Browse projects

Browse Projects

The Browse Projects screen is your central hub for managing all compliance and data protection projects in DPMS. Whether you're a DPO tracking a DPIA programme, a compliance manager running a GDPR gap analysis, or a risk manager overseeing an ISO 27001 audit cycle, this is where you get a complete, real-time picture of every initiative in flight — who owns it, what priority it carries, when it's due, and how much effort is involved. Without this view, it's easy for parallel workstreams to slip through the cracks; with it, every stakeholder shares a single source of truth.

How to open it

Click Projects in the left-hand sidebar. No sub-menu selection is needed — the list opens immediately.

Heads up: You need at least read access to Projects to see this screen at all. If you can only see projects assigned to you, your administrator has granted you a limited view that shows only the records where you appear as a responsible person. If you see a "403 Forbidden" page, contact your DPMS administrator to request access.

What you see

The screen is divided into two main areas. Across the top sits a tab bar — All, Open, In Progress, Completed — that lets you instantly narrow the list to a specific status group. To the right of those tabs is the Create button, which opens a small dropdown for creating or importing projects.

Below the tab bar, an action bar runs across the width of the page. It contains a search and filter control on the left, a Standard dropdown for filtering by risk framework, and export and bulk-delete buttons on the right.

The central portion of the page is a data table where each row is one project. The table scrolls infinitely — as you reach the bottom, more projects load automatically. If any projects in your list have linked tasks with workload estimates and deadlines set, a List / Gantt toggle switch appears just above the table, letting you flip between the familiar row view and a timeline chart.

Working with this screen

Reviewing your active projects at a glance

The most common use of this screen is a weekly or daily status review. Start by clicking the In Progress tab — the table immediately refreshes to show only active projects, filtering out anything that's completed or hasn't started yet.

If you want to go further, click the filter icon in the search bar to open the filter panel. Here you can add conditions such as "Responsible Person equals [your name]" or "Priority equals High" to focus on exactly the projects you care about. Once your filters are set, the table updates in real time. You can also type a project name directly into the search bar for a quick free-text search.

When you've found the projects you need for a team meeting or a report, click the XLSX export button in the action bar. DPMS will download a spreadsheet containing every project row currently visible — filtered and all. Only the records matching your active tab and filters are exported, so if you're on the In Progress tab with a priority filter applied, your spreadsheet reflects exactly that view.

When your review is done, click the All tab and clear your filters using the clear-all button in the filter panel to return to the full list.

Creating a new project

When a new compliance initiative kicks off — a fresh DPIA, a vendor review cycle, a regulatory audit — you'll want to capture it as a project so the whole team can track its tasks, timelines, and responsibilities.

Click the Create button in the top-right corner of the content area. A small dropdown opens. Select the option to create a new project and DPMS navigates you to the project creation form. Fill in the details on the General tab: give the project a name, set its status, assign a priority, describe the scope, choose a workstream and classification, link it to the applicable regulation, and add the responsible persons.

Once you click Save on the creation form, DPMS takes you straight to the new project's detail page where you can start adding tasks, uploading documents, and configuring the RASCI matrix. The next time you return to the Browse Projects screen, your new project appears in the list automatically.

Importing projects from a file

If your team maintains project records outside DPMS — perhaps in another system or from a previous environment — you can bulk-import them using a JSON export file.

Click Create to open the dropdown, then choose Import. Your operating system's file browser opens. Select one or more .json files that were previously exported from DPMS. The system begins uploading immediately; a loading indicator appears while the import is in progress. Once the upload completes, the page refreshes and all newly imported projects appear in the list.

Heads up: The import only accepts .json files — not Excel files. If you have project data in a spreadsheet, you'll need to convert it to the DPMS JSON export format first. The Import option is only available if your account has been granted import permissions. If the option appears but doesn't respond when clicked, contact your administrator.

If any records fail validation, DPMS shows a notification at the top of the screen explaining what went wrong so you can correct the file and try again.

Viewing risk data by compliance standard

If your organisation works with multiple compliance frameworks — say ISO 27001 alongside GDPR — the Standard dropdown in the action bar lets you focus the table on a single framework's risk data.

Open the Standard dropdown and select, for example, ISO 27001. The table updates to show each project's current and target risk scores calculated under that framework. Projects that haven't been linked to ISO 27001 will simply show blank cells in the risk columns — they're not hidden, just not assessed under that standard.

Once you've identified a high-risk project, click the three-dot menu (⋯) at the right edge of that row and choose Edit to go directly to the project's edit form. From there you can navigate to the risk evaluation tab without having to scroll through the full detail page first.

