The Dashboard is the first page you see upon login - from here you can create or modify projects, explore plans, and organize your projects with folders. 

In this article you will learn how to manage projects, plans and folders from the ALICE Dashboard.

• Organize your work in ALICE
• Projects
• Plans
• Folders

Organize your work in ALICE

On the dashboard, you can organize your work with folders, projects and plans.

 How They Work Together:

• All plans live within a project
   
• Multiple projects live within a folder
   
• On the Optimize page, users can see a shared Solutions Graph across different plans within a project
• This makes it easier to:
  • Compare schedule alternatives
  • Track how plans evolve over time
  • Carry over constraints and logic from one update to the next

When to Use Each

Use Folders when:

• You want to group related projects (e.g. all phases of a campus buildout, or all projects in Texas)
• You want to assign access based on team, client, or portfolio
• In the future, ALICE will support portfolio-level analytics for all projects within a folder.

Use Projects when:

• You have a single, identifiable scope of construction work
   
• You want to track multiple versions of a schedule over time
• You want to manage permissions on a per-job basis

Use Plans when:

• You need to import a schedule update while reusing existing parameters
• You’re evaluating alternate construction strategies
• You’re tracking progress snapshots or merging changes with Schedule Sync.

Projects

• Create a Project
• Share a Project
• Project Access Rights
• Archive a Project

Create a Project

1. Click on the + New button in the upper right corner of the project list page.
2. Select your desired option. A new ALICE Optimize project can be created by importing a schedule from P6 or MSP or starting from scratch.
   1. Option to add the new project to an existing project folder.
3. To import from an existing file:
   1. Select import schedule and drag and drop your file into the upload area.
   2. Click Create Project
4. To create a new project from scratch:
   1. Select start from scratch and follow the on-screen instructions to begin a project.

Project access can be restricted so that ALICE technical support cannot access projects for troubleshooting unless explicitly invited. We recommend leaving this setting unchecked so that users can receive prompt support.

Share a Project with Users

1. From the Project List, find the project that you want to share and click the "..." section to find the Share access option.
2. In the Collaborators box, enter the name of the individuals you wish to add. 
   • If you don't see the name of the person you wish to add, they do not yet have a user account set up. They must be invited to your account, click the link they receive via email, and set up their user account to appear on this drop-down.
   • Click here to learn more about user management.
3. Select the project access rights (see below for details)
4. Click the plus button to share access. The user will receive an email notifying them that they now have access to the project.
   

Project Access Rights

• Viewer: Recommended for stakeholders who want to see project information
• Editor: Recommended for users who are participating in the planning process
• Admin: Recommended for the user responsible for ALICE on this project

Archive a Project

Once a project is no longer active, it can be archived and moved to a separate section of the project dashboard. Here's what to know about archiving projects:

• To archive a project, click the "..." on the project dashboard next to a specific project and select "Archive".
• When you archive a project, it moves from the "My Projects" section of the project dashboard to the archived section.
• Archived projects are not deleted, and can be re-activated at any time by going to the archived project list and selecting "re-activate".
• Users who hold the "Admin" project access right for any ALICE Project can archive a project

Plans

To create a new plan, hover your mouse over the existing project in which you want to create a plan, click the "..." on the right of the page, and select "New plan".

To edit, duplicate or remove plans, hover your mouse over the existing plan and click the "..." to see the change menu. Click properties to change the name of the plan.

Note: there must be at least one plan in every project. If there is only one plan, it is not possible to use the remove button - in this case it is better to archive or remove the project. 

Folders

Create a folder by clicking +New in the upper right hand corner of the dashboard. 

Folder Permissions

• Org Editors and Org Admins can create folders.
  • When an authorized user creates a folder, they can share it with other users and grant them permissions within the folder (see table above for permission details)
• Only Folder Editors and Folder Admins can create projects within a given folder
• Access can be granted to users at either the folder or project level - if a user has access to a project but not the folder, they will see the folder name but only the projects they have access to
• Moving a project between folders - the user must be a project admin to be able to do this and must be at least an editor in both folders to do this
• Folder access right are managed by folder admins
• When a new collaborator is added to a folder they receive an email notification

Display

Folders sit at the top of your ALICE Dashboard, they can be sorted by name or last created date (sorting stored at a user level)

Folder Deletion

Only admins can delete the folder, the projects inside of it remain but outside of a folder

Notes:

• You cannot multi-select projects, you must move projects one by one.
• If you invite a new user to a folder, and that folder contains projects for which that user did not have access, the new user will inherit their newly assigned folder permissions at the project level.
  •  
    • e.g. if Mary joins your team and you add her to Folder X as an Editor. And Folder X contains 5 projects to which Mary has never been granted access, Mary will get Editor access to all of those 5 projects. Individual project admins can then decide if they want to change her project level permissions
• ALICE only supports one folder level

Further Resources

• User Management in ALICE 
• Schedule Sync
• Import P6
• Import Microsoft Project