Tasks, projects, lists, milestones… it can be a lot to keep track of when you’re starting out.

But knowing how everything fits together — as well as why and when to use certain features — is key to getting the most out of Teamwork.

Here’s our handy guide to understanding the building blocks of your work for maximum project success.

Note: If you want to see everything in action skip to the video at the end of this post. You can then come back and read through each element — and use the links on the headings to learn more about each building block.

Tasks are the basic units of work in Teamwork. These are the specific things that need to be completed by members of the project.

You can break the work down further by creating subtasks.

Your tasks need a home. That’s where task lists come in.

Tasks cannot be added to a project without being associated with a task list. You can use task lists to group and manage your tasks.

Multiple task lists can be created in a project, and you have the option to associate each list with a relevant milestone.

A milestone marks a point of progress in your project, such as the end of a certain phase.

You can attach one or more task lists to a milestone so everyone can see the tasks that need to be completed in order to reach that milestone.

Each project you create is made up of all of the above. (The illustration above is a handy way to picture the hierarchy and how it all fits together.)

Your overall goal is to complete the project by working through and completing each of these components, working from the lowest level (i.e. subtasks if you have them, tasks if you don’t) right through to the higher levels, e.g. milestones.

Portfolio is like the vantage point from which you can survey your projects. Instead of clicking through several screens to gather pertinent information on multiple projects, you can use Portfolio to get a high level overview of any projects you may have running concurrently and see how they are progressing.

Filters help you to find things faster and get more precise insights.

In most project and site-level areas of your site, you can use the advanced filters pane to customize the information shown. The filter options available to you will change depending on the area of your site you’re viewing.

Applying a tag allows you to add custom identifying markers to your items. You can use tags for items such as tasks, time logs, milestones, and projects.

Once an item has been tagged, you can use filters and searches based on those tags to find items of relevance. You can also choose specific colours for each tag to help you to differentiate them.

Board View allows you to visually represent the journey of your tasks as they move through a process.

Cards represent your tasks in Board View, and can be moved through the custom columns you create to represent the different stages of the project, giving you at-a-glance overviews of where each piece of work currently stands and helping you to identify any bottlenecks.

The projects chart gives you a timeline representation of your projects in one place, highlighting each project’s duration as well as any milestones.

The Gantt project planner gives you a timeline view of an individual project. 

Tasks are represented in bar format indicating their duration based on start and end dates. Any milestones attached to task lists will also be shown in the Gantt chart.

Within the Home area of your site, you can build custom dashboard views using different metrics based on certain projects and project items, so you can quickly and effortlessly stay up-to-date on your KPIs.

These dashboards allow you to drill down further into your projects and gain deeper insights into the work.

The Workload feature gives you an overview of where and when your site’s resources (i.e., people!) are allocated, based on the tasks they are assigned to and the estimated time of those tasks.  

The tasks included in the workload are dependent on a number of conditions, such as estimated time, start dates, and due dates. Workload is a great way to manage your resources, so you can quickly see your team’s bandwidth, helping you to know when and how to redistribute work if you need to.

Looking for more insights to get you started? Check out more features and tips.