How a project manager runs projects in Current

A project manager in Current builds projects, owns the schedule the team works from, and keeps time moving to your PSA. The role creates and edits projects, phases and tasks, manages time and project members, and shares work with partners; it does not configure integrations or workspace settings, which stay with a Tenant Admin. This playbook is the first hour, the two loops, the rules you will meet, and what a month in looks like.

1. 1
   My Day

   Everything assigned to you across every project, sorted by urgency into Overdue, Today, This week, Next week, Later and No date, with the Radar band across the top: the three highest-severity risks on your projects, tiered ACT NOW, WATCH and NOTED, each with an evidence line naming the task, ticket or comment it came from. The project chips in the band filter the queue below.
2. 2
   Portfolio

   Every project in the workspace with its health, lead, progress, budget burn and due date. The pulse tile reads the average Current Score, and the three chips (on track 80 to 100, at risk 55 to 79, off track below 55) filter the table. The Sync filter finds Sync conflict and Stale (7d+) projects. Save the layout you like; it persists.
3. 3
   Open a project

   The view switcher runs Timeline, Board, List, Calendar, Dependencies, What-if and Risks, and remembers which one you left. The project panel carries the Mode field (synced, named for your PSA, or Current-native) and the header a live sync badge. The AI Overview panel holds the same summary, trend and risks Radar showed you, for this project alone.
4. 4
   Create one

   New project from the top bar on any page, or clone from Playbooks. Current-native is preselected; the synced card is named for your connected PSA and is what you pick for work that bills through it. Choosing synced without a PSA-linked partner is allowed in this dialog and bites at Build time, so link the partner first.
5. 5
   Playbooks

   The built-in library plus any project you saved as a template. Clone asks for one anchor date (forward from a start, or back from a deadline), the project type, and whether the template's assignees carry over; every phase, task, checklist item and dependency comes with it.
6. 6
   Schedule

   The resource grid under Delivery: people down the side, days across, and every task's whole estimate landing on its due date. This is also where PTO and blocked days are recorded, and a day marked off drops that person's capacity to zero.
7. 7
   Time entry

   The weekly grid, the running timer and quick-add from a task card all pass through the same guard, and the fields your PSA needs (billing code, work type, contract and role, or work role, work type and agreement) are pre-mapped per task with override.

Create your first project and Log a time entry are the two you are offered first. The project-depth set goes further: add a dependency and see the critical path, set your PTO, run a scenario, use a playbook, and share a project with a partner viewer. Each one ends on the real thing: a real link on the map, a real day off on Schedule, a real partner with a real project shared. Start them from Learn Current, in your profile menu or behind the ring beside What's New. Skip this step is on screen throughout, and nothing is locked while one runs.

• ＋Open My Day and read Radar first. A risk with an evidence line is a row you can open; an empty band means there was nothing worth raising, not a broken feature.
• ＋Work the Board or the List on the project you are driving. Drag a card to move its status; the task drawer edits assignee, dates, estimate, priority, and what the task waits on.
• ＋Watch the sync badge. Synced is fine; Sync error and Awaiting sync link to Sync health, and a project set to sync but not yet built in your PSA shows the Build banner with a running count.
• ＋Log your own time the day you worked it, and read the end-of-day wrap-up on My Day, which flags unsubmitted drafts.
• ＋Comments: a comment marked co-managed crosses to the partner portal and, when the project is mapped to a Teams channel, into Teams. Everything else stays internal.

• ＋Portfolio sorted by health. For anything off track, open the Project Debugger from the score to see which of the ten factors is deducting points, and fix the data (an unassigned task, a task with no dates, a stalled one) rather than the score.
• ＋Timeline. Drag a bar and Current previews every downstream task that will move, in working days, before it commits anything. On a critical task that prompt will almost always appear, because everything downstream is waiting on it.
• ＋What-if before you promise a date. Pick the task that might slip, set a delay in working days, and read the ripple: the forecast shift, how many downstream tasks move, whether the critical path is affected. Nothing is saved.
• ＋Schedule for next week. Over-capacity days are tinted; drag chips between people and days, or apply a rebalance suggestion. A task with no estimate adds nothing to the load bar, so estimates are what make this board true.
• ＋Partners. The Monday digest, if you turned it on for a project, carries progress, milestones and the next few task names, drawn from the same partner-safe fields as the portal.
• ＋Reports, the Delivery group: on one date range with a comparison, and a weekly schedule if you want them in your inbox.

• ＋The mode is chosen at creation and decides everything downstream. A synced project takes time, billing and financials from your PSA and lets Current own the schedule; Current-native holds everything in Current and never makes a PSA call. Converting a native project is permanent and only happens through a deploy flow you confirm, and the Build is safe to press again because it skips whatever already exists.
• ＋Time on a synced project flows to your PSA's billing, and an entry that cannot get there cannot be created. The guard refuses time on a Current-native project, on a task or ticket that has not synced yet, on a ticket type your PSA will not accept, and from a person with no PSA identity, and names the reason. Correct the data; the guard is not the bug.
• ＋Dependencies are what make the schedule real. Four types (finish to start, start to start, finish to finish, start to finish) with lag or lead in days. A link that would create a cycle is refused, and a link cannot cross a PSA-synced project and a Current-native one, because scheduling it would mean arbitrating between two sources of truth. A link into another project is allowed and treated as a fixed point by the map and by What-if.
• ＋The critical path is the zero-slack chain that sets the finish date. Current computes it per dependency network, so a late task in an unrelated chain cannot claim slack it does not have.
• ＋Availability is real. Weekends, company holidays and a person's PTO or blocked days are skipped by the Timeline, the dependency map, What-if and Schedule alike. You can enter your own time off; project managers and Tenant Admins can enter anyone's.
• ＋Everything versus My Work is a scope filter, never a permission. My Work narrows to your tasks; Everything widens to what your role can already see.
• ＋A partner sees only the projects they are a member of, and never an hour, a rate, a cost or a budget. Share and unshare from Portal access; creating a new partner invitation is a Tenant Admin action, and the invitation dialog reads out exactly what the partner will and will not see.
• ＋Current Score is 100 minus ten itemised deductions. A manager can pin a colour from the Risks tab with a reason, and the number underneath does not change.

• ＋Every active project has a mode that matches how it bills, and every synced one is built in your PSA with no Awaiting sync older than a day.
• ＋Dependencies exist wherever the schedule depends on them, so the critical path on the Timeline is the real one.
• ＋PTO is on Schedule before it happens, and no task sits on a day its assignee is away.
• ＋Your own time is logged the day you worked it, and the team's drafts do not pile up past the week.
• ＋No project sits off track without a pinned reason and a next action.
• ＋Every partner who should see a project has a portal login and has opened it at least once; the account records that login as an engagement signal.