Project status updates now have comments

As the final feature of Polish Week, we’ve added commenting to project status updates.

Project status updates help you communicate the state of a project. They let you set a color (Green: on track, Yellow: at risk, or Red: off track ) and post a summary of your progress to project members. But until now, you couldn’t comment on a project status update. Now you can! Project members can reply to updates with questions and feedback, or they can create a task directly from a comment.

Status check

As a project owner, it’s important to keep your project team and other stakeholders up to date on your progress. Status updates let you share the current state of the project with all project members. Status colors signal how things are going and whether the project needs attention.

Project owners can set up reminders to update their project status every week (they’ll get a task to prompt them).

Status updates are useful for communicating milestones being hit, roadblocks, changes in timeline, or ongoing progress reports. They can even help you cut down on those dreaded weekly check-in meetings. They’re great for all project members, especially those who only want the highest-level view and aren’t following every task.

Now that we’ve added commenting on status updates, when a teammate wants to follow up on a status update, they can comment, ask a question, or even create a new task right from the conversation.

How to use comments on project status updates

We suggest that project owners update their project status weekly. To post a project status update:

1. Navigate to the Progress View of any project.

2. Select a status color—green, yellow, or red.

3. Describe any noteworthy events, milestones, or roadblocks that happened since your last update. You can even link to relevant tasks, projects, conversations, or teammates.

4. Project members who are following status updates will get a notification in their Inbox and can comment on the status, just like with Project Conversations.

5. Status updates will appear in Progress View (as they always have) and now they will appear in the Conversations View too.

Project status updates and project conversations: When to use which

You might be thinking, “If project status updates are more like conversations now, then when should I use a status update versus a project conversation?” It isn’t an exact science, but we do have some guidelines that we’ve found helpful.

Update your project status:

• Weekly, to give an overview of recently completed work and what’s up next

• When major milestones are hit

• When roadblocks come up or things go off track

• When plans or timelines change

Start a Project Conversation:

• To check in on how your team is feeling about the project

• To brainstorm ideas that cross multiple tasks

• To ask general questions about the project or solicit feedback

And that’s a wrap on Polish Week!

We hope you enjoy the latest (and final!) feature from Polish Week. Status updates are a powerful tool to give teammates and stakeholders a snapshot of progress and blockers. Now, your teammates are empowered to respond with questions, or just congratulate you on the great progress :)

In case you missed them, read about all the other the features from this latest Polish Week:

• Get to know your teammates (Profile cards and more)

• Dashboard and search enhancements

• More updates (Attach files in Quick Add, project due date on calendar view, and more)

What’s your favorite new feature from Polish Week?