Creating practices

You can create practices within a process description to provide guidance to team members about how to work within the project. Each project area, team area, and process template can have one process description, which can contain multiple practices.

1. Perform one of the following tasks:
   • To create a practice for a project area or team area:
     1. Navigate to the Project Areas page in the administrative web interface. See Logging in for project administrators and team leads (web).
     2. In the list of active project areas, click a project area to open it in the project area editor. To create a practice for a team area, click the team area that is listed in the Team Area Hierarchy section.
     3. Click the Process Description tab.
   • To create a practice for a process template:
     1. Navigate to the Templates page in the administrative web interface.
     2. In the Actions column for the process template, click , the Edit Process Description icon.
2. Click , the Edit icon, to switch from Read-only to Edit mode.
3. The default language of the practices is English. To use a different language, click , the Switch Language icon. In the Switch Languages window, select a language from the Add a language drop-down list and click Create. Select the language from the Existing Languages box and click OK.
4. In the Practices section, click , the Create New Practice icon. Enter a name for the practice. Enter a brief description of the practice.
   An entry for the practice is displayed in the Private Practices pane, as the following figure shows.

   
5. Within the practice, you can add practice elements. For example, within the Roles practice, you might add practice elements for each role, such as project manager, analyst, developer, and tester. To add a practice element, click , the Create New Practice Element icon while hovering over the practice entry. Enter a name and description for the practice element. For example, the following figure shows the Project manager practice element:
   
6. To add details to the practice element, click , the Add Section icon. Enter a name for the section.
   For example, the following figure shows the Tasks section being added to the Project manager practice element.

   
7. Within a section, you can add rich text or plain text fields. When you add a section, the rich text field editor opens. The rich text editor lets you format the text and include links and images. In the following example, a new rich text field that includes a bulleted list of tasks is being added to the Tasks section.
   You can switch between plain text and rich text. When you click Switch to plain text field, the formatting, such as bullets, bold, or italics, is removed from the field text, and the rich text editor toolbar goes away. When you click Switch to rich text field, the rich text editor toolbar returns. When you finish entering and formatting content for a field, click Apply. To resume editing a field entry, click inside the field.

   
8. To add fields to a section, click the Add Field icon in the section toolbar. For example:
   
9. You can also create categories within your practices to organize your practice elements. To create a category, hover over a practice entry and click , the Create New Category icon.
10. When you finish entering your practices, click Save to save your changes.