This guide is for everyone using BotPM: project managers, PMO leaders, sponsors, executives, org admins, and platform admins. It explains what to do in the app, what each area is for, and how to recover when something looks wrong. For deep API, deployment, or operator runbooks, open Docs in the app.
1. What you're using
BotPM is an AI-native project, program, and PMO workspace. It keeps charters, SOWs, plans, schedules, budget signals, EVM, RAID, stakeholders, governance, reports, and closeout on one rail.
BotPM is not a generic chatbot. Work is tied to organizations, projects, bots, roles, approvals, and audit-friendly history. The goal is to make project delivery more consistent without removing PMO control.
| Concept | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Organization / workspace | The tenant that owns projects, users, templates, integrations, policies, billing, and security settings. |
| Project | The delivery container for scope, schedule, risks, stakeholders, documents, governance, and reports. |
| Bot | A PM assistant assigned to project work. Bots can advise, run allowed actions, or prepare proposals depending on autonomy. |
| Governance inbox | The queue where proposals, escalations, approvals, and human decisions are tracked. |
| Autonomy | The control model: Assist, Operate, or Lead. Your admin and PMO policy decide what is allowed. |
| Admin / super admin | Platform-level users who can manage cross-tenant or global operational settings. Org users do not automatically get platform access. |
2. First login checklist
- Sign in with the account your admin created. Use the username/password or SSO method your organization provided.
- Confirm the right organization. If you belong to more than one workspace, use the organization selector or URL
organization_id. - Open Overview. This is the fastest way to see workspace health, active projects, and shortcuts.
- Run First week checklist if your org is new or you are onboarding a pilot group.
- Open Projects and confirm you can see the projects you expect.
- Open Governance inbox and check if anything is waiting for review.
- Open My account / Notifications and confirm contact preferences.
- Ask your org admin if you cannot see a project, cannot approve, or cannot execute an action.
3. Roles and access
Your role controls what you can see and change. The API is authoritative; UI hints exist to keep navigation clean.
| Role type | Typical access |
|---|---|
| Super admin | Full platform administration, global settings, user access management, tenant oversight, and superadmin-only tools. |
| Platform admin | Platform operator tools such as support, monitoring, pricing, or operational pages when enabled. |
| Company admin / org owner | Organization setup, team access, policies, integrations, templates, and workspace settings. |
| PM / project manager | Project delivery, bots, governance proposals, reports, and assigned work. |
| Executive / sponsor | Portfolio, reports, approvals, escalations, and read-focused oversight. |
| Viewer / stakeholder | Read-only project and report access where assigned. |
If a page is missing, it is usually one of four things: wrong organization, insufficient role, disabled feature, or subscription / policy limit.
4. Main areas of the app
Orientation & trust
| Sidebar (left nav) | What you use it for |
|---|---|
| Overview | Workspace home: health, bots, and shortcuts into your work. |
| First week checklist | Step through onboarding for a new org or new user group. |
| Trust center | Security, DPA, and trust & compliance information. |
Documents, bots, and work items
| Sidebar (left nav) | What you use it for |
|---|---|
| File Extraction | Upload files so the system can extract schedule, scope, and metadata. |
| Charters & SOW | Create or open the charter / statement of work for a project. |
| Bot assignments | Assign and manage PM bots and how they run on projects. |
Portfolio, projects, and governance
| Sidebar (left nav) | What you use it for |
|---|---|
| Portfolio | Cross-project view: health, dependencies, and rollups. |
| Projects | Open a project hub: cockpit, schedule, EVM, risk, change, stakeholders, closeout, and related tabs. |
| Programs | Group and track work that spans more than one project. |
| Resources | People, capacity, and resource-related portfolio views. |
| Governance inbox | Proposals, escalations, and other items that need a human decision. |
| Reports | Status packs and exports for stakeholders and the PMO. |
Help & settings
| Sidebar (left nav) | What you use it for |
|---|---|
| User guide | This same guide, inside the app. |
| Docs | Technical and operator documentation when you need depth. |
| FAQ | Short answers to common how-to and product questions. |
| Workspace settings | Organization settings, account, billing, usage, team, notifications, webhooks, and integrations. |
Operator console
| Sidebar (left nav) | Who uses it |
|---|---|
| User access | Super admins add, modify, deactivate, elevate, or downgrade platform and org-scoped users. |
| Tenant oversight / monitoring / audit | Platform operators review system health and cross-tenant readiness. |
| Feature flags / API flags / license / pricing | Super admins or platform admins manage global product controls where enabled. |
| Support / support chat contacts | Platform operators triage support and public support contact events. |
5. How to create or update a project
- Open Projects.
- Choose an existing project or create a new one if your role allows it.
- Add core project details: name, dates, owner, budget if known, and organization scope.
- Upload or connect source documents through File Extraction, Charters & SOW, or the project document area.
- Review extracted information before relying on it in reports or governance.
- Assign a bot if the project should receive AI assistance.
- Check schedule, budget, risks, stakeholders, and governance tabs before inviting sponsors.
Best practice: keep the charter, SOW, schedule, RAID, and status reports in BotPM instead of copying decisions into disconnected slides.
6. How to use File Extraction and documents
- Open File Extraction or the relevant project document area.
- Upload the file type your workspace supports.
- Wait for extraction to complete.
- Review the extracted scope, schedule, dates, stakeholders, risks, or assumptions.
- Correct anything that looks wrong before using it in a charter, proposal, report, or governance decision.
- Attach the document to the project so future analysis has the right context.
Do not treat extraction as a legal or contractual sign-off. A person should verify key dates, financials, scope boundaries, and obligations.
