Set up work plan templates

A work plan template consists of an ordered hierarchy of tasks. Work plan templates are used to create repeatable processes to be used as a model and basis for numerous projects. They speed up the process of drafting a work plan for project managers.

This section describes how to create and manage a work plan template.

Create a Work Plan Template from Scratch

  1. From the main menu, click Create > Administrative > Work Plan Template.
  2. Give the template a name, select its owners and whether or not to enable the template.
  3. Click Create.

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Create a Work Plan Template from an Existing Work Plan

  1. Prerequisite: you must have the Edit Work Plan Templates access grant and be able to edit the target work plan.
  2. Open the project work plan in the Schedule view.

  3. In the toolbar, click Actions > Convert Work Plan to Template.

    Note: In order to successfully convert a work plan to a template, you must be the only user editing the work plan. If other users are editing the work plan, a message will appear stating that the "Project is being edited by another user" and the conversion stops.

  4. Give the template a name, select its owners and whether the work plan notifications are included in the template.

  5. Click Convert.

    • Data that work plan templates do not carry is dropped. This includes:

      • External predecessors

      • Schedule dates

      • Constraints

      • Effort and cost actuals

      • Task status

      • Resource assignments and summary task owners

      • References

      • Notes

      • User data

    • Scheduled effort is copied as follows:

      • For automatically-calculated tasks, scheduled effort is recalculated.

      • For manually-input tasks, total task effort is retained in the Unassigned Effort field.

    • Everything else is copied into the work plan template.

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Configuring Access to a Work Plan Template

You can control who has the ability to use or edit a work plan template.

  1. From the main menu, click Search > Administrative > Work Plan Template.
  2. Click the desired work plan template, and click Configure Access.
  3. Select who can edit the template or use the template to create work plans.

Editing Work Plan Template

You can do the following to edit a work plan template:

  • Add tasks.

    Same as adding tasks for a work plan. For details, see Add tasks

  • Edit task information.

    Same as editing task information for a work plan. For details, see Edit task details

  • Mark a task in a work plan template as required.

    A required task cannot be renamed or removed from a work plan created using the template.

    To mark a task as required, select the Require this task on work plans created from this template checkbox on the Task Details page.

Note: Some fields in work plan template tasks do not exist or cannot be updated.