Tasks & Milestones

The Tasks tab gives you access to tasks and milestones. Tasks tell people what to do – milestones tell them when something is due. Tasks can be assigned to milestones - but they can exist on their own as unassigned tasks. Milestones can have tasks assigned to them - but they can exist without any tasks, simply as a reminder for an important date.

• New task: Creates a new task.
• New milestone: Creates a new milestone.
• All: Use the submenu to create a task from a task template.

• Complete: Sets the currently selected tasks to complete.

• In the upper part of the dropdown menu you see existing tags. Choose one to assign it to the currently selected tasks. You may assign multiple tags for the same note if you would like to do so.
• Add tag: Lets you create a new tag and assign it to the currently selected note(s).
• Delete tag: Lets you remove one or more tags from the currently selected note(s).

• Move to trash: Moves the currently selected tasks to the trash.

• Archive: Archives the selected note(s) into the Archived Objetcs folder.

• Mark as: Lets you mark the selected note(s) as read or unread.

• Show: Shows more information such as Workspaces, Time, Tags and Dates, depending on your selection.

• Filter: By setting filters you define which tasks are visible. Proceed from left to right since the content of the second dropdown menu depends on what you select in the first dropdown menu.
• Status: The status filter is independent from the other filter and lets you select only pending tasks, only completed tasks, or both.

• Group by: By grouping you define which aspect of your tasks is taken as a criteria to organize them in smaller groups. Grouping helps you to generate task lists for almost any purpose, so make yourself familiar with this simple but powerful feature.

• Order by: You can order your tasks by one of many parameters. Please note that sorting happens always within a group. In other words the Group by settings (see above) are applied before the Order by settings. A smart combination between the two features will optimize your task list - whereas some combinations don't make much sense (i.e. setting Group by and Order by to Due date).

• Show: These four switches control what parameters of your tasks are shown in the task list. While Workspace, Tags and Dates only display the indicated information, Time adds a button at the end of each line that allows you to start the time tracking for this task.

There are some more commands for tasks in the list view:

• Hide others / Show all: Hides or unhides other task groups.
• Print: Prints the current task group.
• Green plus icon: Adds a task or subtask.
• Blue plus/minus icon: Indicates that a task has subtasks. Click on it to unfold or hide the subtasks.
• Edit: Lets you edit the task properties in quick edit mode (see below).
• Complete: Sets the task to complete.
• Stop watch icon: Starts the time tracking for a task. If there is a user working on a task his name is shown in red, and you get buttons to pause or stop the time tracking.

The quick edit mode allows you to quickly edit the most important properties of an existing task from the list view. To have access to all properties klick on All options… which takes you to the edit view.

When creating a subtask from the list view you get a reduced version of the quick edit mode:

When you click More options… you will get the standard quick edit mode described above.

• Complete: Sets the task's status to “complete”.
• Edit: Lets you edit this task. Clicking on this link takes you to the edit view.
• Move to trash: Lets you move this task to the trash.
• Archive: Lets you archive this task into the Archived Objetcs folder.
• Create a copy of this task: Lets you create a copy of this task
• Add to a template: Lets you add this task to a certain template.
• Print view: Displays a printable version of this task and calls the print command.
• View History: Lets you read the note's history.

• Workspace: Workspace where this task is allocated to. Clicking on a workspace name to select it, takes you to list view.
• Tags: Tags that are attached to this task. Clicking on a tag name, selects it in the left sidebar.
• Subscribers: People who are subscribed to this task. Clicking on a subscriber name takes you to the corresponding user profile.
• Created by: User who created this task. Clicking on this users name takes you to the corresponding user profile.

• Description: Details about a task
• Assign to: User or company responsible for a task. If you select a single user then you get the option of sending him an e-mail notification. Whether or not you can assign a task to users of another company (or to another company as a whole) depends on the workgroup permissions.

Each task is assigned to a workspace. You can select the appropriate workspace here. Check Apply Workspace to Subtasks to apply this setting for all subtasks of this task as well.

In this section you can assign a task to one ore more tags.