7. Bots and autonomy
| Level | What happens | When to use it |
|---|---|---|
| Assist | Bot provides insights, drafts, recommendations, summaries, and next steps. | New teams, sensitive projects, early pilots, or high-risk work. |
| Operate | Bot can run approved low-risk actions within policy. | Mature workflows where the PMO trusts the rules. |
| Lead | Bot prepares high-impact proposals and routes them for human decision. | Complex governance, escalation, or strategic PMO workflows. |
How to assign a bot:
- Open Bot assignments.
- Pick the project or work area.
- Choose the bot profile if your org has more than one.
- Set autonomy based on risk and PMO policy.
- Confirm governance expectations before moving from Assist to Operate or Lead.
If a bot is not acting, check autonomy level, bot assignment, feature availability, pending governance items, and your role.
8. Governance inbox
Governance is where AI suggestions become controlled decisions.
- Open Governance inbox.
- Review the proposal, escalation, or intervention.
- Check rationale, source project, affected dates, cost, scope, risks, and recommended action.
- Approve, reject, or ask for rework based on your PMO process.
- Keep comments concise and decision-focused.
- Confirm the project reflects the decision after approval.
Use governance for scope changes, budget changes, schedule baseline decisions, escalations, high-risk automations, and anything that must be auditable.
9. Reports and exports
- Open Reports.
- Choose the organization and report type available to your role.
- Select the project, portfolio, time window, and template if prompted.
- Generate the report.
- Review before sharing externally.
- Download or copy the output into your stakeholder channel.
Reports are only as good as the underlying project data. If a report looks wrong, fix the project details, dates, budget, risks, or status inputs first.
10. Team and user access
Org admins manage organization-level team access from Settings -> Team access. Super admins manage platform and cross-role access from Operator console -> User access.
Common actions:
- Invite a teammate: enter email, choose role, send invite.
- Elevate access: change role only when the person needs the permissions.
- Downgrade access: move users to viewer, executive, PM, or org role based on responsibility.
- Deactivate access: remove access when someone leaves the project or company.
- Reset password: use only when the user cannot self-recover or when policy requires admin reset.
Least privilege is the default: give people the smallest role that lets them do the job.
11. Settings
| Settings area | What to configure |
|---|---|
| Account | Your own profile and sign-in preferences. |
| Organization | Workspace name, policy, branding, and admin-owned settings. |
| Security & privacy | SSO, audit, retention, privacy, export, and deletion workflows where enabled. |
| Billing | Plan, subscription, payment portal, or trial state where Stripe is configured. |
| Usage | Quotas, consumption, limits, and subscription usage. |
| Team access | Members, invites, and org-scoped roles. |
| Notifications | Email, in-app, categories, severity, and summaries. |
| Webhooks | Outbound events for external systems. |
| Integrations | PM tools, calendars, collaboration systems, files, and enterprise connectors. |
If a setting is disabled, the reason is usually role, feature flag, subscription, tenant policy, or missing integration credentials.
12. Billing, trials, and usage
Billing appears only when enabled for your deployment. Depending on configuration, you may see trial banners, plan status, checkout, billing portal links, and usage limits.
- Open Billing to view plan or subscription state.
- Open Usage to check quota consumption.
- Ask an org admin or platform operator if checkout or billing portal buttons are missing.
- If a trial is expiring, resolve billing before workflows are blocked by policy.
- If an action says quota exceeded, reduce usage, upgrade, or ask an admin to review limits.
13. Integrations and webhooks
- Open Settings -> Integrations.
- Choose the provider or connector.
- Add required credentials or OAuth connection if your role allows it.
- Test the connection.
- Use project pages or reports to confirm data is flowing.
- For outbound automation, configure Webhooks with target URL, event scope, and secret if required.
Never paste production secrets into notes, comments, or support chat. Use the integration or credential fields your admin has configured.
14. Closeout and lessons learned
Closeout captures what happened and makes the next project smarter.
- Open the project.
- Review completion status, RAID, change log, decisions, benefits, documents, and remaining handover tasks.
- Add lessons learned.
- Confirm ownership for unresolved actions.
- Generate closeout artifacts or reports if enabled.
- Archive only after your PMO process is complete.
15. Troubleshooting
- Empty dashboards - Confirm you are in the correct organization and that the URL includes
organization_idwhen your deployment requires it. - Page says access required - Your role is not allowed, your session role is stale, or you are in the wrong org. Refresh or sign in again; then ask an admin.
- Bot is not executing - Check autonomy level, pending proposals, feature flags, quota, bot assignment, and whether your role can approve.
- Too many approvals - Your org may need a workflow tune; do not set Lead everywhere to go faster without a PMO review.
- Report is missing data - Check project fields, documents, schedule, budget, and date range.
- Integration fails - Confirm credentials, provider status, allowed origins, webhook secret, and org-level configuration.
- Billing or usage blocks work - Open Billing and Usage; ask an admin to check plan, quota, or trial state.
- I cannot find admin pages - Platform admin pages are hidden unless your role is
adminorsuper_admin. Superadmin-only pages requiresuper_admin. - I changed a role but navigation did not update - Refresh, sign out/in, or ask a super admin to confirm the backend role.
Need more? Open the Help drawer, FAQ, Docs hub, or your internal support channel. For tenant-specific incidents, include organization, project, user, time, action attempted, and any error message.
16. Best practices
- Start new pilots in Assist.
- Move to Operate only for well-understood, low-risk workflows.
- Keep high-impact decisions in Governance inbox.
- Keep project data current before generating reports.
- Use least-privilege access.
- Review integrations and webhooks regularly.
- Do closeout while the project team still remembers the work.
- Treat BotPM as the project system of record, not a side notebook.
17. Where to read this on the web
The same User guide and FAQ live on the public BotPM site, so you can share them with people who are not in the app yet. Use Guide and FAQ in the site header, or /guide and /faq.