Task management

Projectous brings work from every client, project and service into a shared system of statuses and priorities. Your team can see what needs attention across the business, while each project uses the workflow steps it needs.

Understand what needs attention#

Three fields help you decide what to work on:

• Status: Where does the work stand?
• Priority: How important is it compared with your other work?
• Due date: When does it need to be finished?

These are separate choices. An urgent task might still be in planning, while a low-priority task is already in progress. See Working with tasks for how to change them.

Different workflows, shared meaning#

Statuses are defined for your company, and each project chooses which ones to use. A website project might need On Staging and Ready to Launch; a bookkeeping project might use different steps.

Each status belongs to one of four groups, keeping progress understandable when you view tasks from several projects together:

Group	What it means	Example statuses
Planning	Not started yet	Need Info, Needs Estimate, Estimated
Active	Work is underway	TODO, In Progress, Reopened
Review	Ready to be checked	Turned In, Reviewed, Published
Done	Finished	Completed, Closed

Tasks in Review remain open until they're checked. Tasks in Done leave the open task lists and Planner.

Choose a project's available statuses in Project settings.

How do tags fit in?#

Tags are an extra way to organize a project's work, such as by page, by phase or by who asked. Each project has its own. They sit beside the shared statuses and priorities rather than replacing them. See Tags.

Choose your view#

Project view#

See one project's tasks in List view, or arranged by status in Board view, the Project Board. Use List to scan and update tasks, and Board to see where each one stands.

How to filter, sort and set up a project is on Projects.

Team#

See tasks across projects and filter by person to understand what everyone is working on. Team is in the Work group of the menu, for admins, and its Board view is the Company Board.

Stalled, Waiting on and the other filters are on Team.

Planner#

Tasks assigned to you appear here automatically, across all projects, and so do tasks you own that nobody else is assigned to. Plan work around your calendar, and set a next work date to put a task aside until you're ready to return to it.

Planning days, next work dates and slipped work are on The Planner and Today.

An example#

Marie's pool on Monday holds three tasks from three clients:

• A broken checkout on a client's shop: Urgent, In Progress, due tomorrow.
• A new page for another client's website: Regular, TODO, due Friday.
• The monthly bookkeeping close for a third client, made by a service: Regular, TODO, due on the 5th, waiting on the client for bank statements.

The checkout is Urgent and due tomorrow, so it is the obvious first task. The page and the close are both Regular, and their due dates tell her which comes sooner. The close cannot move until the client sends the statements, and its waiting marker says so without anybody changing its status.

Make responsibility clear#

Assigning someone work and making them responsible for its progress are separate choices. A task has three kinds of people:

Role	What they do
Owner	Makes sure the task moves forward. There is one.
Assignees	Do the work. There can be several.
Followers	Need to hear how it goes, without owning or doing it. A follower can be a teammate, or an email address that gets only status changes.

Say an account manager owns a client's new brochure and assigns it to a designer. The designer does the work and moves it along. The account manager is responsible for its progress and is told when it is turned in. The client's marketing lead follows by email, and gets a message each time its status changes, without an account and without ever seeing the team's chat. How to set each one is on Working with tasks.

How do I offer a task to whoever is free?#

Instead of assigning somebody, make the task available for anybody to take. Set its status to On Job Board, or tick List on Job Board in the new task form. It then appears on the Job Board, under Work. Taking a task assigns it to you and moves it to In Progress. An admin can turn the board off, or limit it to each project's members, under Settings, Company, Features.

Keep work moving#

How do I see where work stands?#

Every status change is posted in the task's chat, and small pictures under a message show who has seen it. Choose which changes reach you in Notifications. Admins see everybody's open tasks on Team, where Stalled shows what has not moved for more than a week.

How do I mark a task as waiting on somebody?#

Waiting on someone? Mark who you need an answer or action from, so the task keeps its status and priority while making the next step clear.

Open the task, press the clock at the top, choose the person or the client, write what you are waiting for, and press Set. The task shows who it waits on, and for how many days. That person sees it on their Planner under Waiting for me. When they reply in the task's chat, the clock turns green; press Clear once you have what you need.

How do I pause a task?#

Set its status to On Hold when the work is paused with no date to come back to. It leaves the Planner, Home and the Job Board for everyone, and sits under On Hold, folded away, on Team. If somebody else has to act first, mark it as waiting on them instead.

What about repeating work?#

A task can repeat on a schedule or after each completion, and a service can plan a client's whole year of work and show each task when it is time to do it. How to set a repeat is on Working with tasks.

How do I handle a change in workload?#

When somebody is away or priorities shift, change many tasks at once instead of opening each one: reassign a person's work, raise a client's priorities or move a batch to another project. See Update tasks in bulk.

Can an AI assistant manage tasks for me?#

Yes. Connect one, and you can ask it to create or manage tasks without opening Projectous. See Create and manage tasks with AI.

What are private reminders?#

Projectous can privately remind people about overdue work, tasks that have gone quiet and unanswered requests. Each reminder stays between Projectous and the person who needs to act. See Reminders and follow-ups.

Discuss and review work#

Where do I ask a question about a task?#

In the task's chat. Write in your company's tab for your team, or the client's tab for the client; see Chat. Type @ and a name to make sure somebody sees it: they are notified and follow the task from then on. If you cannot go on until they answer, mark the task as waiting on them rather than changing its status.

How do I hand finished work over to be checked?#

When the work is done and somebody should check it, move the task to a status in the Review group. Any Review status keeps the task in lists of work until it is checked. Turned In is the one status that also sends the owner a private message saying it was turned in. The person checking either moves it back to In Progress with a note in the chat, or to Completed.

Tips#

• Find any task with Cmd+K on a Mac or Ctrl+K on Windows. See Search.
• See every shortcut with Cmd+/ on a Mac or Ctrl+/ on Windows.