In the world of software, we automate everything—deployments, testing, infrastructure. So why is our project management still stuck in the era of manual clicks, endless status meetings, and copy-pasting report data? Traditional project management tools, with their UI-centric design, often create more administrative work than they solve.
At Projects.do, we believe in a better way: Project Management as Code. By treating your projects, tasks, and workflows as programmable entities through a powerful API, you can move beyond simple tracking and start building intelligent, automated, and scalable business processes.
But what does this look like in practice? It's about building functions—not just in your codebase, but in your operational logic. Here are five powerful "functions" you can implement with the Projects.do API to transform your project workflows from manual chores into automated services.
The Problem: Every project is different, yet we start them with the same rigid, one-size-fits-all templates. A "Client Onboarding" project needs different tasks than a "Bug Fix" project, and manually adding or removing tasks for each one is tedious and error-prone.
The Projects.do Solution: Use our Project Management API to build logic that creates tasks based on project parameters. When a new project is initiated—perhaps triggered by a "Deal Won" event in your CRM—your backend service can inspect the deal's properties and dynamically build the perfect task list.
How it works:
Your service receives a webhook from your CRM. It checks the project type and makes a call to the Projects.do API with a custom-built task list.
The Benefit: Enforce consistency, eliminate manual setup, and ensure the right steps are taken for every single project, automatically.
The Problem: Manually assigning tasks is a bottleneck. Who's available? Who has the right skills? This often involves checking spreadsheets, asking in Slack, or just guessing—leading to overloaded team members and stalled projects.
The Projects.do Solution: Automate resource allocation. Integrate with your internal systems (or even a simple shared calendar) to query for availability or skills. When a high-priority task is created, your system can programmatically find the best person for the job and assign it to them.
How it works:
When a new task is created in Projects.do (e.g., "Critical Bug Discovered"), a webhook can trigger your "assignment service."
The Benefit: Optimize workload distribution, reduce response times for critical tasks, and remove the project manager as a manual assignment bottleneck.
The Problem: A task is completed, but the next person in the chain doesn't know it's their turn. Projects stall while waiting for someone to manually check a box and notify the next assignee. This is the definition of workflow friction.
The Projects.do Solution: Build agentic workflows that manage their own momentum. Use webhooks to listen for task completions. When a prerequisite task is marked as completed, your service automatically unblocks the next dependent task and notifies the new assignee.
How it works:
Projects.do sends a webhook when task_r1q2p3o4n5m6l7k8 ("Creative Development") is completed. Your code listens for this event and automatically starts the next task.
The Benefit: Drastically reduce project latency and keep momentum high. Your projects run themselves, ensuring seamless handoffs between teams and tasks.
The Problem: Budget tracking is often a reactive, manual process done at the end of the month. By the time you realize you're over budget, it's too late. The data lives in one system, and the project status lives in another.
The Projects.do Solution: Proactively monitor your project's financial health. A simple scheduled script can run daily, poll the Projects.do API for active projects, and check the budget object. If spending exceeds a certain threshold (e.g., 80% of allocated), it can automatically flag the project and alert stakeholders.
How it works:
A cron job runs, pulls project data, and takes action if budget thresholds are met.
The Benefit: Gain real-time financial visibility directly within your project management system. Move from reactive reporting to proactive, automated course correction.
The Problem: Key approvals or quality gates (like a client review or a security audit) need to happen at specific points in the project lifecycle, but triggering them is a manual process that's easy to forget.
The Projects.do Solution: Use project progress as a trigger for critical actions. A webhook listening for task.completed events can recalculate the project's overall progress.percentage. When it crosses a key milestone (e.g., 50%), you can programmatically create a new "Mid-Project Review" task and assign it to a manager.
How it works:
Your service listens for task updates, recalculates progress, and creates a new task when a milestone is reached.
The Benefit: Build quality gates and formal review processes directly into your workflow. Ensure that crucial checkpoints are never missed, creating a more robust and reliable delivery pipeline.
These five functions are just the beginning. By combining them, you can build truly sophisticated business-as-code workflows. Imagine a new deal triggers a conditional project setup, which dynamically assigns the first task; its completion then unblocks the next five, all while a separate process monitors the budget.
This is the future of project management. It's not about a prettier dashboard; it's about making your project workflows an integrated, intelligent, and code-driven part of your core operations.
Ready to stop clicking and start coding your workflows? Explore the Projects.do API documentation or sign up to get your API key today.
// Pseudocode for your backend service
function onDealWon(deal) {
let tasks = [];
if (deal.type === 'Enterprise Onboarding') {
tasks = [
{ title: 'Schedule Kick-off Call' },
{ title: 'Provision Sandbox Environment' },
{ title: 'Conduct Technical Training' }
];
} else if (deal.type === 'Bug Fix') {
tasks = [
{ title: 'Replicate Issue' },
{ title: 'Develop Patch' },
{ title: 'Deploy to Staging' }
];
}
// Call the Projects.do API
createProject({
name: deal.name,
source_crm_id: deal.id,
tasks: tasks
});
}
# Example: Your service finds an available engineer and updates the task
ASSIGNEE_EMAIL=$(./find_available_engineer --skill "backend")
curl -X PATCH "https://api.projects.do/v1/tasks/task_b1a2c3d4e5f6g7h8" \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $PROJECTS_DO_API_KEY" \
-d '{ "assignee": "'$ASSIGNEE_EMAIL'" }'
// Pseudocode for your webhook listener
function onTaskCompleted(event) {
const completedTask = event.data.task;
// Check if this task unblocks another one
if (completedTask.id === 'task_r1q2p3o4n5m6l7k8') {
// Unblock the "Campaign Launch" task
updateTask('task_j9i8h7g6f5e4d3c2', {
status: 'not-started' // Change from 'blocked'
});
// You could also notify the assignee via Slack here
}
}
# A daily script to check project budget status
PROJECT_DATA=$(curl -G "https://api.projects.do/v1/projects/proj_1a2b3c4d5e6f7g8h" \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $PROJECTS_DO_API_KEY")
SPENT=$(echo $PROJECT_DATA | jq '.budget.spent')
ALLOCATED=$(echo $PROJECT_DATA | jq '.budget.allocated')
# Check if spent is > 80% of allocated
if (( $(echo "$SPENT / $ALLOCATED > 0.8" | bc -l) )); then
# Update project status and send a Slack alert
curl -X PATCH "https://api.projects.do/v1/projects/proj_1a2b3c4d5e6f7g8h" \
-d '{ "status": "at-risk", "status_reason": "Budget at 80%" }'
# ... call to Slack API ...
fi
// Pseudocode for your webhook listener
function onTaskCompleted(event) {
// 1. Get the full project details
const project = getProject(event.data.project.id);
// 2. Check the new progress percentage
const progress = project.progress.percentage;
// 3. If progress hits 50% and review task doesn't exist...
if (progress >= 50 && !project.has_mid_project_review) {
createTask({
project_id: project.id,
title: 'Mid-Project Review',
assignee: project.manager_email
});
// You could also update the project to prevent this from re-firing
updateProject(project.id, { has_mid_project_review: true });
}
}