How to create a task

Tasks are made in one dialog that opens from a dozen places, so you rarely have to navigate anywhere to raise one. This page covers that dialog and the shortcuts into it. For what a task is for, start at What are tasks?.

Before you start

You need to be able to create tasks in the department you pick. That is granted to every member by default, so in most workspaces this is not something you will hit.

If the Create button offers you no departments at all, that is what to ask an admin about. How to work out who can do what in your workspace explains how to work out which right you are short of.

Where do you open it from?

Create, next to your workspace name at the top of the sidebar, works from every screen. Beyond that, the openings come to you:

• The + on any group header in a list, which pre-fills the status or the due date to match the group you clicked.
• The + on a board column header, or Add task at its foot, which pre-fills that column's status.
• The hover bar on any chat message.
• A Create task button on an insight in the daily brief.

All of them open the same dialog. The only difference is what is filled in when it appears.

What do you have to fill in?

A title, and a Department. Everything else can wait.

The department is the required one because it decides who may edit the task afterwards, so Tideswell will not let you save without it. Until you choose one, the Project and Assignee pickers stay empty and Attach files is unavailable, because all three depend on which team the work belongs to.

Changing the department resets those pickers. Pick the team first and the rest of the form behaves.

Underneath the title and description you can set Status, Project, Cycle, Assignee, Due date and time, and Priority. A title can run to 300 characters.

Can you add sub-tasks before the task exists?

Yes. Type sub-task titles into the dialog and they appear as chips you can remove. When you save, the parent is created first and the sub-tasks are added to it.

This is the quickest way to raise a job that has an obvious shape: "Autumn lookbook" with "book studio", "confirm samples" and "brief retoucher" under it.

If some of the sub-tasks do not make it, the dialog tells you honestly rather than pretending it worked, with a message naming how many of how many were added. Add the stragglers from the task panel, covered in How to break a task down and put it in order.

How do you attach files while creating?

Pick a department first, then use the file picker. Files upload as soon as you choose them rather than when you save, so a large file is already on its way while you finish typing.

Files can be up to 25 MB each.

One case behaves differently. A task set to repeat carries no attachments, because the schedule produces many tasks and a file belongs to one of them. The picker is replaced by a note telling you to add files to an individual occurrence instead.

How do you turn a chat message into a task?

Hover the message in chat and use the task button on the bar that appears. The first line of the message becomes the title and the whole message becomes the description, so a request somebody typed in passing arrives as work with its context intact.

The finished task keeps a From #channel link at its foot. Anyone who opens it later can get back to the conversation that caused it, which is usually where the detail is.

You still choose the department, assignee and date, so nothing is created behind your back.

How do you make it repeat instead?

Open the due-date calendar and turn on Repeats inside it. The dialog then creates a schedule rather than a single task.

Repeating is a property of the date rather than a separate field, which is why it lives inside the calendar. How to make a task repeat covers the rhythms and how to pause one.

A schedule needs a date to start from. Without one you get a prompt asking you to pick a date.

What happens right after you save?

The task appears in the list you were looking at, and in the assignee's My tasks if you assigned it. If you assigned it to somebody else, it lands in their Inbox as well.

To keep going, open it and work from the panel, which is How to edit a task.