Data Management Capabilities > Managing Projects > Projects and Programs > Project States
  
Project States
You can define states and phases for projects and the objects that they contain.
Project and Program States
When referring to projects or programs, its state is an indicator of the stage of operation and activity.
If using automatic execution, only certain plan states are allowable depending on the project state. For more information on working with states in automatically executed plans, see Automatic Execution.
State
Access Permissions
Defined
The project has been created, but the plan has not started and invitations have not been sent to team members.
Project managers can add and update content.
Others users cannot access the project unless a project manager manually invites them to the project team using the Team table actions. However, once added, team members cannot perform any actions within the project while it is in the Defined state.
Running
The project has been started and invitations have been sent to team members.
Access is determined by the standard access controls.
Suspended
The project has been temporarily removed from the active list.
Project managers and owners can add and update content.
Other users have read-only access.
* 
If a project is suspended, the corresponding plan is also suspended. When the project is resumed, the plan must be manually resumed in a separate action.
To automatically resume the plan, set the following property to true:
com.ptc.projectmanagement.plan.resumePlanOnProjectResume
Canceled
The project has been permanently removed from the active list, but project data is still available to team members.
All users, including project managers, have read-only access to data located in project or program folders.
Project managers can continue to update plan activities. However, other users have read-only access to plan content.
Completed
• If using manual execution, the plan state is set to Completed.
• If the project includes an automatically executed plan that is in the Running state, the plan is moved to the Suspended state.
All users, including project managers, have read-only access.
For more information on setting the Suspended, Canceled, and Completed states, see Terminate a Project.
Activity States
The following states are available for plan activities:
• Scheduled
• In Process
• Suspended
• Completed
Activity states automatically change as a result of the following factors:
• Change in plan state
For example, if the plan is suspended, then in-process activities are automatically suspended as well.
• Task dependency relationships
For example, if an activity has a Finish-to-Start task dependency on another activity, then it remains in the Scheduled state until the first activity completes. For more information on task dependencies, see Predecessor Relationships.
If the plan is in automatic execution mode, additional execution controls are available from the Schedule table. The actions that you can access for an activity depend on its state. For more information, see Automatic Execution.
* 
To see the states of individual activities, you can create a custom view in the Schedule table to add a column for the State attribute.
Project and Program Phases
The project phase is used to indicate its maturity to members and the organizations using the project. A project manager sets the phase. The phase is not linked to any specific capabilities or access control features.
The list of phases can be customized and might vary depending on your site.