Projects come from Autotask
ProjectSmith doesn’t keep a separate list of projects. Your projects, phases, tasks and task dependencies live in Autotask, and ProjectSmith shows them, adds planning tools on top, and writes your changes back. Anyone who works only in Autotask still sees an up-to-date project.
What comes from Autotask
Section titled “What comes from Autotask”These are read from Autotask and kept in step automatically:
- Projects: name, company, status, type, start and end dates, project lead.
- Phases.
- Tasks: title, status, dates, estimated hours, primary resource and other assigned resources.
- Task dependencies (Autotask calls them predecessors).
- Time already logged in Autotask against tasks and tickets.
For these fields Autotask wins. If someone changes a task’s dates in Autotask, ProjectSmith shows the new dates at the next sync.
What ProjectSmith adds
Section titled “What ProjectSmith adds”Autotask has no concept of these. They live in ProjectSmith and Autotask never sees them:
- The board: columns, the order of cards within a column, card colours. See Boards and columns.
- Estimates against actuals at a glance on each task and phase.
- Allocations: how many hours each person is committed to each project each week. See Capacity planning.
- Budgets and fixed-price billing plans.
- The timesheet workflow: draft, submitted, approved, rejected. See Log time and submit your week.
A sync never overwrites these.
What ProjectSmith writes back to Autotask
Section titled “What ProjectSmith writes back to Autotask”| You do this in ProjectSmith | This happens in Autotask |
|---|---|
| Move a card to another column | The task’s status changes to the column’s linked status |
| Create a task | The task is created in Autotask first, then appears on the board |
| Change a task’s title, dates, estimate or primary resource | The Autotask task is updated |
| Add a dependency between two tasks | An Autotask task predecessor is added |
| Remove a dependency, or an extra assignee | The Autotask task predecessor, or secondary resource, is deleted |
| Delete a task with no time logged | The Autotask task is deleted. A task with time offers Complete instead |
| Approve time | A time entry is created in Autotask as the person who did the work. See Approve time |
| Approve an estimate change | The Autotask task’s estimated hours are updated |
| Approve a cost or expense | An Autotask project charge is created |
| A fixed-price milestone is reached (its date arrives, or its task is completed) | The Autotask contract milestone is marked ready to bill |
| Create a project with the New project wizard | The project is created in Autotask, then mirrored |
Invoicing stays in Autotask. ProjectSmith gets the right billable items into Autotask; Autotask turns them into invoices as it always has.
Deletes are limited. ProjectSmith deletes only three things in Autotask: a task dependency, an extra assignee on a task, and a task with no time logged against it. A task with time is completed instead. Phases, projects and everything else are deleted in Autotask itself, and ProjectSmith picks up the change at the next sync. Every delete goes through the write-scope guard and is recorded in the audit log.
When a write doesn’t go through
Section titled “When a write doesn’t go through”Every change is sent to Autotask straight away and ProjectSmith reads the record back to confirm it. If Autotask is unavailable or refuses the change, the card shows Not saved to Autotask, retrying and ProjectSmith keeps trying. Nothing is silently dropped. If the change can’t ever succeed (for example, a required field in your Autotask is empty), the card says what’s wrong so you can fix it.
While the write-scope guard is on, changes outside the scope are refused on purpose and the card says so.
Creating a project
Section titled “Creating a project”Choose New project and the wizard asks for what Autotask needs: company, project name, type, status, start and end dates, project lead and the contract to bill against. If your Autotask has extra required fields, the wizard asks for those too. It creates the project in Autotask, optionally adds phases and tasks from a template, and applies your board template.
On the project form, the Client is picked from your Autotask companies: start typing to search, or choose Internal (no client). A project synced from Autotask shows its client as Set in Autotask: Autotask sets it when the project is created there. Until Autotask is connected, you type the client’s name instead.
Common questions
Section titled “Common questions”How quickly do Autotask changes appear? Within a few minutes during your business hours, and within about fifteen minutes outside them. See How the Autotask connector works.
Can I have a project in ProjectSmith that isn’t in Autotask? No. Every project and task exists in Autotask first. That’s what keeps both systems telling the same story.