Make a recurring project schedule

With ProcessKit, you can make your projects repeatable on a recurring schedule.  

In this article:

• What is a repeatable project in ProcessKit?
• How to make a project repeatable
• Configuration options for a recurring project schedule
• See your active recurring project schedules
• Cancel & delete a recurring project schedule
• Make updates to a recurring project's settings

What is a repeatable project in ProcessKit?

By default, projects (which live inside your Boards), are single instances, meaning you create the project, work on it, and when it's done you can archive or delete it.

With ProcessKit, have the option to make projects repeatable.  That means you'll create a project schedule, which will re-create new projects on the recurring schedule that you set.  The first project in a project schedule, and all the future projects that get created from the project schedule will share the following attributes:

• The project title, plus whatever modifier you wish to append to the end of it (more on this below).
• The client association, if any
• Project tag(s), if any
• The board in which this project resides.

The board is what determines which process(s) are preloaded on your projects, as well as which custom project field(s) are preloaded on your projects.  These board settings apply to all projects that are created within this board, including projects created on a recurring schedule.

As always, the board in which your projects are created can be set to automatically preload the process(s) on all projects—including recurring projects—that are created in the board.  For more how to configure a board's preloading settings, click here.

When a project has a repeating schedule, you will see an indication of that in 2 places:

• When inside a project, you will see the repeating schedule information in the project header:
  
• When viewing a list of projects, for example in a board's kanban view or elsewhere, you'll see this icon to indicating that this project has a repeating schedule:
  

All projects, including the initial project and all repeated instances of the project will show the same recurring schedule indicator since they are all associated with the same repeating schedule.

Read on for how to create, edit, manage and delete repeating project schedules...

How to make a project repeatable

You can make a project repeatable in one two ways:

• When creating a new project
• Make an existing project repeatable

Create a new project and make it repeatable

1. Go to a board > create a new project.
2. Give the new project a title.
3. Click "More settings"
4. Check the box for "Make this project repeatable".  This will reveal the repeating schedule options, with some defaults already set for you.
5. Click "Create" on the project.

Now this first project has been created, and it has a repeating schedule that will re-generate new projects that have this project's same settings.

Make an existing project repeatable

1. Navigate to the (non-repeating) project that you wish to create a recurring schedule for.
2. Open the project's settings dropdown by clicking "..." at the top-right of the project header.
3. Click "Make repeating"
4. Configure the recurring schedule options.
5. Click the "Make repeating" button.

Now this project has a recurring schedule and new projects that share this project's current settings (title, client, tag(s), board), will be created on the recurring schedule that you've set up.

Configuration options for a recurring project schedule

This is how each of the configurable options for your recurring project schedules work:

• Title
  This field is only shown when updating an existing project's recurring schedule.  This is the "base" title for your repeating projects in this recurring schedule.  Typically it matches the title of initial project in this recurring schedule, but you can use this field to change it.  You will have an option to append unique identifiers to this title in that option (more on this below).
• Repeats Every
  This is the frequency that your schedule will repeat.  You can set it so that new projects are created daily, weekly, monthly, every 3 months, or yearly.
• Days
  This option displays in all cases except when you've selected "Weekly" for your schedule (you'll select which day of the week to repeat below...).  For all other schedules (Daily, Monthly, 3 Months, Yearly), you can use these checkboxes to allow or disallow new projects from being created on certain days of the week.  For example, if you leave Saturday and Sunday unchecked, and your repeating schedule is set to repeat Monthly on the 15th, then whenever the 15th of the month is a Saturday or Sunday, ProcessKit will wait until Monday to create that next new project in this schedule (assuming you left Monday checked).
• Time
  The time of day that the project should be created.  Note: If your processes have date rules that are based on a project's start date & time, when a project doesn't yet have a start date set, ProcessKit will assume the project start date & time is the same as its creation date & time.
• Day of the Week
  This option is only shown when you have "Weekly" selected.  This is where you define which day of the week you want new projects to be created on.
• Day of the Month
  This option is only shown when you have "Monthly", "Every 3 Months", or "Yearly" selected.  This is where you define which day of the month you want new projects to be created on.
• Month
  This option is only shown when you have "Yearly" selected.  This is where you define which month of the year you want new projects to be created on.
• Append to title on future instances
  You might want to ensure that all projects that get created on this repeating schedule have a unique identifier in their title.  This option lets you do that.  If you select "An incrementing number", then future projects will be titled by the base title, followed by a space and number that increments up by 1 with each repeating project.  If you select "The current date", then the project title will be appended with the current date that each repeating project was created.  If you prefer to make all repeating projects in this schedule share the same exact title (no unique identifier), then select "Nothing".
• Date format to be appended to title
  If you selected to have the current date appended to the title of future projects in this schedule, here you can select the format for how that date should be output.

See your active recurring project schedules

When you want to see all of your recurring project schedules that are currently running, you'll find these within the board they were created.  Go to the board, then click "Automations".  

Here, you see the list of schedules that are currently running.  Click the project title to go to the most recently created project in this schedule.

Cancel & delete a recurring project schedule

When you need to cancel and stop a recurring project schedule from creating new projects in the future, you can do this from either of these places:

• In the board > automations > view your recurring schedules list, then click the settings dropdown on a schedule and click "Remove".
• Open any project that has a recurring schedule > open its project settings > click "Recurring schedule" > click "Cancel schedule".  This will cancel and remove the recurring schedule from this project and all other projects that have been created via this schedule.  It will not delete the projects themselves.

Make update to a recurring project's settings

Let's say you've had a recurring project running for a while, but then you decide you want to change up this project's settings for all future repeats of this project.  For example, say you want to change the tags, or change the client associated with this recurring project.

Here's how to do that:

1. Go the most recent one (which should be the one that's linked from the Automations page).
2. Remove the recurring schedule from this project.
   
3. Add the tag(s) to this project that you'll want to be included on every repeated project going forward.
4. Re-create the recurring schedule on this project:
   
   

Now going forward, new projects in this recurring schedule will have those tags by default.