Projects

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Projects

Projects are the heart of Basecamp. You can make projects for every major thing you have going on — like a marketing campaign, a new product launch, or a project for a client. Inside projects, you’ll post announcements, chat, organize and assign work, set deadlines, share files, and present ideas.

Add a new Project

To create a new project, click the button beneath your company logo or company name:

Screenshot of the top of the Home screen with the Make a new project button highlighted

Give your project a name and add a description about it, or take a look at your project templates. You can also decide the lineup schedule, available tools, and select if the project will be Invite-only or All-Access:

Screenshot of a Make a new project page where you can see three steps - start with the basics, choose your tools, choose who's on the project

Click 'Create this project' to start the project. Once that’s done, you’re in! 

NOTE: Do the same sorts of projects over and over? Save yourself time by adding frequently-used messages, to-dos, files, and more to a project template. Learn more →

Click the project and you’ll see the tools that you've selected. You can organize these in the order you want them in:

Screenshot of the Office Renovation project as an example with the default project tools

Set up project tools

Personalize the tools you need to get your work done!

If a project doesn't need all of the project tools in it by default, you can turn them off. Click the "Set up tools" in the ••• menu:

Screenshot of the More options menu with a red arrow pointing at the Set up tools option

Then toggle off the tool you don't need. Any changes you make will be reflected to anyone else on the project. For example, if you turn off Automatic Check-Ins, it turns them off for everyone in the project:

Screenshot of the Set up tools for this project page with a red arrow pointing at the ON/OFF button for Automatic Check-ins

💡 TIP: Account owners and administrators can set default names for project tools in Adminland.

Need to add a link to an external service like Github, Zoom, or Google Drive? You can add direct links to those services and more using Doors. Learn how to enable those here:

🔗 Doors →

Screenshot of a project page with a Door to Zoom highlighted in red

Below your tools, you'll find the activity timeline, where you can see all the updates that have been made to this project!

Add multiple tools

You can add more than one of each tool to a project by clicking the "+ Add another" option:

Screenshot of the Set up tools for this project page with red arrows pointing at the Add another buttons for tools

This comes in handy if you'd like to to have different to-do tools for unrelated tasks:

A couple of caveats:

  • Additional Chat rooms will not include everyone in the project by default when they are created. Folks will have to choose to follow the Chat room, or be @mentioned in it in order to be notified about updates in it:

Screenshot of the extra Campfire chat with an arrow pointing at the Notify me when people chat button

Screenshot of the Set up tools for this project page with a red arrow pointing at the Edit categories button for a Message Board tool called Heartbeats

  • If you add multiple Schedule tools to a project, you can choose between events and assignments with due dates or just events. For example, you could have one Schedule just for events and another one set up for assignments with dates. Cool, right?

Screenshot of an enabled Schedule tool in a project with a red arrow pointing at the Choose what to show button

Here is how it works in more details:

🔗 Choose what to show on a Schedule →

Remove multiple tools

If you've set up multiple tools, you can remove them when you no longer need them. Be sure the tool is completely empty — if you had set up another To-Do tool, delete all the lists in that tool first. 

Screenshot of the Project tools page with the Delete button highlighted under one of the tools

Invite people

When you’re ready for other people to join the project so you can work together, hit the "Set up people" button at the top of the page. If you've made the project All-Access, just send the URL of the project to your team member, and once they click it, they'll automatically be added.  Read more about adding people to a project.

Switch team members and clients

Sometimes a client joins your organization, or a coworker is accidentally added to a project as a client user. It happens! But don't fret, there are ways to switch a user's type. The important thing to remember is that folks in Basecamp can’t be a team member in one project, but a client user in another. They can only be one type of user in the account. 

An account owner or an admin will need to make this change in Adminland. If that's you, please follow the full guide on that here.

Project settings

Click the •••  toward the upper right corner to update the project’s name or description, change what tools are visible, or archive/delete it. We’ve got a couple of Developers’ Tools included there too:

Screenshot of the open ••• menu at the top right of a project

TIP: If you'd like to assign a team or project lead, include that info in your project description. It will show up on that project's page, and on the project card.

Close comments

Folks can close comments in content they created themselves, and account admins can close comments on anything in the account.

When comments are closed boosts are also disabled. You'll be able to see older boosts but not add any new ones.

Screenshot of a post on the Message Board with the dropdown menu. A red arrow is pointed at the Close comments option.

When comments are closed or enabled, it will be logged in the item's change log:

Screenshot of the change log page with one of the changes highlighted

Turn an existing team into a project

NOTE: The option to create a new team or convert an existing project into a team is no longer available as of 16 June 2022. 

Have an existing team that would be better suited as a project? No problem! You can swap it over. Click in the ••• menu to Edit project details:

Screenshot of the ••• menu at the top right with an arrow pointing toward Edit project details

Then you’ll see an option to switch it to a project. 

Screenshot of the Edit project details page with an arrow pointing at the It's for a project option


Use the directory of all projects

Just above your pinned projects, click the link to view all projects:

Screenshot of the Home screen with the link to View all in a list highlighted.

You'll get to a view that includes all Active, Archived & Trashed, Client, or All-access projects. There are filters at the top of the page to see all of them alphabetically, see only your pinned projects, projects with clients only, All-access projects, or all the inactive projects — all the archived and trashed projects:

Screenshot of the All Projects directory sorted alphabetically

There's also a search bar at the top! When you start to type what you're looking for, our system will search for matches in the titles as well as the descriptions of your projects. You can search everything by clicking on A-Z, or narrow things down by choosing a filter in addition to your search terms.

In this example, these are all the results for the search term "gala" for all projects:

Screenshot of the All Projects directory with the results for the search term

Your account will also remember what you last searched so if you find it useful to see your pinned cards in a list, you'll go right to the pinned section every time you return to the directory.

Screenshot of the All Projects page filtered by Pinned

More on pinning the projects you want to see on your Home page can be found here:

Pinning →

Next up: Training your Team →

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