How to create a task

Adding a task logs a piece of work with an owner and, usually, a deadline, so it doesn't rely on someone simply remembering to do it.

Where to add a task from

There are two direct ways in, plus a third route through automations covered further down.

From an entity that supports tasks, a job for example, open the Tasks tab and click Add Task. This opens the Add Task form already tied to that record, so anything you create is automatically attached to it.

Or go straight to the Tasks overview page and add one from there, for anything that doesn't need to sit against a specific record.

Title and details

Start with a title that says what needs doing, short enough to scan in a list.

Add details or instructions underneath it. Write enough that whoever picks the task up can act on it without having to go and ask you what you actually meant, or dig through other records to find the context themselves.

How much detail a task needs depends on what it is. A simple reminder might only need a name, an assignee and a due date. Something more involved is worth writing out properly, with instructions and enough structure that anyone could pick it up and know what to do.

Assigning the task

Assign the task to either a person or a team.

Assign to a person when the work has one clear owner, following up with a client, checking a detail, preparing something for a specific job.

Assign to a team when more than one person could reasonably handle it, or when the task belongs to a particular part of the business rather than one individual, preparation work for an upcoming booking going to your operations team, for example.

Get the assignment right and nothing falls through the gap where everyone assumed somebody else had it.

Setting a priority

Priority is what tells the team which task to look at first when there is more than one sitting in front of them.

Use a higher priority for anything urgent, time sensitive, or likely to affect a client, a booking or a payment if it gets missed. Use a lower priority for anything useful but not pressing.

Setting a due date

A due date gives the task an actual deadline, rather than leaving it as an open ended thing to get to eventually.

This matters most when the work has to happen before something else can, before a booking, or before a client can move on to the next stage of theirs.

Status

Status shows where the task actually is, so update it as the work moves rather than leaving it looking the same as the day it was created.

Once it's finished, you have two options. Set it to Done if you want it to stay visible as part of your task history. Archive it if you would rather it stopped appearing in your working list altogether.

Keeping this current is what makes a task list actually useful day to day, since it lets your team focus on what still needs doing rather than wading through work that finished weeks ago.

Customising status and priority

Status and priority, along with any other dropdown field on a task, are not fixed to whatever comes as standard.

Add your own custom options for them from the field management area under Tasks, so the choices actually match how your team works rather than forcing your process to fit a generic default list.

Custom fields

If the task needs information specific to how your business works, add it using custom fields rather than folding it into the description.

These are worth using when a particular kind of task always needs the same structured piece of information captured the same way, an internal reference, a client's chosen option, a completion detail. Keep the description for instructions and context, and use custom fields for anything you want captured consistently every time.

Creating tasks with automations

A task does not only get created by someone opening the Add Task form themselves. Inside an automation, the Create Entity action can generate one automatically as part of a workflow.

Choose Task as the entity type and you get the same set of fields to fill in as you would filling the form out by hand, title, assignee, due date, status, priority, details and any custom fields you have set up.

Using variables from earlier in the automation

Rather than typing fixed values, you can pull in variables from earlier steps in the automation, so the task arrives already filled in with real data from whatever triggered it. A task created when a new booking comes in could have the client's name and the event date dropped straight into its title and details, without anyone typing them by hand.

Holding a workflow until a task is done

You can also set a task to hold the automation's workflow, so it will not move on to its next step until that task has been marked complete.

This is what makes tasks useful for human in the loop workflows. An automation can run everything it is able to do by itself, then stop and wait for a person to check something, approve something, or complete a step that genuinely needs a human, before carrying on automatically once the task is done.

Finding tasks afterward

The Tasks overview page is also where you go to see everything at once, rather than checking record by record.

Filter by user, team, status, priority, due date or any other field on the task, including your own custom ones, to narrow a long list down to exactly what you are looking for.

One-off tasks and repeating tasks

Not every task needs building from scratch. If the same task comes up at the same point in every booking, it is worth setting up once so it is created consistently rather than rebuilt by hand each time.

For anything that only applies to one situation, a genuine one-off, add it as a standalone task instead.

Before you save

A quick check before you save any task. Does it have an owner. Does it need a due date. Is there enough in the details that the person assigned could act on it without coming back to ask you what you meant.

If the answer to all three is yes, the task is ready to go.