In Drawboard Projects, a project holds all the information relating to a particular real-world project that you're working on - all the drawings, documents, markup, issues and conversations.

Everything you do in Drawboard Projects, you do inside a project.

In this section:

1. Using projects
2. Creating a new project
3. Changing project settings
4. Adding project team members
5. Accepting an invite to a project
6. Removing project team members
7. Project roles and permissions
8. Archiving projects
9. Exporting projects
10. Deleting projects

Using projects

The project list shows all the projects in the selected workspace. It can be viewed as a large grid, small grid or a list view. It can also be sorted by creation date (new->old and old->new), or by project name (ascending or descending).

When you open a project, the left hand side navigation bar changes so you can navigate around inside the project between the activity feed, drawings, documents, issues and the project team list. To return to the project list, click the left arrow in the top left of the screen.

Creating a new project

1. To create a new project, navigate to the project list in the workspace you want to create a new project in, and select + New Project.

2. Enter the name of your project, and add a description if you want (optional). Adding a distinctive image (e.g. a site or building render) makes it easier to locate this project in the project list
3. Decide on the appropriate Project Access settings
4. Decide whether to use the default set of Statuses, or to change them
5. Click Create once you have finished adding project information to create your Project

Changing project settings

1. Open the Project settings
   1. On the project list, click the More (three dots) icon for the desired project, and choose Project settings; or
   2. From within a project, click the More (three dots) icon in the top-right of the screen, and choose Project settings
2. Make changes as desired
3. Click Save to save your changes

The Name, Description and Image are all displayed in the project list. The other two settings (Project Access and Status) are described in detail below.

Tip: In the rare circumstance that you're a Project Admin on a project but not a member of its parent workspace, you won't be able to change settings

Project Access settings

To learn more about managing access control in Drawboard Projects, click here.

This setting lets you decide which workspace to create your project in and whether the workspace members can access it.

The two main Project Access options are:

Public projects are viewable by everyone in the workspace...

Private projects can only be seen by the people listed in the Project Team

If the project is set to Private, there's nothing more to do here. Admins can invite individuals to the project team and no-one else will be able to see or access it. 

If the project is set to Public, the next step is deciding whether to use the workspace-wide role configured in the workspace members screen or whether you want to override this and force all workspace members to have a specific access role. The two options are:

Inherit project access roles from the workspace: Every member of the workspace gets the level of access given to them in the Default Project Role attribute by a workspace admin. Essentially you're outsourcing access control to the workspace admins and allowing them to decide what access all members of the workspace get to this project.

Every workspace member is a(n) Admin | Collaborator | Reader: The workspace-level Project Role attribute is ignored, and instead every member of the workspace gets the level of access set here.

Tip: To see who will have access to your project if you choose to inherit project access roles, click View project access role details here

Tip: All projects created prior to the introduction of Public and Private access options will be Private by default

Adding Project Team members

Navigate to the Team screen to see all the members of the project team, as well as any temporary guests and any unaccepted invitations. On this screen you'll see several sections:

Members: Full project team members with permission of Admin, Collaborator or Reader (if the Project Access is set to Public, the workspace members who can access this project will also appear in this section)

Guests: Temporary project team members with permission of Collaborator or Reader

Pending Invites: Users who have been invited but who have not yet accepted their email invitation

The person who creates a project is always added as the first Owner in the project.

If your Project Access is set to public, then members of the workspace will be able to access your project according to the rules you've set, and you may not need to add anyone else to the project team itself. If your Project Access is set to private, you will most likely need to add users to the project team so they can collaborate on the project.

Invitations to join a project are sent via email.

Tip: Drawboard Projects users who already have an existing account will be automatically added to any projects they are invited to. Team members who do not yet have a Drawboard Projects account will need to accept an email invitation to the project and create a free trial account to be able to access the project.

