The core of Baton is creating and completing projects. Here's a brief overview of how to use Baton to create, plan, pause, and complete a project.

To create a project, click the "+ New Project" button in the top left corner of your workspace. You'll be prompted to enter project details, and then you can choose to create a blank project, select a template, or upload a CSV with task information. You can upload new tasks or select a template at any time from "Project Actions" in the top right corner of your project view. Note that importing a template will replace the current project if any tasks, milestones, or phases exist.

You can manage templates by clicking "Templates" in the top left corner of your Baton landing page. You can click the three buttons to the left of the template to use it, or click on the row to edit the template. While editing a template, you can start a project by clicking "Actions > Use This Template" which will take you to enter details for the new project.

Using templates is a best practice as it helps you work more efficiently and enables filtering and grouping projects by template throughout the product. For more on Template Best Practices, click here.

Once you've created a project, you can continue to edit tasks, milestones, phases, and details of the project until you're ready to launch. Bulk Actions and Schedule adjustments can help make your project prep more efficient if you need to modify multiple tasks at once. You can also visualize the project in the timeline view to ensure everything looks right on a timeline.

Once your project plan and details are set, click Next Step in the bottom right corner. Validation will occur for best practices for project management, such as assigning all tasks and inputting client information. You can also skip any validation by clicking Next Step again in the pop-up. Next, you'll see all the users who you've added to the project and will get an invite once it is set in progress. You can preview all emails that will come for the upcoming project by clicking Preview Emails on the left side of your page. When you're ready to launch the project, click Set in progress and invite team. The project will be set in progress and all users will receive a welcome message.

At any point during a project, you can choose to pause it. Do this by clicking into a project and clicking on In Progress in the header, then Paused to update the status. This will pause all notifications for the project, and the project will not be included in any data or calculations using In Progress projects. It will continue to appear in exports.

When a project is ready to be unpaused, simply go back into the project view and click on Paused then select In Progress in the same bar. The project will inform you how many days it is shifting due to being paused and will be included in all notifications and calculations again.

A project will run until all tasks are completed. It will advance phases from top to bottom in the order set by the project planned once all tasks in a phase are complete. This can be updated at any time and you can continue to add tasks and update details as your project proceeds.