Status updates

Status updates are the regular "here's where we are" reports clients actually read. Ambital drafts them from the project's live data — tasks done, milestones moved, time spent — so the writing starts at 80% finished and you edit for judgement, not for facts.

Find them on a project's Status Updates tab.

Creating an update

1. Hit New update. The panel asks how this one should be made — all choices apply to this update only:
   • Template — the project's usual, or any template from your library for just this update (a wrap-up or one-off exec report on a project that normally sends the weekly). A Manage templates link is right there if the one you need doesn't exist yet.
   • Date range — draft for exactly the window you choose (a missed fortnight, a single day, last month). Leave blank for the usual period.
   • Snapshot sources — tick or untick what feeds an AI draft: tasks, meetings, emails, notes, risks, decisions, approvals, hours logged.
   • Extra context / steer — free text telling the AI anything it should know or emphasise ("lead with the go-live slip and why it's under control; keep it short"). It shapes emphasis and tone; it never invents facts.
   • Then either Draft with AI — the sections arrive filled from the project's real activity — or Write it myself, which opens the same sections empty for you to fill by hand (no AI involved; works even with AI switched off). Mixing is natural too: draft with AI and rewrite whatever you like, since every draft opens in the editor.
2. Edit it — tone, emphasis, the things a human should say. The covered period sits at the top of every open update and is editable: widen the dates on a draft and hit Refresh from activity to pull in more.
3. Under the dates is Add context — a box for anything the system doesn't hold: a call that wasn't recorded, a decision made in the corridor, a number the client gave you on the phone. Type it there and every refresh folds it into the sections as fact.
4. If the underlying data changes while you're drafting, Refresh re-pulls the facts without discarding your edits — your wording is preserved and merged with the new numbers.

Every update in one place

Status updates in the main nav lists every update across all your projects. Each row is tagged Draft, Awaiting approval or Sent, with where it went — Portal, Email, Gmail draft — and who it was sent to. Filter by any of those, by project, client, RAG or label, to answer "what have we actually told this client, and when".

Templates

Templates control the shape: define your own sections and ordering once, and every update follows the house style. Open Manage templates from a project's Status Updates tab (the Template card) or from the org-wide Status Updates page.

Each template is an ordered list of sections, and every section has three parts:

• a heading — what the client sees ("Wins this week"),
• an optional editor hint — helper text beside the input when you're editing,
• an AI instruction — your own words telling the generator exactly what belongs there ("3 short bullets on client-visible outcomes, no task IDs"). This is where you say what you want included.

Add, remove and reorder sections freely. Three ways to start:

• Start from a preset — built-in shapes for common rhythms: Daily stand-up, Weekly client status, Monthly exec report, Go-live countdown, Project wrap-up. Picking one copies it into your library to make your own.
• Describe it, and AI drafts the sections (Business plan and above) — write what the update should cover and who it's for; the sections, hints and AI instructions are drafted for you to review and tweak before saving.
• New template — build it by hand from the default sections.

Mark one template as the org default, assign a specific template per project, or customise sections on a single project without touching the library. Edits to a template never re-shape updates that already exist — each update keeps the sections it was written with.

Approval and publishing

When an update is ready, it can go out through more than one channel:

• Publish to the client portal — it appears in the project's portal view, styled. You're never asked "who?" twice: the recipients you chose on the update become its portal audience automatically (no portal recipients named = everyone with portal access). A Who can see link next to the publish button adjusts it any time.
• Email via Gmail draft — Ambital creates a draft in your connected Gmail, addressed to the update's recipients, for you to review and send. Nothing is ever emailed automatically — you always press send yourself.
• Download a copy for anything else.

If your workflow needs a second pair of eyes, updates support an approval step before they go anywhere, and a published update locks against accidental edits.

Automatic scheduling

For projects with a reporting rhythm, set a schedule — Ambital auto-creates the draft on cadence, ready for your review. Cadences run from daily (workdays by default — ideal with the Daily stand-up template) through weekly and fortnightly to monthly.

Each schedule picks its own template, so one project can run a weekly client update and a monthly exec report off two different shapes — and the Manage templates link sits right on the schedule if the template you need doesn't exist yet. A schedule left on "Project's usual template" follows the project's Template card.

The schedule creates drafts, not sent emails; the never-auto-send rule holds everywhere.

Tip: the draft is only as good as the project data. Teams that keep task statuses and time up to date get uncanny first drafts; teams that don't get a polite fiction to rewrite.