Project folders provide a number of benefits and can be structured to meet your organization’s needs. Below you will find some best practices for setting up, sharing and managing your Project Folders to maximize their value.
Determine the Project Folder Structure
Choose the right destination for your project folders: The goal is to ensure that users can easily navigate to and between project folders. Many of our construction customers create a /Shared/Projects folder. You can think of different ways to create sub-folders to further categorize your project folders within the Projects folder.
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- Current versus Archive: If you have several project folders and want an easy way to distinguish between current and archive folders. For example, /Shared/Projects/Archive
- Sub-folders named by the year: An easy way to navigate to the project folders based on the project date
- Sub-folders named by regions: If you have teams working in different locations. For example, US-West, Canada.
Create project folder templates: Your company might work on different types of projects (for example, Design-Bid-Build or Design-Build). Each project folder can have a unique folder hierarchy, structure, and permissions. In such scenarios, consider creating a /Shared/Project Templates folder. You can create different project folders inside the Templates folder.
Set up Project Folders
Create a project folder from a template: Select the project template folder and choose the Advanced Copy option. This allows you to select a new name for the destination folder. If you want to retain the project template permissions, choose the “Keep Source Folder Permissions” option as shown below.
Invite External Contractors Access to the Project Folders
If the project requires collaboration with external subcontractors or people from outside your organization, you can create and assign Standard User Accounts (Guest accounts) for these users. Standard User accounts allow external subcontractors to upload, download or view files within one or more project sub-folders via the Web UI or mobile app. Once the project assignment completes, you can revoke the Standard User account for the subcontractor.