Intake Management
Capture new project requests through gated templates, send each gate to the approvers your policy names, and promote approved requests to projects, all from one place.
Project intake gives your organisation a formal front door for new work. Every request starts from a request template. A template splits the request into gates, and each gate is a form of its own. The requester fills in one gate at a time and submits it for approval. When a gate is approved, the next one opens. After the final gate is approved, the request can be promoted to a project.
This lets you ask for a little information first and more only when an idea earns it. A quick idea screen can come before the business case, and the business case before the funding.
Submitting a Request
- Click New Project Request on the Intake board and choose the template that matches your kind of request.
- Complete the first gate. Required fields are marked with a red asterisk. Each section shows All required answered once its required fields are filled.
- Click Submit for approval. The gate goes to the approvers your approval policy names for that gate.
- When the gate is approved, the next gate opens. Use Next gate at the bottom of the form, or pick the gate from the list on the left, and repeat.
Gates that are not open yet are shown with a lock and the note Opens after gate N. You can open All gates to read every gate of the request at once.
Some fields only appear when another answer calls for them. For example, a Vendor quotes field may only appear when Sourcing is set to External vendor. This is set in the template, see Field settings.
Reviewing a Gate
When a gate is submitted, every approver the policy names for that gate reviews it. When a rule names more than one approver, they review in parallel and the gate is approved only when all of them approve. Each approver chooses one of three outcomes:
| Action | What happens |
|---|---|
| Approve | Once every named approver approves, the gate is approved and the next gate opens. After the final gate, the request can be promoted to a project. |
| Need more info | The gate goes back to the requester. Comments from the approver are visible on the request, and the requester can update the gate and submit it again. |
| Reject | The request is closed. Add the reason in the comments before rejecting. |
Every submission and decision is recorded with who acted and when. Open the History tab on the request to see the full trail.
Phase ends
A gate can be set to end a phase. When it is approved, it sets a status on the request, for example Qualified, and opens the gates of the next phase instead of leading straight to a project. This is useful when ideas are qualified long before anyone commits funding.
Funding at a Gate
A gate can include a Budget plan, so funding is requested and approved before the project exists. The budget plan works the same way as funding on a project:
- Enter the approved budget split into Capex and Opex.
- Click Add fiscal year to spread the budget across fiscal years. The unallocated amount shows what is left to assign.
- For each fiscal year, assign the funds and pick the envelope they come from, then submit the funding request.
- A funding manager approves the funding request. Each fiscal year shows its funding status.
Promoting a Request to a Project
Once the final gate is approved, the request can be promoted to a project. The request and its full history stay available, so anyone can later see how the project was approved, gate by gate.
Building Request Templates
Each type of request has its own template. A template is a form you build gate by gate. Each gate holds one or more sections, and each section holds rows of fields.
- Click Add gate to add a gate, then name it and give it a short description.
- Inside the gate, add sections, then use Add row and + Field to place fields from your custom field library.
- In Gate settings, choose how the gate's sections appear to the requester: All on one page or One at a time, with each section as its own step.
- Turn on Wait for funding approval if the gate should stay open until its funding requests are approved.
- Set the gate's approvers under Approval policy, see Approval Policies.
- Use Preview to check the form as a requester will see it, then click Publish.
Field settings
Click any field in the builder to open its settings:
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Name | The label the requester sees. |
| Help text | A short hint shown with the field. |
| Layout | How wide the field is in its row: Small, Medium, or Large. |
| Required | The requester must fill the field before submitting the gate. |
| Visibility | Show the field only when another field has a given value. Click Add condition to add one. |
Under each field's name, the builder shows its type and where it comes from:
| Label | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Fixed | A built-in field, such as Project name, Customer, or Fiscal year. |
| Shared | A custom field from your site's field library, which other templates can use too. |
| This template | A field that belongs to this template only. |
Template versions
Each time you publish, the template gets a new version, shown as Published vN. Requests already in progress stay on the version they started with, so changes only apply to new requests.
Approval Policies
Each template has its own approval policy, with the same gates as the template. The policy is versioned along with the template, and each request shows the policy version it follows in its Details panel.
For each gate, the policy has Default Approvers and can have any number of rules. A rule has conditions based on the request's field values, for example a Scorecard total score greater than a set value, and names the members or groups whose approval is required when it matches.
You can edit a gate's approvers in two places, and both change the same policy:
- From the gate's Approval policy panel while building the template.
- From Approval Policies in Site Settings, under Project intake. Pick the template, then the version and the gate.
