations

On the main dashboard, you can select multiple projects at once using the checkbox that appears when you hover over a card. Once one or more projects are selected, a bulk action bar appears at the bottom of the screen with the following options:

Change status - update all selected projects to a new status in one action
Export CSV - download the selected projects as a spreadsheet
Delete - permanently delete all selected projects (with undo grace period)

Click the X in the bulk action bar, or press Escape, to deselect all projects and dismiss the bar.

Pinning projects

Hover over any project card and click the pin icon to pin it to the top of your dashboard. Pinned projects always appear first, regardless of other sorting. Useful for your most active or critical projects.

Tasks

Each project has a lightweight task list - finer-grained than milestones, useful for individual action items, follow-ups, or internal to-dos that do not need a formal milestone entry.

Creating a task

Open the project detail page and go to the Tasks section. Click Add task, enter a title, and press Enter or click the check. You can then set the status, assignee, and due date inline.

Task statuses

Status	Meaning
To Do	Not yet started. The default for any new task.
In Progress	Actively being worked on.
Done	Completed. The task stays visible but greyed out so the history is preserved.

Click the status icon on any task to cycle it forward: To Do to In Progress to Done, then back to To Do.

Assigning tasks

Use the assignee picker on each task to assign it to a workspace member. Only people who are members of your workspace appear in the list. Assignments are informational - Dashly does not send email notifications for task assignments at this stage.

PERMISSIONS

All workspace members can view tasks. Creating, editing, and deleting tasks is restricted to DASHMASTERs and DASHKEEPERs. DASHVIEWERs can see the task list but cannot make changes.

Alerts

Alerts let you set automatic notification rules for a project. When a condition is met, Dashly fires an in-app notification and optionally sends an email to all project members.

Available alert rules

Rule	Triggers when...
Health below	The project health score drops below your chosen threshold (e.g. fire when health drops below 50).
Budget over	Actual costs exceed a percentage of the project budget (e.g. fire when 80% of budget is spent).
Milestone overdue	Any incomplete milestone has passed its due date. No threshold - fires on any overdue milestone.
No update in	The project has not been edited in a given number of days (e.g. fire if no activity in 14 days).

Setting up an alert

Open the Alerts section in the project sidebar. Click Add alert and choose a rule type. Set the threshold where applicable. By default, rules fire an in-app notification only. Click the mail icon on any rule to also send an email to project members.

Managing alerts

Click the bell icon on a rule to toggle it on or off without deleting it.
Click the mail icon to toggle email delivery on or off for that rule.
Each rule fires at most once every 24 hours to prevent alert fatigue.
Alerts are checked automatically once per day at 9am. There is no manual trigger.
Fired alerts appear in the notification bell at the top of the dashboard.

PERMISSIONS

Viewing alerts is available to all workspace members. Creating, editing, and deleting alert rules is restricted to DASHMASTERs and DASHKEEPERs.

Sharing your portfolio

The Share button in the main dashboard header generates a public, read-only link to your entire project portfolio. Anyone with the link can view it without a Dashly account or login.

What the portfolio view shows

Company name and portfolio summary stats (total projects, active count, total budget, health breakdown).
A card for every non-cancelled project showing: status, health score, budget, NPV, milestone progress.

What the portfolio view hides

Actual costs (spend-to-date) - only the approved budget is visible.
Internal notes, comments, and documents.
Team membership and individual user details.
Cancelled projects are excluded entirely.

Enabling and disabling

Click Share in the dashboard header. Toggle sharing on to generate the link, then copy it. To revoke access, click Disable - the link stops working immediately and the token is destroyed. A new Enable creates a fresh link with a different URL.

IMPORTANT

The portfolio share link is company-wide - it shows all non-cancelled projects. Use it for board reporting, executive visibility, or external stakeholder reviews. Revoke it when the sharing window ends.

How tasks, milestones, and goals relate

These three things are often confused. Here is exactly how they connect - and where they do not.

	Milestones	Tasks	Goals
What it is	A key checkpoint or deliverable in a project	A granular action item inside a project	A company-level strategic objective
Lives on	A project	A project	The company (spans many projects)
Affects health score?	Yes - overdue milestones drag the schedule dimension	No	No
Links to each other?	Independent from tasks	Independent from milestones	Linked to projects via the Goals page
Progress tracked how?	complete / in_progress / pending / overdue per milestone	todo / in_progress / done per task	Manual 0-100% slider - you set it
Triggers alerts?	Yes - the milestone overdue alert fires when any milestone is past its due date	No	No
Shows on calendar?	Yes - milestone due dates appear on the calendar	No	No

KEY DISTINCTION

Completing a task does not complete a milestone. Completing a milestone does not update goal progress. These are independent layers: tasks are the day-to-day work, milestones are formal checkpoints, and goals are the business outcomes you are trying to reach. You connect them by linking projects to goals - but the progress on each layer is tracked separately and deliberately.

Deleting a project

CAUTION

Deleting a project is permanent. All linked calculations, milestones, and member assignments are removed. Only DASHMASTERs and DASHKEEPERs can delete projects. If you are unsure, set the status to Cancelled instead - it preserves the data for audit purposes.

Dashly gives you a 5-second undo window after deletion. A toast notification appears with an Undo button - click it within 5 seconds to restore the project. After that, the deletion is permanent.