Projects

A project is a record that groups related tickets. It has its own reference, name, owning department, workflow, and status. This page covers creating one, linking tickets to it, staffing its roles, and the point at which any of that affects a ticket's owner.

Three separate things

These are configured separately and none of them repairs another.

All three must line up before project-linked routing puts the people you expect on a ticket. Mappings are set up elsewhere. Which set of role mappings applies to a ticket — the ones set up for its service, or the department's fallback set — is explained in Assignment Rules.

Who can do what

Customer Portal single sign-on (SSO) requesters do not get the Projects workspace at all, and cannot be project managers or role holders.

Create a project

1. Open Projects and select Add project. The Create project record drawer opens.
2. Enter a unique project reference. The screen recommends a department key + PRJ + number pattern, which keeps a project reference from looking like a ticket reference. It is a recommendation only — the product accepts any unique reference and does not check the pattern.
3. Enter the name, description, owning department, workflow, and current status. The workflow must belong to the owning department. There is no active-state field in the create drawer.
4. Select Save project once.
5. Reopen the project and confirm its reference, department, workflow, status, active state, and creation entry in History.

To edit an existing project's reference, name, description, or custom fields, open More info and select Edit details.

Editing a project cannot move its status. Status changes go through the project's own transition action and nowhere else; an edit that tries to set a status directly is refused with "Project status changes must use the project transition action." This is deliberate — routing every status change through the transition keeps the project's history and its workflow rules intact.

Retargeting a project onto a different workflow keeps it inside that workflow. The project's current status must be named in the new workflow's transition graph, or the change is refused with "Status must be part of the selected workflow." A workflow that merely has an any-source transition reaching some other status does not count: the current status itself has to belong to the graph. So a project cannot be left sitting in a status its own workflow does not recognise, with no move available to it.

Find and review a project

1. Open Projects.
2. Read Current view, the visible-project count, and Status mix.
3. Use Search projects for a reference or name, or select Show filters to combine activity, department, workflow, status, role holder, project manager, tag, and custom-field conditions.
4. Select Apply filters. Use Clear draft or Discard changes to abandon a filter draft.
5. To keep the filter set, use Manage views and save it. A saved view is your own filter settings. It does not show you anything new and it does not select projects for a bulk change.
6. Open a project by its reference and review More info, Linked work, People, History, and — if you are the owning department manager or SystemAdmin — Stewardship.

The roster shows only projects you can reach. A project reporting linked work does not thereby reveal a ticket you cannot see.

Link a ticket from the ticket

1. Open the ticket from Agent Queue.
2. Open Project Association.
3. Read the currently linked project, if one is shown.
4. In Project reference, type part of the reference or the name.
5. Select the project from the suggestions, or type an exact reference and select Find project.
6. Compare the project reference, name, and owning department. A similar name is not enough.
7. Select Link this project.
8. Confirm the ticket shows the expected project. If another project was linked, the new link replaces it. A ticket has one active project link.

You need Work or stronger access to the ticket's department, and you need to be able to see the project. The search does not return inactive projects or projects you cannot see. The ticket and the project can be in different departments, as long as you have the access each side needs.

If the ticket's current project is not visible to you, you cannot clear or replace it either.

Link a ticket from the project

1. Open the project and select Linked work, then Manage linked work.
2. Use Find visible ticket with an exact reference or part of the title.
3. Select a ticket you can already open, then select Link this ticket once.
4. Read Linked total, Shown here, Visible links, and Needs attention, plus Open work, Resolved work, and Closed history.
5. Confirm the ticket appears, showing only what your ticket access permits.

Ticket search here needs separate ticket visibility: department View or stronger, being the requester, or holding an active watcher or participant link. It returns only tickets that are not already linked to a project. A ticket you cannot see, or one that is already linked, is refused, and the message does not name the project it is linked to.

The Linked work view also surfaces a relationship signal — a count of relationships among the linked tickets, and a blocker or dependency signal where those exist. It is informational: it flags that linked tickets block or depend on one another, and does not itself change ownership, routing, or workflow state. Read it to understand the shape of the linked work, not as an action.

Where a project-role holder can create the link

The two entry points do not grant the same thing, so which one you use matters.

If a direct project role is the only thing you hold on that project:

• From the ticket, you can create the link. Holding an active project role counts as being able to see the project, which is what Project Association requires.
• From the project, you cannot. Managing linked work needs department Admin on the project's department, an explicit project-manager assignment, or SystemAdmin. A project role alone lets you review the project, not manage its linked work.

Use Project Association on the ticket. If you need to work from the project side, ask a project manager for that project, or the department administrator who owns it.

Clear a ticket-to-project link

1. Open Project Association on the ticket, or Manage linked work on the project, and check the pair is the one you mean.
2. Select Clear project link on the ticket, or Clear link on the project.
3. Confirm the ticket reports no linked project.
4. Check ticket History for the recorded clearing if your process requires it.

Clearing removes only the link. It does not delete either record, remove owners, watchers, participants, tags, comments, attachments, approvals, or history, and it does not undo routing that already ran.

