Core concepts

A workspace contains your projects. A project contains schedules for one job. A schedule describes the activities, dates, and relationships for that job. A progress update collects changes from the team and turns them into an updated schedule.

Workspace: Northside Construction
└── Project: Riverside School
    ├── Baseline schedule
    ├── Current schedule
    └── Progress update cycle
        ├── Collect progress on a source schedule
        ├── Apply it to a new copy or another schedule
        └── Review and publish the updated schedule

Workspace

A workspace is the home for a set of projects, members, and licensing. You can belong to multiple workspaces. Switching workspaces changes the projects and administration options you are working with; it does not move your data.

A personal workspace supports your individual work. Team workspaces support shared administration and collaboration. See Workspaces.

Project

A project represents the construction job. Its schedules share a project context: the job’s identity, team, and project settings. Keep successive schedule updates for the same job in that project so they can be managed together.

A program can group related projects within a workspace. The project remains the container for its own schedules. See Projects.

Schedule

A schedule is a particular plan or update for the project. It contains activities, a work breakdown structure, relationships, calendars, and schedule dates.

Current identifies the project’s working schedule. Baseline identifies a reference schedule. These labels describe the schedule’s role; creating or importing a newer schedule is a separate action from choosing which schedule is current.

The status date, also called the data date, is the schedule’s reporting point. It separates reported progress from remaining work. See Schedules.

Activity and WBS

An activity is a piece of work, such as pouring a foundation. A WBS row organizes activities into a hierarchy, such as Building → Structure → Foundations. Relationships connect activities and influence the calculated dates.

A WBS Summary activity is a special activity type. It is distinct from the WBS rows used to organize the schedule. See the CPM reference for special activity types and their calculation rules.

Progress update

An update cycle gives the team a reporting window, an Updates Through cutoff, and a submission due date. Contributors record progress during collection. A manager applies the changes, reviews the resulting schedule, and publishes the cycle.

Updating an activity, applying collected updates, recalculating dates, and publishing a cycle are different operations. See Progress updates.

Premium project

Premium is an allocation to a project within a team workspace. It enables the Progress Update module and changes the licensing requirements for project Editors. A member license is allocated to a person; a Premium slot is allocated to a project. See Premium projects.