Tasks

Tasks are for tracking to-do items related to your portfolio records, work, and projects. A task can be assigned to a specific user, given a due date, and generates email alerts. Tasks can also be set to repeat at regular intervals, like once a year or once every six months.

Examples of tasks might be:

• Follow up with landowner on reserved rights request
• Record the easement at the registry of deeds
• Mow the field once per year in August
• Perform annual monitoring

Note that many of these example tasks can be associated with work items like issues, site visits, or acquisition documents. The work item holds the final data (like the site visit points, issue description, etc.) while the task just tracks whether an action related to that item has been completed.

Pre-built custom task checklists, like a checklist of tasks that guides the user through the process of acquiring a property, can be built in settings and applied to projects.

Once you've created a task, you can click on the 'edit' button to have access to several additional fields:

The Name is displayed at the top of the 'editing task' window. This is a place for a short description of the task.

Description is useful for elaborating on the task itself. For example, if you need to explain how a user might go about accomplishing a task.

Assigned To is who the task is assigned to. You can only assign the task to one user at a time. That user will receive email alerts based on their own profile settings.

Task Status is displayed in the colored bubble. You can create custom task statuses via Settings > List Items. Tasks can only have one 'Completed' status.

Click on Add Date to add a 'Start by' and/or 'Due on' date, and to set a task to repeat. See the section below on repeating tasks.

Once a task is completed, the Completed on date will display in the date field. This is set automatically when the status is changed, but can be overridden.

Task Type is available and editable through the grid view of the 'Tasks' page, and allows you to filter and view only select types of tasks when reviewing tasks in views, widgets, or reports. You can add custom types via Settings > List Items > Task Types (must be an administrator). For example, having a type of 'Annual Monitoring' allows you to see all of your annual monitoring tasks quickly and easily by filtering an 'All Tasks' view.

Repeating Tasks

A task can be set to repeat by selecting the 'repeat' button from within the calendar menu of a task. A repeating task will create a copy of itself based on the settings the user applies. This is very useful for tasks which need to be repeated at regular intervals, such as annual monitoring or seasonal mowing. It's important to note that a repeating task creates a new duplicate task automatically, rather than overwriting the old task. This allows users to see a history of past repeating task completion.

The Repeats every field defines the interval at which the new tasks will be created. If set to 1 year, for example, then a new duplicate task will be created every year.

Skip every allows you to skip regular intervals. For example, a task that repeats every 1 year but skips every 2 years will do the following:

-Task year 1

-Task year 2

-Skip

-Task year 4

-Task year 5

-Skip

You can only skip single intervals.

Once a task has been set to repeat, a written summary of the anticipated task behavior appears in the task details pane:

You can stop a task from repeating by clicking on the 'repeat' button in the date editor.

There is no need to delete previously completed repeating tasks. Once a task repeats, a new copied task is created and the existing task is set to not repeat.

Work

The 'Work' tab allows you to attach work items to the task, or to define required work for a task. For example, if a site visit is necessary to mark a task as completed and you would like to attach a recently completed site visit to the task, you can do so by adding the work item. Note that if the item has 'Required work', marking the task as completed will prompt you to add work as well.

Required Work Category can be used to specify which work items are necessary for the user to upload or connect the task to before it is completed. For example, if you want to make sure that the user uploaded a 'Title Work' work item when they mark a 'Obtain Title Work' task as completed, then you could make the required work category 'Title Work'. This setting also makes Landscape 'listen' for work items which are created in a record and alert the user if there are any tasks with that required work. You can further refine what work is required by using Required Work Type.

For more on managing work through tasks, see this article.

Comments

Allow you to capture comments or notes on the task, like: 'waiting on surveyor to respond to email' or 'this was not applicable to this project because XYZ'.

Adding a simple task to a portfolio record or project

Adding a task from the 'Tasks' tab of a record will associate that task with that record, allowing users to see which record the task is associated with when looking at the Task summary page.

First, navigate to the relevant record. Then go to the tasks tab of the record and click 'Add Task' at the top of the page:

Enter the name of the task (what the task is), who it is assigned to (optional) as well as when it is due (also optional). The task will generate an email alert to the assignee when it is saved.

The task will be added to the task list, and the task editor will open on the right, where you can alter any of the additional fields listed above.

Adding a task to a work item

Linking a task to a work item can help clarify where additional data needs to be added, and provide more context to the assignee about what they need to do.

From within a work item, click on '+Add' and select 'Linked Tasks'. You'll then be prompted to select an existing task. If a task already exists related to the work item, you should select it. Otherwise, click on 'Add New'.

Add the task details and click 'OK'.

Here's what a linked task looks like within an issue:

From whatever context you're in, the task will now be able to guide you to the correct work item through the 'Work' section of the task editor. For example, from here in the 'all tasks' view, I can see that this title search task is linked directly to this title work item, and navigate directly to it.

Adding the same task to multiple portfolio records

This article talks about the workflow of adding multiple tasks at once across multiple records.