Inviting new project members

Available on: Web app

1. Navigate to the Team screen in the appropriate project
2. Click Invite people
3. Search for existing team members from projects and organizations you are a member of, or enter the email addresses of the people you wish to add to your team in the email field (to type in multiple emails, separate them with a comma or press Enter to separate the email addresses)
4. Choose the permission level to apply to these invitations
   Administrator - all upload and mark-up rights
   Collaborator - restricted upload rights, full mark-up rights
   Reader - read-only users, no public layer mark-up access, no upload rights
5. Click Send Invites

Tip: In the Web app, You can also invite new project members from the canvas by clicking the 'Contributors' icon, then selecting + Add Contributors

Inviting an entire team at once

Available on: Web app

1. Navigate to the Team screen in the appropriate project
2. Click Invite people
3. Click Invite multiple members via CSV
4. Download the example Excel .csv file by clicking Download example
5. Fill out the template with your team members' information
6. Upload your completed list by dragging the file into the circle or clicking Select from files

Inviting guests

Available on: Web app

1. Navigate to the Team screen in the appropriate project
2. Click Invite people
3. Click Invite Guests at the bottom of the dialogue
4. Enter the email addresses of the people you wish to invite as guests (use a comma to separate multiple emails)
5. Choose the permission level to apply to these invitations
   Collaborator - restricted upload rights, full mark-up rights
   Reader - read-only users, no public layer mark-up access, no upload rights
6. Select how long these users can access the project (note that you can re-invite guests again after their initial access period expires)
7. Click Send Invites

More information on Guest invites can be found here.

Adding workspace members to the project

To override the access role for a particular workspace member on a public project:

1. Navigate to the team member list and locate the workspace member you wish to invite into the project team
2. Click the More (three dots) icon for that user
3. Select Add to project as... and then the desired role

Workspace members who are added to the project team will now show up in the project member list, not in the workspace member list. If you remove them from the project in the future, they'll go back to being displayed in the workspace member list (as long as they're still a member of the workspace!)

Removing Project Team Members

1. Navigate to the team member list and locate the user you wish to change
2. Click on the More (three dots) icon for that user
3. Select Revoke Membership... 
4. Click Confirm

Tip: You can't completely remove workspace members from a public project. To reduce the access workspace members have on your public project, your options are to add them to the project team and override their access level to the project (e.g. make them a reader), or to set your Project Access setting to private.

Accepting an invite to a project

When you're invited to a project, you'll get an email notifying you of this. You won't be able to see or access the project until you click the acceptance link in the email.

If you don't yet have a Drawboard Projects account, you'll need to create one to accept the invite. If your company has a Drawboard Projects account, talk to your company admin to get yourself added. If your company doesn't yet use Drawboard Projects, register a new account to start a trial.

Project roles and permissions

Projects offers flexible permission management. You can manage permissions on a per-project basis, or take advantage of workspace-wide permissions management to ease your admin burden.

The role you have on a project determines what actions you can perform. The available roles are Owner, Admin, Collaborator and Reader.

Click here to see an explanation of what actions each role can perform

Changing the role of a project team member

1. Search for or navigate to the project team member whose role you wish to change
2. Click the More (three dots) icon for that user
3. Select Update role and then the desired role

Once you have changed your team members permission setting they will receive an email notifying them of the change and what their new access restrictions are.

Changing the role a workspace member has on a specific project

If your project access is set to public, then workspace members will be able to access this with a role configured in either the workspace or the project settings. To "override this" on your project for a user:

1. Navigate to the team member list and locate the user you wish to change
2. Click on the More (three dots) icon for that user
3. Select Add to project as... and then the desired role

Tip: Workspace Admins can never be "demoted" from admin

Archiving projects

To help you focus more easily on your current projects, you can archive projects that are completed, dormant for a period of time, or that your team no longer needs to work on.

Read more about archiving projects here.

Exporting projects

Available on: Web app, Windows app

To export a project:

1. Navigate to the project list and locate the project you want to export
2. Hover over the project you would like to export
3. Click on the More (three dots) icon for that project
4. Select Export Project
5. Click Export to start the export process.

You will then receive a notification that a download link has been sent to your email address. Upon clicking the link in your email, a zip folder containing all project files will be downloaded to your designated download folder.

The zip folder is split into Drawings (annotated and original), Documents (annotated and original) and an text file export log which confirms exactly what has been exported from the project.

Deleting projects

Available on: Web app

1. Navigate to the project list and locate the project you want to delete
2. Hover over the project you would like to delete
3. Click on the More (three dots) icon for that project
4. Select Delete Project
5. Select Delete to delete this project