How-to

How to run a project with your client in the loop

A step-by-step guide to Waypoint Pro: set up a board with your own workflow, plan sprints, start issues from templates, keep a private project for one client, and let them follow along without being able to change a thing.

By Darryl Waterhouse · · 3 min read

Clients ask "where are we with it?" because they cannot see. A separate project tool means another login for them and another subscription for you. Waypoint Pro keeps your projects inside your own site, and lets a client see their project, and only theirs, without being able to change a thing.

This guide follows our made-up company, ACME Ltd, running its website and shop alongside a printed catalogue with an outside printer.

1. Start from Home

Home shows every project and My work: what is overdue, due today, in the next 7 days, later, and with no date at all.

The Waypoint home screen with three project cards and My work grouped into overdue, due today, next 7 days, later and no due date

2. Shape the workflow

In Project Settings, name your statuses, then tick which moves are allowed between them. If nothing should jump from To do straight to Done, it cannot. Set the issue types and priorities you use, too.

Project Settings: the statuses with their categories, a grid of the moves allowed between them, issue types and priorities

The board then only offers the moves your workflow allows.

The menu of a board card with Move to open, offering only To do and In review

3. Work on the board

Drag cards across the board. Give a column a limit, and the board tells you when In progress is full, so work gets finished before more is started. A blocked issue stands out.

A Waypoint board with To do, In progress at its limit of three, In review with a blocked issue, and Done

4. Start issues from templates

Work you repeat, such as a new product listing, deserves a template: the type, priority, labels and a checklist in the description, filled in for you.

The New issue panel with the New product listing template applied: title, type, priority, sprint, estimate, labels and a description checklist

Each issue holds its description, checklist, details and the conversation about it. Mention a colleague and they are told by email.

An issue with its description, a checklist, details and comments from two colleagues

5. Plan in sprints

If you work in sprints, the backlog shows the running one with its goal and a burndown chart, and anything unfinished carries over to the next.

The running sprint in the backlog, with its burndown chart, goal and issues

6. Keep a client's project private, and let them watch

Set a project's access to selected members, and only those people see it.

Project access set to selected members, with four of seven people ticked

Give your client an account with a see-only role, and that is all they get: Waypoint in their sidebar, their own project, and no buttons to create or change anything.

A client's view of the admin: only Waypoint in the sidebar, the private catalogue print board, no create or settings buttons

7. Hear about what matters

Each person chooses what they are told about, in the admin and by email.

The notification preferences panel set to All watched changes, with in-admin and email notifications ticked

An email from ACME Ltd telling Alex Carter that Sam Patel mentioned him on WEB-9, with the comment and an Open the issue button

And if you close an issue with changes unsaved, Waypoint offers them back next time, and warns you if someone else has changed the issue since.

Quick checklist

  1. Set your statuses and the moves allowed between them.
  2. Put a limit on In progress.
  3. Make templates for the work you repeat.
  4. Make each client's project private to its members.
  5. Give the client a see-only account.

Explore Waypoint Pro.

The screens above come from our made-up demo company, ACME Ltd.

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