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This guide covers an institution-level feature at deandesk.com. See Institutions & Schools for how these levels relate.
Projects are collaborative workspaces for your institution staff — use one for a cohort, a class initiative, a committee, or a research group. Each project combines:
  • A schedule of events, including recurring events
  • A feed for updates, polls, and shared task lists
  • A linked Google Drive folder for the project’s files
Projects can span the whole institution or be tied to a specific school. Open them from Projects in the institution dashboard sidebar — your projects also appear individually in the sidebar for quick access.

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Create a project

1

Open Projects

From the institution dashboard, go to Projects and click New Project.
2

Fill in the basics

Enter a Project Title and Description (both required). Optionally pick a School — leave it as None (Institution-only) for a project that isn’t tied to any school — and a Project Owner from your admin identities.
3

Add members

Under Project Members, check the Identities who should participate. Members receive access to the project’s Google Drive folder, shared via their identity email, when the folder is created.
4

Set the timeline and status

Pick an optional Start Date and End Date, and use the Active Status switch to make the project immediately visible to members.
5

Create

Click Create Project.
If your institution has connected Google Drive, creating a project automatically creates a Drive folder named after the project inside your institution’s root folder and shares it with the project members’ identity emails.

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Browse and filter projects

The Projects page shows every project as a card with its title, owner, timeline, and status badges (Draft for inactive projects, days-left warnings for projects ending soon, a school badge, and a Drive badge when a folder is linked).
  • Use the Filter projects… box to search by title.
  • Use the school dropdown to show All Schools, Institution Only projects, or projects for one school.
  • Use the All / Active / Archived tabs to filter by status.
Click a card to open the project.

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The project page

Each project page shows a header with the project’s title, description, tags, and an Active Project or Archived badge, plus three tabs: Schedule, Feed, and Drive. A sidebar shows Project Details (owner, term, timeline, school, and enrollment code if set), Members, and Resources (a quick link to the Google Drive folder).

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Schedule

The Schedule tab lists the project’s events in date order, with time, location, and status badges (Tentative, Cancelled). To add an event, click Add Event:
1

Enter the details

Give the event a title, set the Date & Time (or flip the All day switch), and optionally add a Location (room, building, or meeting link) and a description.
2

Set recurrence (optional)

Pick a repeat option — Does not repeat, Daily, Weekly on [day], Monthly on the [date], or Custom…. Custom recurrence lets you repeat every N days/weeks/months/years, choose weekdays, and end Never, On specific date, or After number of occurrences. For simple repeats, set an Ends on date or leave it empty to repeat indefinitely.
3

Save

Click Create Event.

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Feed

The Feed tab (Updates & Discussion) is the project’s message board. Click New Post and choose a post type: Members can react to posts with emoji and reply in threads. Pinned posts appear highlighted at the top of their card.

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Drive

The Drive tab shows the files in the project’s linked Google Drive folder, with owner, size, and modified date. From here you can:
  • Choose Folder — link the project to a different existing Drive folder.
  • Open in Drive — jump to the folder in Google Drive to upload or organize files.
Files uploaded to the folder in Google Drive appear here automatically. This tab requires the institution’s Google Drive integration to be connected.

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Manage members

In the Members sidebar card, click Manage to open the Manage project members dialog. Check or uncheck Identities and click Save members. Members get access to the project’s Google Drive folder using their identity email.
Project members are institution Identities, not school Users. To collaborate with someone on a project, they need an identity at your institution — see Identities.