Clients sometimes have a need to track projects in Project Online but only want select users to see these projects. It could be R&D type projects that have proprietary information, or it could be internal projects that needs limited access. In Project Online, we can create Confidential Projects that only specified users have access to. Here is how this is done.

This is accomplished by creating a custom Security Category and a Security Group, giving the right permissions, and then denying permissions on the new Category for other users. Here are the steps:

  1. Go to PWA Settings > Under Security, go to Manage Categories
  2. Click on New Category
  3. Give the Category a name: Confidential Projects
  4. In Projects section, select “Only include the selected projects”
  5. From the Available Projects, add to the right the project(s) that need to be hidden for general users and visible to Specified Users
Figure 1: Create a Confidential Category under PWA setting
  1. Go to PWA Settings > Under Security, go to Manage Groups
  2. Click on New Group
  3. Name it Confidential Projects
  4. In Users section, add users that will be managing and viewing these confidential projects. (You can also use an AD Group if this is a large list)
  5. Navigate to the Categories section, select Confidential Projects, and add it to the right
Figure 2: Navigate to the Categories section, select Confidential Projects, and add it to the right
  1. With the Confidential Projects Category selected, select Allow for appropriate Permissions that users in this group would need. These users would generally be PMs so they would need everything we would give to a regular PM.
Figure 3: With the Confidential Projects Category selected, select Allow for appropriate Permissions that users in this group would need
  1. Go to Global Permissions section and give the same permissions as you would for a regular PM
  2. Click Save

Now we have our custom Category and Security Group. The next steps are what hides the projects added to the Confidential Category from other users.

  1. Go to each of the other Security Groups that users are in (Project Managers, Team Members etc.) and deny permissions to view/manage the project
  2. In this example, we will go to PWA Settings > Manage Groups > click on Project Managers (or your custom Groups)
  3. Navigate to the Categories section, select Confidential Projects, and add it to the right
  4. With the Confidential Projects Category selected, select Deny for appropriate Permissions to disable viewing/managing of Confidential Projects
Figure 4: With the Confidential Projects Category selected, select Deny for appropriate Permissions to disable viewing/managing of Confidential Projects
  1. Click Save
  2. Repeat for other Security Groups that need Confidential Projects hidden from

In the future, when a new Confidential Project is created, an Admin will have to go to the Confidential Category and manually add the project as shown in Step 5.