• Milestone: Assign a task to an existing milestone of the same workspace.¹⁾
• Apply Milestone to Subtasks: Controls whether or not subtasks will inherit the assigned milestone.
• Parent Task: Lets you assign, change or remove a parent task. By assigning a parent task you are changing a task to a sub task. Please note: The parent task may be chosen from all existing tasks and may therefore belong to another workspace.
• Start date: Date when this task is supposed to start.
• Due date: Date when this task is supposed to be complete.
• Time estimate: Time needed to complete this task (in hours and minutes).
• Priority: Defines how important/urgent a task is. Choose between High, Normal and Low.

Please note: Currently (Feng Office 1.5.3) you can enter any date for start date and due date. You can even enter a start date which is later than the due date, and you can enter a start or a due date which is later than the milestone date. Feng Office does not consider this as an error and does not give you a warning.

If a task has to be done more than once and with a certain regularity you can define a repeating task. (This is very similar to defining a repeating event.)

• Repeat: Interval of the occurance of this task. Choose between Repeating Daily, Repeating Weekly, Repeating Monthly and Repeating Yearly. To convert a repeating task back to a standard task, choose This Day Only here.
• Every … days: This defines the interval between two occurances of the task.
• Repeat forever: If you don't want to limit the repetition, choose this option.
• Repeat … times: Use this option if you know exactly how often the task will occur.
• Repeat until: Use this option if you know the last occurence of a repeating task. Example: If you a planning a weekly task like “Writing status report” for a project which must be complete at the end of the year, enter 31st December.
• Repeat by: Define whether the repetition settings refer to the Start date or the Due date of a task.

To ensure that tasks are completed on time you can define reminders, consisting of e-mail notifications or pop-up alerts. (This is very similar to defining reminders for events.)

Choose the type of a reminder (E-mail or Pop-up message) and the timeframe (in Minutes, Hours, Days or Weeks before the due date.) By checking Apply to all subscribers these reminders are sent not only to the assigned users but to all users who have subscribed to this task as well. You can define as many reminders for a task as you like.

Please note: Feng Office will not prevent you from defining several identical reminders.

Pop-up reminders are displayed at the top of the screen and look as follows:

In this section, you will have the option to set your own new properties depending on your needs.

This section allows you to edit the subscribers options.

This section allows you to link objects to a task (and unlink them as well).

Chapter to be written.

Chapter to be written.

Chapter to be written.

Chapter to be written.

Chapter to be written.

Chapter to be written.

Chapter to be written.

Chapter to be written.

Especially if you are paid on an hourly basis its important to know how much time you spent working on a specific task. But even if it's not about money a project manager might be interested to know how long a task took. Feng Office has a built in time tracking feature that makes it easy for users to fill in their time sheet.

In the detail view of a task nobody has worked on before, you simply see these two buttons:

Both buttons allow you to enter a so called time slot for this task. A time slot is simply an amount of time (minutes or hours) you have worked on a specific date for this task, and usually you add a comment with some detail information about your work.

The difference between the two buttons is that Start work starts a timer, while Add work simply opens a form which allows you to enter a number of hours. So you would typically use Start work if you start working on a task right now, while you would use Add work to enter some work you already did.

PLEASE NOTE: Feng Office does not prevent you from starting the timer for several tasks in parallel or from starting the timer on a task that is already completed.

After saving a time slot it is displayed in a list like this:

Starting and stopping the timer can be achieved from the list view as well: Clicking on the stopwatch icon toggles the timer on and off.

In the example above, user “Martin Sauter” is currently working on the first task (indicated by a red background).

Note that you can edit or delete a time slot at any time if needed. The edit screen for a time slot can be reached from the task detail view and looks like this:

There are some changes in the task concept of Feng Office since version 1.0. This section of the wiki needs an update.

If you have to create similar tasks over and over again, task templates will save you a lot of time: Instead of creating a new task from the scratch you choose a template and add only the information that is different for every task.

Creating tasks from templates is similar to copying tasks, but it's quicker because you have access to task templates in the list view:

To create a new task template you usually go to the detail view of a task that is similar to the template you want to create. There you choose Save as template:

If you have administrator privileges you can manage task templates in the administration panel as well:

Some user specific preferences for tasks can be set in the User account.

Can tasks be assigned to groups? No, tasks can only be assigned to users or companies. Feng Office groups are used only for security related issues (setting permissions).