Our new features, especially the Available Tasks column, are designed to streamline your workflow, making task assignments more intuitive and efficient.
Understanding the Available Tasks Column
The Available Tasks column is a dynamic feature that allows a user to see and subsequently pick up unassigned tasks based on specific criteria such as a User Group or Project Team they are a member of, a task type their user profile is associated with, or a specific status. This feature, though intricate, is incredibly powerful for managing complex workflows.
Enabling Available Tasks
To use the Available Tasks workflow, users must be able to self-assign tasks. To enable this in your workspace, navigate to System Settings > Scheduling > Settings and ensure that the setting Users can claim tasks has been enabled by clicking the checkbox and then saving your changes.
To turn on Available Tasks, navigate to System Settings > Workflow > My tasks.
Upon toggling this on, you’ll see the options for populating this column, including project teams, group assignments, and user skills based on task types.
Toggling on the filters that appear will allow you to populate the Available tasks column based on the following criteria:
Project Teams: Tasks that appear will be driven by who has been added to a given project's team. See Managing the Project Team for instructions on how to set up a Project team.
Group Assignments: Tasks that appear will be driven by which groups have been assigned to a given object on a project. Groups can be created both Globally from the system settings, or per Project. See Organizing Users into Groups for instructions on how to set-up User Groups. It is important to note that groups may only be assigned to parent-objects, not tasks.
Skills-Based Task Visibility: Tasks that appear will be driven by specific task-types that have been associated with a user in the system settings. For example, if you are associated with compositing tasks, you'll only see tasks that have been created with the type of "Compositing".
Status-Based Visibility: Tasks that appear will be driven by specific statuses that have been selected. For example, if the status "Ready to start" is selected, then tasks will not populate in the Available tasks column until their status has been changed to "Ready to start".
Setting Associated Task Types
In System settings > Resources > Users and Groups there is now a new attribute called "Associated task types" which can be set up for each user in your workspace. This will allow you to assign specific task types to each user that align with their skills or area of expertise.
To associate a task type with a user, click on the pencil icon that appears next to the user when hovering over their row.
Then select the task type(s) you wish to associate with that user from the drop-down menu and click "Update" to save.
Selecting Statuses
To use Statuses to populate the Available tasks column, simply select the status you wish to use from the drop-down menu found in the Available tasks filters.
Combining Filters
Filters can be combined to achieve more granular ways to populate the Available tasks column.
For example:
Project team or Group assignments can be combined with User skills based on task types to ensure that users are seeing only tasks on projects that they are assigned to, as well as those that match their skill set. This may be helpful for users who have access to all open projects.
| Note: Project team and Group assignments filters cannot be used in combination with each other. |
Selected statuses can be combined with any of the other filters to ensure that in addition to group assignments and/or task types, tasks will not appear in the Available tasks column for users until they have been updated to a specific status.
Where to find the Available tasks column
After activating the feature, the Available tasks column will appear on the My Tasks page, where users see all of their assigned tasks.
If the Available tasks workflow has been activated in your workspace, but a user does not see this column, it may be minimized. To expand it, click on the eye icon 👁️ at the bottom left of the page.
| Note: This feature does not appear for users with an Assigned user role (e.g. Restricted User). |
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Tip: To further configure the My Tasks page for your workspace see the following article: |
Self-Assigning from the Available Tasks Column
If a user would like to self-assign a task that appears to them in the Available Tasks column, they simply need to drag and drop the task to the appropriate status column in their task board.
This will also update the user assignment in the "Assignee" attribute column on the project's Task Spreadsheet.
Conclusion
These updates aim to provide you with a more flexible and efficient workflow management experience. By utilizing these new features, you can align tasks with team skills, streamline distribution, and enhance overall project productivity. We hope this guide helps you navigate these changes effectively. If you have any questions or need further assistance, feel free to contact our support team. Happy task managing!