Task types and task templates

Both live under the Company menu, and they are different things.

A task type is a task with its own questions. A bug asks for steps to reproduce, a request asks who asked. You define the fields once — text, number, date, tick box or a list to pick from — and every task of that type collects them. Changing a type can push the new fields onto tasks already made from it. Admins only.

A type can be chosen while writing the task, from the picker beside the priority dot on the add row, or it comes from the template the task was started from. The picker only appears once a company has defined a type.

A task template is a task somebody saved to make again: a title, some detail, a priority and an estimate. It deliberately forgets the situational parts — no project, no assignee, no due date — because those are decided fresh each time. Templates belong to the company, not to whoever wrote them, so they survive that person being away.

Two ways to make one. Open any task and choose Save as template, or write one from nothing under Company › Task Templates, which is the one to use when the work does not exist yet ("the five things we always do for a new client"). Either way it appears under "start from a saved task" wherever a task is added.

A template can name the type it makes. Choose one and every task made from that template arrives already typed, with the type's fields ready. Answers that never change can be set on the template and are filled in automatically; answers decided per task are left blank. Saving an existing task as a template keeps its type and its current answers.

Each step of a service's task list can name a type too, so selling a retainer produces the right kind of work rather than tasks somebody has to type by hand every month.

Codes. A template's title or detail can carry {month}, {month_short}, {month_number}, {year}, {date}, {project} or {client}, filled in when the task is made — a monthly report titled "Report for {month}" is twelve distinguishable tasks a year rather than twelve identical ones. Anything else in braces is left exactly as written, which makes an unrecognised code a visible typo rather than a silent blank. A task typed by hand is never expanded.

A template is one task. A service's task list is several, and it brings a contract with it. Somebody who wants a set of tasks and no money changing hands wants templates.