In Planhat's Workflow Platform, one of the core concepts you work with are Tasks. They're the smallest piece of objective-setting, and can either be independent or be part of a larger Workflow (eg, an Onboarding project). π
Task Management is often the "home" of your workday in Planhat, and so we've built it with that purpose in mind. Fast, few clicks, and great overviews so you can spend time where it really matters.
In this article we will cover 2 important parts:
Tasks: key fields and features
The Actions Page / Calendar View and how to work with Tasks
1/ Tasks: key fields and features
Task is a model like any other in Planhat's data structure, to which you can:
Work with a set of system fields, like Status or Due Date or Ownership
Add custom fields that help you organise and represent
Filter based on any Task criteria, and any company criteria
Embed Loom videos or other attachments
In addition, Tasks have "Checklists" for when you want to break down a bigger objective into digestible pieces.
There are two main "types" of Tasks: Tasks and Events (events can have Start and End times and can be synced over from your calendar).
There are three important parts to call out on how tasks interact with rest of Planhat.
A/ Tasks Status/Outcome
As you may have seen, each Task can have a status. In Planhat, there are a few default status values here (In-progress, Blocked) but Admins can add/edit these. These are used for when work is still ongoing.
In addition, we also have two values to represent an outcome, when the task is completed. It can then either be Done or Ignored, and when set to any of these we will also archive the task (which automatically hides it from some lists, etc).
When a Task is completed, you also get a chance to log a Note regarding the outcome. This leads us into the second thing to call out.
B/ Tasks vs. Notes
What is the difference between Tasks and Notes? In short: a Task represents something that is going to happen; a Note represents something that has happened. It's two fundamental concepts that you don't want to mix. For example, sometimes you want to log a note of something happening without scheduling a task beforehand.
But when you complete a task you often want the chance to log down a recording of what happened, which is why there are shortcuts to log a Note at completion of a Task. There is then a Note reference on the archived Task (eg, to access it from your projects).
C/ Workflows
Thinking about the real world, few tasks are completely ad-hoc and independent - most are part of larger workflows, like an Onboarding or Expansion project. This means that tasks are often generated by Workflow, and will have a Workflow reference in the details.
2/ The Actions Page and how to work with Tasks
The Actions Page is the place where most users start their day in Planhat, with a clean overview of this day's, week's or month's activities depending on what perspective you want. So it's built to be intuitive and a fast at getting your job done! π
Shift between two modes:
Calendar view
List view
In both, you have the ability to filter on task owner, company owner, task type, or any other task/company filter you want to build.
In the Calendar view, there are a few neat shortcuts:
Quick-actions for Completion and Note access (for completed tasks)
Bulk actions to update statuses
Toggle Someday and Overdue for quick access to specific Task sets
Change between periodical overviews; π pro-tip is to combine this with specific company filters to get a month-by-month planning breakdown per segment
Quick-filters for drill-downs and faster prioritizations
Compact Mode for when you have a looooot of things to get an overview of!