Switching to the Gantt view

If you've set up linked tasks with workload estimates and deadlines on your projects, a toggle switch appears above the table. Flip it to Gantt and the table transforms into a visual timeline showing all your projects' tasks laid out across a calendar. This is especially useful for spotting scheduling conflicts or checking whether a sprint is realistic.

To go back to the familiar row view, flip the switch back to List. If you don't see the toggle at all, it means none of the currently loaded projects have tasks with both a workload value and a deadline set — add those details inside the project's task list and the toggle will appear.

Cleaning up outdated records

Over time, duplicate or obsolete project records can clutter the list. To remove them, tick the checkbox on the left side of each row you want to delete. Once you've selected one or more rows, the Delete button in the action bar becomes active. Click it and confirm the deletion when prompted.

Heads up: Deleting a project from this list does not delete its linked tasks, assessments, or meetings. Those records become orphaned. If you need a complete clean-up, open each project's detail screen first, unlink all related items from each tab, and only then delete the project from the list.

Field reference

The columns in the projects table show the following information at a glance:

• Project Name — The project's name in your current display language. If no translation is available, DPMS falls back to the default language. A blank here is unusual and typically means the project was imported without a name.
• Priority — A coloured circle: red for Critical, orange for High, yellow for Medium, green for Low.
• Responsible Persons — Avatar icons for every person assigned as responsible. Hover over an avatar to see the person's name. Empty means no one has been assigned yet.
• Workstream — The operational category the project belongs to (e.g., "Legal", "IT Security"). Workstreams are defined in Compliance Settings → Tags.
• Classification — The compliance domain or type (e.g., "GDPR Article 30", "ISO 27001"). Also defined in Compliance Settings → Tags.
• Deadline — The planned end date. Blank if no deadline has been set on the project record.
• Estimated Effort — Total budgeted time for the project (e.g., "8h 30m"). Displays a dash if no workload has been entered.

How this connects to the rest of DPMS

The Browse Projects screen sits at the orchestration layer of DPMS. Everything you do here ripples outward:

• Clicking a project row takes you to the project's detail page (/projects/:id), where you'll find tabs for tasks, the RASCI responsibility matrix, budget and cost impact, meeting logs, risk evaluation, and linked assessments.
• The Create button takes you to /projects/create, where a new project record starts its life before being linked to tasks, TOMs, assessments, and other compliance elements.
• The Standard dropdown depends on risk frameworks being configured in your organisation's risk settings. If the dropdown is empty, no compliance standards have been set up yet — ask your IT or compliance administrator.
• The status tabs (Open, In Progress, Completed) reflect the custom project statuses configured under Compliance Settings → Statuses. If your organisation has renamed or added statuses, the tab labels will reflect those changes.
• After creating or editing a project here, the changes become visible to every other module that links to projects — assessments, meetings, dashboard statistics, and the MCP AI agent's project resource all read from the same underlying data.

When you return to Browse Projects from a project's detail page, DPMS restores the breadcrumb link so you can always get back quickly. If you've just created a project for the first time, DPMS takes you to the detail page directly — the list will include it the next time you visit.

Tips & common pitfalls

Tip: The Gantt view toggle only appears when at least one project in your current view has a linked task with both a workload estimate and a deadline. If you can't find the toggle, open a project, go to its Tasks tab, and make sure each task has a value in the "Estimated Effort" and "Deadline" fields.

Heads up: The Standard dropdown filters the risk score columns only — it does not hide projects that aren't linked to the selected standard. If a project row shows blank risk cells after you select a standard, that project simply hasn't been assessed under that framework yet.

• Filter state persists across tabs. If you switch from In Progress to All and the list looks shorter than expected, check whether a filter is still active in the filter panel — the search bar will show a badge if any filters are applied. Use the clear-all button inside the filter panel to reset everything.
• Only your assigned projects may appear. If a colleague tells you a project exists but you can't find it even on the All tab, your account may only have access to projects where you are listed as a responsible person. Check with your DPMS administrator if you need broader visibility.
• Import accepts JSON only, not XLSX. The export button produces an Excel file for offline reading, but the import flow requires the DPMS-specific JSON format. Don't try to import the Excel export back in — it won't work.
• Deleting is permanent and affects linked data. There is no undo for project deletion. Linked tasks, assessments, and meetings are not deleted alongside the project, but they lose their project association. Always review a project's tabs before deleting.
• The Standard dropdown requires risk settings to be configured. If the dropdown is empty, your company's risk frameworks haven't been set up yet. Navigate to the Risk Settings area and configure at least one standard to enable risk-column filtering.