The two routes are not interchangeable if the project has been made inactive. Once it is inactive, nobody can clear or replace the link from Project Association on the ticket — not the ticket's owner, not a department administrator, not a System Administrator. Manage linked work on the project is then the only way to clear it.

Staff a project role

Role slots come from the active project-role mappings for the project's department and for services. You staff a slot; you do not create or rename it.

1. Open the project, select People, and read Staffing roles on this project.
2. For one slot, select Staff slot, Assign person, or Change assigned person.
3. Read the slot's role key, display name, mapping source, and configured outcome.
4. Select one eligible internal person. They must be active and hold Work or stronger access in the project's department. Customer Portal SSO requesters are not returned as candidates.
5. Select Save role staffing once.
6. Reopen the slot and confirm the result.

Clear assigned person marks the slot unstaffed. It does not delete the slot or change the mapping behind it.

Only the owning department manager (department Admin) or a SystemAdmin can clear a staffed slot. An explicit project manager can staff a slot and change who holds it, but cannot empty it. The Clear assigned person control is shown to project managers anyway, and the attempt is refused when they use it.

Rows under Roles outside current admin mappings are kept for history. They cannot be staffed until a System Administrator creates an active mapping for that role key.

Add or remove a project manager

Only the owning department manager or SystemAdmin can do this. An explicit project manager cannot appoint another one.

1. Open the project and select Stewardship.
2. Select Add project manager.
3. Choose one active internal person and select Save project manager.
4. Confirm they appear on the project.
5. To remove, use Remove project manager. Their other access is unaffected.

Restaff roles across several projects

1. On Projects, filter to the projects you intend to change, then select Restaff roles. The Restaff project roles workspace opens with nothing selected.
2. Under Staffing family, choose Approved project roles or Project managers. Changing project managers stays restricted to the owning department manager and SystemAdmin.
3. Under Action, choose Replace source with target, Leave matching slots unstaffed, or Onboard target into unstaffed slots.
4. Select role keys. Onboarding requires at least one. Replacing and unstaffing may leave role keys blank, which matches every approved role the source person currently holds. Role keys do not apply to Project managers.
5. Select the source and target people. A target role holder must be active with Work access in each project's department; a target project manager must be active. A source may still be selectable after their account is deactivated, so that offboarding can be finished. Customer Portal SSO identities are rejected as source and as target.
6. Select projects with Select visible, Select remaining visible, or Clear selection. Nothing is selected for you. Select no more than 250 projects: only the first 250 are used, and the rest are dropped without a message. Select 300 and 50 go through unchanged with nothing to tell you. Count the selection yourself.
7. Select Preview changes.
8. Read every row in Full cohort evidence: Project, Role or family, Current, Target, Authority, Outcome, and Consequence. Read the text of each outcome — colour alone is not the signal.
9. Resolve every unexpected row.
10. If Unlock apply changes appears, confirm your identity with Verify credentials or Refresh organization SSO. Only a System Administrator is asked for this.
11. Select Apply previewed changes once.
12. Read the per-project results, then reopen one project and confirm its staffing.

Applying checks everything again: the projects you selected, your access right now, the role slots, who currently holds them, and whether the person you named can still take the role. The preview does not carry any of that forward. If any project you selected has stopped being visible to you, the whole request fails and no row explains which one.

When project-linked assignment actually runs

Linking a ticket to a project does not assign anyone. Staffing a project role does not assign anyone. Routing runs at three points and nowhere else:

Each of these checks the project link, the role mappings, the staffing, and whether the staffed person can take the ticket, at the moment it runs.

Deactivating a project

New links reject inactive projects. Deactivation does not clear links that already exist, and both workflow routing and bulk routing will still use them.

Deactivation also locks the ticket side. From the moment the project is inactive, no one can clear or replace an existing link from Project Association on the ticket, whatever their access. Only Manage linked work on the project still works. That is the reason to settle the links first, not just tidiness.

Before you deactivate, list the project's active ticket links and decide for each whether to relink it elsewhere or clear it. Do not run a project-linked routing action against tickets still pointing at a retired project.

If it does not work

• No project matches your search. Check the exact reference and that the project is active, and check that you have access to it. Do not try other references to find out whether it exists.
• The ticket's current project is not shown. You have ticket access without access to that project. The product will not let you clear or replace the link. Ask someone who can see both.
• You can see the project but cannot clear the link from the ticket. The project has been made inactive. No one can clear it from the ticket in that state. Clear it from Manage linked work on the project, or ask someone who can.
• You linked the project but nobody was assigned. That is expected. Linking is not routing. Use one of the three triggers above.
• Routing preview skips a ticket. Check, in order: the project link, the mapping set, the role staffing, whether the staffed person is active, and whether they have Work access in the ticket's department.
• A role slot you need is not listed. No active mapping defines that role key. A System Administrator has to create one first.
• Bulk restaff reports stale or current-mismatch rows. Refresh, build a new preview, and apply that. Do not resubmit the old preview.

Related pages

• Agent Queue
• Ownership and Participants
• Workflow Actions
• Bulk Operations
• Assignment Rules