Project Dashboard: Manage Projects in Microsoft Outlook

The Project Dashboard displays all messages, appointments, contacts, attachments, tasks and deferred messages by Project and category.

 

Open a Project Dashboard tab from the Summary Dashboard by selecting a Project in the Project Summary and double-clicking or pressing Open Project. 

To close a Project Tab, click the X on an active tab.

Title Bar

The Project Dashboard's title bar provides more advanced views of your Projects:

• Click the Attachment Explorer icon to open a new tab displaying all of the attachments associated with this Project.
• The Jump to Folder icon takes you to the folder associated with this Project.
• Toggle Show Sub-Folders on to include sub-Projects in the Project Dashboard.
• Filter your information by category with the category drop down.

Messages

The Messages pane shows all messages in the Inbox and the Project folder for the selected Project.  Double-click a message to open it.  Select a message and use the Actions button to act on it (Sort, Reply, Forward, Delete, Task, Appointment).  Select Jump to Folder to open the Project folder for this Project.  By default, ClearContext only loads the most recent 1,000 messages for the selected Project.  When this limit is in effect, click the Show All link at the bottom of the pane to load all messages in the Project.  Use the Hide Filed link to display Inbox messages for this Project only.

Appointments

The Appointments pane shows all active appointments for this Project.  By default, today's appointments are in blue.  The pane will only show the next instance of a recurring appointment.  Double-click an appointment to open it and use the Actions menu to delete the current appointment or create a new appointment with this Project pre-assigned.

Contacts

The Contacts pane shows all Contacts in the From: fields for messages that appear in the Messages pane.  The colored contact icon indicates the assigned priority for the contact.  For contacts that exist in the Outlook address book, click more to show additional contact details.  For contacts that do not exist in the Outlook address book, click create to quickly add a record for the current sender.

Perform the following actions from within the Contacts pane:

• Double-click a contact to open the contact record.  Adjust priority from here to improve Outlook prioritization.
• Highlight contact(s) and right click or select the Actions menu to email or set up an appointment with the group, export contacts to a file or create a distribution list.  You can also invite others to try ClearContext from here.
• Sort the contact list via the Actions menu.

Attachments

The Attachments pane shows all attachments found in the messages that are displayed in the Messages pane.  For attachments that appear in more than one message, click the more button to see a list of all emails that contain the file.

Perform the following actions from within the Files pane:

• Double-click a file to open the most recent message to contain that attachment.
• Highlight message(s) and right click or select the Actions menu to open the message containing the attachment, open the attachment itself or forward or save the selected files.
• Sort the file listing via the Actions menu.

Tasks and Actions

The Tasks and Actions pane shows all tasks and deferred messages associated with this Project.  Double-click an item to open it.  Mark tasks complete via the check box.  Click a header to sort the information in this pane.  Select Actions to delete a task or create a new one with the current Project pre-assigned.  Items are color-coded by due date.  Adjust color display options or toggle the display of completed items using the links below this pane.

Global Buttons

There are three buttons at the bottom of the Project Dashboard:

• New Task starts a task with the current Project pre-assigned.
• Similarly, New Appt starts an appointment in the current Project.
• The Refresh button reloads all data in the Dashboard.