Tasks

Give work to the people who have to do it, and see it come back. They upload whatever you asked for, in any file format, and you read it without downloading anything.

Overview

Tasks covers the whole round trip:

• Write a task once and give it to one person, a whole group, or both.
• They start it, tick off the steps, attach files and send it back.
• You read it inline, approve it or ask for changes, and record a mark if you use one.
• Every handover, deadline change and reopened item keeps its reason on the record.
• Each person builds up a record you can look at, broken down by category.

Choose your wording

The same service is used by schools, hotels, agencies and offices, so the words on screen follow you rather than the other way round. Go to Tasks → Settings and pick the one that fits:

This only changes the words. Nothing you have already created is affected, and you can switch back at any time or change a single word on its own.

Categories and groups

Two pieces of setup make everything else easier. Both live under Tasks → Groups.

• A category is what a piece of work is about, and it decides how work in it is marked.
• A group is a set of people. Everyone in it is either a reviewer, who sees and decides on the group's work, or a member, who gets given it.

Create and give out work

1. Tasks → New task. Give it a title and say what needs doing.
2. Pick a category, a priority and a deadline.
3. Say what has to come back: a note, files, both, or nothing at all. You can set a minimum number of files and a limit on how many times somebody may try.
4. Publish, then Give it to someone - choose a group, a person, or both.

Everyone you give it to gets their own copy, with their own deadline, attempts and history. Giving the same task to thirty people gives you thirty separate records.

Doing the work

Whoever it was given to opens it from Tasks, reads the brief, downloads anything you attached, ticks off the steps and sends it back with a note and files. This screen is built for a phone first, because it is often used away from a desk.

If the deadline has passed and you allowed late work, it still goes through and is clearly marked as late, so nothing is lost and nothing is hidden.

Reviewing it

Tasks → Waiting for you is a queue of everything that has come back and needs a decision. Open the top one, look at it, decide, and move to the next.

For each attempt you can Approve it or Request changes. Requesting changes sends it back so they can try again; each attempt is kept, so you can compare.

Marking

Marking is optional. Set it on the category, and any single task can do its own thing. The choices are:

Moving work and deadlines

Work moves around, and the record keeps up with it:

• Move it to someone else - who had it before, who has it now and why is all kept.
• Pass on your own work - if your role allows it, you can hand something you were given to a colleague. This is recorded differently from being given work by a manager.
• Change a deadline - the deadline it started with is never overwritten, so you can always see how far something slipped.
• Pause a task - it disappears for the people it was given to without anything being deleted. Resume it and they pick up where they were.

Every one of these asks for a reason, and the reason shows up on the History tab of that piece of work.

Reopening finished work

Sometimes something is approved and later turns out to be wrong. Open it and choose Reopen this. You have to say why, the person is told, and it goes back to being in progress. It also shows up in their record, so repeated rework is visible.

Email

People are emailed when work is given to them, when a deadline is close, and when their work is approved or sent back. It goes out from your own address, not ours, so it looks like it came from your organisation.

Set the address up once in Workspace settings → Email; Tasks → Settings shows you whether it is done and links straight to it. Until it is, nothing is emailed - people still see everything in the app and in their notifications, so no work goes missing.

The wording of each of those emails is yours to change under Workspace settings → Email → Templates.

Performance

Tasks → Performance shows everyone you review. Open any person for their full record, broken down by category:

• How much they were given and how much they finished.
• How much came in by the original deadline, and how late it was when it was late.
• How often work had to be redone, and how often finished work was reopened.
• How quickly reviewers responded to them - this measures your reviewers, not the person.
• Their average mark, where marking is used.

Templates

For anything you do the same way each time - taking on a new starter, a monthly compliance round - build it once under Tasks → Templates. Each step gets a title and a number of days after the run date, so deadlines lay themselves out. Run the template against a group and every step is created and given out in one go.

Who can do what

Set on each role under Members & Access → Roles:

Somebody with only "Doing the work" sees their own work and their own record, and nothing belonging to anybody else.

Common questions

• Can one person have several reviewers? Yes. Put them in more than one group, each with its own reviewers.
• Can I give the same task to two groups? Yes. Anybody already on it is skipped rather than given it twice.
• What happens to work in progress if I cancel the task? Every open copy is cancelled with it, and the reason you gave is recorded against each one.
• Can somebody see another person's submission? No, unless they review that person's group or have workspace-wide access. The private thread on a piece of work is only between that person and their reviewers.
• Do we have to mark anything? No. Leave marking off and you still get completion, timeliness and rework figures.