Your day to day
Tasks: what the system will not do for you
For what depends on a person rather than a document.
The platform chases documents on its own. What it cannot do is make a phone call, negotiate a deadline, or decide whether a supplier is still worth keeping. Those are tasks, and unwritten tasks get forgotten.
What deserves to be a task
| Yes | No |
|---|---|
| Phone the supplier who has not opened the notice in a month | Remember to request a document (the process does that) |
| Review approval criteria with the team | Remember something expires (the alert does that) |
| Decide whether to close a dead case | Check whether someone signed (the case shows it) |
The three things that make a task get done
Watch out
A task list that grows and never shrinks stops being read, exactly like a full alert inbox. If something has sat three weeks, either do it today or delete it: keeping it there only generates guilt.
Worth knowing
Tasks arising from a case are best created from it: whoever opens it then sees the context without hunting.
›Can I assign a task to someone else?
Yes, and they are notified.
›Do they close when the case completes?
No: the task is yours, the case belongs to the process. Close it by hand.
›Are they good for recurring work?
For anything that repeats, a process or an expiry alert is better.
A real case
The situation
A manager notes on paper who to phone and loses it.
What you do
- Creates the task from the case itself, with a name and a date
What you get
Whoever opens it sees the context without hunting, and calls stop being forgotten.
The situation
Some things the system cannot do get noted in a personal notebook.
What you do
- Records the task in the file itself
- Assigns an owner and a date
- Checks pending tasks alongside the file's status
What you get
What depends on a person stops living outside the file.
The situation
A task is agreed in a meeting and nobody notes it.
What you do
- Creates it there and then with an owner
What you get
The agreement is not lost on leaving the room.
The situation
Tasks pile up and nobody knows which are real.
What you do
- Reviews and closes those no longer relevant
What you get
The list becomes credible again.
The situation
One task waits on another and nobody knows.
What you do
- Notes what it depends on
What you get
The blockage is visible without asking.
The situation
Somebody leaves and their tasks stay in their name.
What you do
- Reassigns the open tasks
What you get
None is orphaned.
This article answers
- create a task
- reminder to call a supplier
- assign work to a colleague
- so i do not forget to do something