Project States Pro

Project States allows you to track the overall progress of your projects. With this tool, you can categorize projects into different states, helping you quickly identify which projects need attention and which are on track. It provides a central view of all projects in your workspace, so you can group projects by stage, see a snapshot of all of them from a single view, and adapt the states to fit your team's process.

Project states and work item states

Project states are separate from the states a work item moves through. Work item states belong to one project and come in five groups (Backlog, Unstarted, Started, Completed, Cancelled). Project states belong to the workspace, apply to every project in it, and come in six groups: Draft, Planning, Execution, Monitoring, Completed and Cancelled. Changing a project's state doesn't touch any of its work items. For work item states, see States.

Enable Project States

Role: Workspace Admins

1. Navigate to Workspace Settings > Projects.

2. Turn on Enable project states. The switch reads "Track progress of all your projects by any project property."

3. Plane creates one default state in each project state group:

   • Draft (the default state for new projects)
   • Planning
   • Execution
   • Monitoring
   • Completed
   • Cancelled

   

4. Modify state

   1. Click the pencil icon to edit the default state name and description.
   2. Click Update to save changes.

5. Add new state

   1. Use the + button next to a group to add a new state.
   2. Provide a name and description for the new state. The name is required, and the description placeholder reads "Describe this state for your members".
   3. Click Create.

You'll be able to apply these states to all projects in your workspace and begin tracking their progress. Each new project starts in the default state.

Until you turn the switch on, the page reads "Project managers can now see the overall progress of all their projects from one screen. Turn on project states below, set states for your projects, and start tracking progress."

The same settings page holds a second switch, Let members create projects: "When enabled, workspace members can create new projects, not just admins and owners." See Who can create a project.

Manage states

• Mark as default. Open a state's menu and choose Mark as default to make it the state new projects start in.
• Delete. You can delete a state only when no project is in it. Plane says "The state is not empty, only empty states can be deleted" otherwise, and "Default state cannot be deleted" for the default.
• State names must be unique in the workspace.

Set a project's state and properties

Turning on project states adds properties to every project. Only project admins can change them, and not on an archived project.

1. Navigate to Work on the siderail, then select Projects in the sidebar.

   

2. In each project card, you'll see a bunch of project properties.

   • State: Set the project state.
   • Priority: Highlight high-priority projects. The options are Urgent, High, Medium, Low and None.
   • Lead: Assign or change the project lead.
   • Members: Update the team members working on the project.
   • Start and end Dates: Add or adjust timelines.
   • Labels: Tag the project. See Project labels.

The same properties appear when you create a project and in the Properties tab on the project's Overview page. Without project states, that tab reads "Enable Project States to view and manage properties like state, priority, due dates and more."

Where project states show up

• Projects page. Group the project list by state, priority or lead to see the whole portfolio at a glance.
• Overview page. The Properties tab shows the project's state alongside its other properties.
• Initiatives. An initiative's project board groups by project state. Without project states it reads "Project states not enabled". See Initiatives.

See also

• Manage projects
• Project labels
• Workspace features