How to edit a task

Clicking a task title anywhere in What are tasks? opens it as a panel over the page you were on. Everything on that panel is live: there is no edit mode to enter and no Save button to find, because each control writes as soon as you use it.

Before you start

Editing is checked against the task's own department, not the workspace. You can be a lead in Marketing and a plain member in Warehouse, so a control that is live on one task can be read-only on the next.

That surprises people more than any other rule in the product, so it is worth reading How to work out who can do what in your workspace once, properly.

What can you change from the panel?

Almost everything the task has.

• The title. Click it and type. It saves when you press Enter or click away.
• The description. Click it to edit in place. Enter saves and Escape cancels, and a save that fails keeps your text on screen rather than losing it.
• Status, Assignee, Cycle, Due date and time, and Priority, each from its own control. These save the instant you pick.
• Sub-tasks, blockers, files and comments, each covered on its own page.

While anything is saving, the other controls go quiet for a moment. That is deliberate: it stops two half-finished edits racing each other.

What are the four statuses?

Backlog, To do, In progress and Done. Every workspace has these four and they are the columns you see on a board.

Underneath the label, each one counts as either backlog, active or done. The Done category is what makes a task drop out of open lists and stop counting as work, which is why finishing a task and moving it to Done are the same thing.

Tasks use this fixed set. Settings › Stages, where an admin designs the steps a record moves through, applies to purchase orders and to Objects rather than to tasks. That is covered in The stages a record moves through.

How do priorities work?

Five levels: Urgent, High, Medium, Low and No priority. Each shows as a small glyph on the row, with a red square for urgent and signal bars for the rest.

Priority sorts and surfaces work, and it is what fills the Urgent screen described in How to see what needs you. It does not restrict anything or change what anyone is allowed to do.

How do you set a due date and time?

One calendar control handles both. Pick a day, and set a time underneath it if the job has one.

A date is what puts a task on the company calendar and into the Due soon and Overdue groups, and it is what task reminders are driven from. Overdue dates render red everywhere they appear.

The same calendar holds the Repeats switch, covered in How to make a task repeat.

Who can you assign it to?

Anybody on the roster of the task's department. If a department has nobody on it yet, the picker offers Unassigned only, which is a sign that somebody needs to add people to that team in Settings › Departments.

Assigning is a separate right from editing, so in some workspaces you will be able to change a task's dates but not its owner.

How do you complete or reopen one?

Click the circle at the top left of the panel, or the circle on any list row. It turns into a green tick.

Clicking the tick reopens the task and puts it back in the open lists.

If the task is waiting on something unfinished, Tideswell asks first, with a dialog naming what it is waiting on and a Complete anyway button. It is a prompt rather than a barrier. See How to break a task down and put it in order.

How do you find where a task sits?

A breadcrumb at the top of the panel reads department, then project, then campaign. Each part is a link, so a task is a way into the project it belongs to.

Underneath the panel you also get who created the task and when, plus a From #channel link when it started life as a chat message.

How do you archive one?

Archive on the panel, with a confirmation that explains it can be recovered. Archiving takes a task out of the lists without destroying its history.

Archiving is usually a lead's job, with one exception that catches people out pleasantly: you can always archive a task you created yourself.

Why is a control greyed out?

Because the rights are separate from one another, and all of them are read in the task's department.

Editing fields, assigning, completing, managing blockers and commenting are five different permissions. Holding one tells you nothing about the others, which is why you can sometimes comment on a task you cannot reschedule.

Work out which one you are short of before asking, using How to work out who can do what in your workspace. If the task is archived, commenting is closed on it regardless of your rights.