Plan and run projects

Most projects don’t fail for lack of a plan. They drift because the plan, the background documents, and the latest status all live in different places — so every update means re-explaining where things stand.

This walkthrough shows you how to keep all of it in one workspace: the source documents the project depends on, a living plan you can update, and a shared conversation where your team contributes in real time. By the end you’ll have a plan with milestones, owners, and risks, plus a repeatable way to ask “what’s done, what’s at risk, what’s next?” and share the answer.

We’ll follow one example throughout: rolling out a new expense tool across three regions by the end of Q2, with training and internal comms. Swap in your own project as you go.

What you’ll set up

Piece	What it holds	Built with
A Collection	The background docs the project depends on	Knowledge
A Folder	The project workspace and its conversations	Folders
A shared conversation	Where the plan is drafted and updated together	Shared conversations
A living record	The current plan, kept up to date	Notes

You’ll do the setup once, then return to the same workspace for every status update.

Step 1 — Gather the background into a Collection

A Collection is a set of documents the assistant can read and cite. Putting your project’s source material in a Collection means every answer is grounded in your documents, not just general knowledge.

Open Knowledge in the sidebar and create a new Collection — call it something like Expense Tool Rollout.
Upload the background docs. Drag files in, or use Add Source → Upload. You can add PDFs, Word and Excel files, PowerPoint, CSVs, Markdown, and plain text (up to 100 MB each). For the rollout that might be the vendor contract, the project mandate, last year’s migration retrospective, and the regional org charts.
If some context lives on a public website, use Add Source → Web Crawl to pull it in.
Wait for each file to finish processing. Once a document shows as ready, it’s searchable and the assistant can cite it.

For the full walkthrough of uploading and crawling, see Upload a file to work with.

Step 2 — Create a Folder for the project

A Folder (also called a Project) is the workspace that groups everything for one effort: its conversations, its assistant, and the people who can see it.

In the sidebar, create a new Folder named after the project — Expense Tool Rollout.
As the creator you’re the Owner. New conversations you start while the Folder is open automatically belong to it, so you won’t have to file things later.

This is the home you’ll come back to for every status check. Conversations you start here stay together and stay in context.

Step 3 — Link the Collection and invite your team

Now connect the documents to the workspace and decide who can do what.

Link the Collection to the Folder so every conversation in the project can draw on the background docs without re-attaching them each time. Open the Folder’s settings and add the Expense Tool Rollout Collection to its knowledge.

Invite people on the Members tab. Each person gets a role:

Role	Can do
Owner	Everything; the creator, can’t be removed
Admin	Manage members and settings
Member	Read and contribute — post messages, add updates
Viewer	Read-only — see the plan and status, can’t change it

For the rollout, add the regional leads and the comms owner as Members so they can contribute, and add your sponsor or wider stakeholders as Viewers so they can follow along without editing.

Step 4 — Open a shared conversation and ask for the plan

Inside the Folder, start a new conversation. Because it lives in the project, it’s shared with the Members and Viewers you invited, and it can read the linked Collection.

For planning work, set the tier to Thinking (the default) so the assistant reasons through the structure rather than answering off the cuff.

Ask for the plan in one prompt. Be specific about what you want back:

Using the documents in this project, draft a project plan to roll out our new expense tool across three regions by the end of Q2. Include: the objective, key milestones with target dates, an owner for each milestone, a timeline, the main risks with how we’d mitigate them, and the metrics we’ll use to know it worked. Account for training and internal comms in each region.

You’ll watch the assistant work through its steps — understanding your request, gathering from the Collection, and composing the answer — and the result will come back as a structured plan with citations linking back to your uploaded documents. Click any citation to see the exact source.

If the first draft isn’t quite right, you don’t need to start over. Use the buttons under the reply:

Refine this to tighten or improve it.
Explain more to expand a section.
Try different approach for a different structure.

Or just reply in plain language — “Make the regional rollout sequential, not parallel, and add a go/no-go checkpoint before each region.”

Step 5 — Save the plan as a living record

A chat reply is a moment in time. To make the plan something you maintain, copy it into a Note — your living record.

On the assistant’s plan, use Copy, or select the part you want and save it to a Note.
Give the Note a clear title like Expense Rollout — Plan (living) and keep it in the project.

From now on, the Note is the canonical plan. When details change, you update the Note — there’s one place to look, and your team always finds the current version there.

Learn more about Notes and the other workspaces in Chat, Notes, Channels, and Knowledge.

Step 6 — Run the project: post a status update and ask what’s next

This is the part you’ll repeat. A week or a month in, come back to the same shared conversation in the Folder and paste in what’s happened:

Status update: Region 1 training is complete and the tool is live there. Region 2 training is scheduled for next week. Region 3 is blocked — we’re waiting on the vendor’s data export and the regional lead is on leave. Comms went out in Regions 1 and 2.

Then ask the assistant to read it against the plan:

Compared to our plan, what’s complete, what’s at risk, and what are the top next actions with owners? Then give me an 8–10 line executive summary I can share with leadership.

You’ll get back a clear read on progress — what’s done, what’s slipping, and the concrete next moves — followed by a short summary written for an audience that wasn’t in the weeds.

Update your living Note with anything that changed, so the plan and reality stay in sync.

Share the executive summary right where the work happens, and send a copy to people who live outside the tool.

Share in the Folder. Members and Viewers already see the conversation, so the summary is visible to your team the moment it’s posted — no forwarding required.
Export for outside readers. When you need to send the plan or the summary to someone who isn’t in the project, export the conversation as PDF or Markdown from the conversation menu. PDF is best for a polished hand-off; Markdown drops cleanly into other docs and wikis.

See Export a conversation for the full set of formats.

Members contribute in real time

Throughout the project, your Members aren’t just reading — they’re working alongside you. The shared conversation updates live: when a regional lead posts their own status, or asks the assistant a follow-up, everyone in the Folder sees it as it happens, with each person’s messages attributed to them. You can plan together in one place instead of stitching together separate threads.

The outcome

You’ve gone from “we need to roll out the expense tool” to a workspace you can actually run a project from:

The background documents are in a Collection the assistant cites.
The plan lives in a Note you keep current.
Status updates take two messages and produce a leadership-ready summary on demand.
The right people can contribute or follow along, in real time, from one place.

Next time you start a similar project, you can reuse the same shape — and if you want that plan or playbook to be findable for the next team, save it back into Knowledge.

Where to go next

Save what you learn — turn this project’s playbook into reusable knowledge.
Executive reports and briefings — go deeper on the summary step.
Find and organize your conversations — keep your Folders and history tidy as projects pile up.
Choosing the right assistant — point this project at an assistant tuned for your team.