The goal of Tasks 2.0 is to dramatically improve the usability of tasks. This includes making it easier to create, view, and edit tasks. We want you to make tasks a part of your daily work life.
The Tasks Tab
The new Tasks Tab looks similar, but provides more information and better usability. The entire view is now filterable, so you can quickly find the specific task you want. In addition to your previous ability to filter by task assignee, you can now filter by name and due date.
In addition to name, assignee, and due date, each task also displays whether or not it includes a link (more on that later) and the number of comments that have been made.
One change is that Milestones are now Task Lists. We found that the overwhelming majority of people used Milestones as task lists, without ever using the due date feature. We’ve made the change official, though those of you who used Milestone due dates don’t have to worry; we’ll automatically add all your Milestone due dates to any tasks to which they apply.
Tasks 2.0 also makes it much easier to edit your tasks. If you mouse over the name of a task, you now see a Task Card that lets you check the assignee and/or due date without leaving the page. Or, if you want to make more extensive changes, clicking the pencil icon lets you edit the Task right from this screen; in addition to assignee and due date, you can also change the task’s name, insert a link, or even move it to another workspace.
We’ve dramatically enhanced what used to be called the Due Date view. The new Sort View starts with your tasks sorted by due date, just like the Due Date view. But in addition to sorting by due date, you can also sort by the task name, to whom it’s been assigned, the task list, and the number of comments. As with the standard view, you can mouse over any task to pull up a Task Card, and click the pencil icon to edit the Task.
Finally, we’ve added Task Cards to the Calendar View of tasks. Now, when you scan the calendar for upcoming tasks, you can use the Task Cards to change the due date and assignment of the tasks, and click through to view the content link and any comments (if they’ve been added).
The Task View
We’ve also improved the view we provide of individual tasks. The previous task view was a simple activity stream, which mixed together all types of activity. This made it hard to follow the conversation around a task.
The new task view maintains the activity stream, but breaks out and highlights comments in their own section, making it easy to follow the conversation. It also highlights key information about the task, such as the due date, assignee, and link (if applicable) to make it easier to find.
You can add a single designated link while creating or editing a task. This link lets you explicitly link your task to a piece of content. If you need to add more than one link, you can still add those links in the comments, much as you did in the old system.
Task List View
One new view we’ve added is the Task List View. If you want to focus on a single task list, you can drill down and work with just the tasks that belong to that list. You can filter, sort, and even view the tasks in calendar view.
My Tasks
Tasks 2.0 improves working with tasks everywhere in the product. For example, My Tasks on your personal Dashboard now includes all the features of the Sort View, including filtering and sorting by task name, task list, and number of comments, as well as sorting by workspace. My Tasks also includes the ability to create a new task from the Dashboard.
The User Profile has also been updated to including the sorting features of the Sort View.
Network Bar Tasks
For a while now, we’ve had a tasks shortcut in the Network Bar at the top of your screen. This check mark let you pull a list of your incomplete tasks, then navigate to the one you selected. Tasks 2.0 enhances this feature, letting you edit the tasks in the Network Bar. It will also allow you to create a task from any screen.
Task Reminders
While task reminders have appeared in our change notification emails, Tasks 2.0 breaks these out into Daily and Weekly task reminder emails. No need to nag your people; we’ll do it for you! Every user gets to choose whether to receive Daily or Weekly task reminder emails (they can also choose not to receive any task reminder emails, though this should be discouraged.) Depending on what they choose, we’ll either email a list of upcoming tasks at the beginning of every week or send a list of tasks that are overdue or due that day each morning.
Task Notifications
One popular feature of our old tasks system was the automatic notification of task assigner and task assignee whenever changes were made. What this system left out were folks who might be interested in the task’s progress despite not being responsible.
Tasks 2.0 extends our concept of “sticky” notifications to tasks. Sticky notifications use your actions to determine which notifications you’re likely to find interesting. If you’ve edited a wiki page or commented on a file, we expect you’ll want to know about future changes to that item. With Tasks 2.0, the same approach will apply to tasks. If you comment on a task, you’ll be notified about future comments and changes.
If you’d like to learn more about Tasks 2.0, you can get detailed, step-by-step instructions with images by visiting our user manual.
You can also watch a recording of our Tasks 2.0 Preview Webinar: