Tasks & Milestones

The Tasks module is the most popular Feng Office module. The Tasks tab gives you access to tasks and milestones.

Tasks are a way of letting user's know what they have to do, when they have to do it, how long they have to do it for, and maybe even How to do it.

Milestones tell teams when a set of tasks is due.

Tasks can be assigned to clients, projects, workspaces, and milestones.

Milestones can have tasks assigned to them - but they can exist without any tasks, simply as a reminder for an important date.

Note: In order to enable Milestones, please see the following link

There are many ways to create a New Task. You can find Step-by-Step instructions on How to Add a New Task here: Creating your First Task

On this section, we will review the different functions of Tasks and show you how you can manage them to get the best out of them.

Below is a screenshot of how a typical Task Module looks in the list view, with added Tasks, Subtasks and more.

This is how your Task Module's Tool Bar. This toolbar lets you Edit, Delete, Complete, Print, and Filter Tasks, among other functions.

Below, we will show in detail what each item on the toolbar does for you.

• New task: Creates a new task.
• New milestone: Creates a new milestone.
• Templates: Use the submenu to create a task(s) from an existing task template or Create a new Template.

• Complete: Marks the currently selected Task as Completed.

• 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 further information such as Time, Dates, Empty Milestones or Estimated Task Time.

Time adds a button at the end of each line that allows you to start the time tracking for this task.

• Print: Allows you to print the tasks you are working with at that moment.

• View as Gantt: Allows you to View your Tasks in a Gantt Chart instead of the List View.

• Push Tasks: This feature allows you to select a set of tasks and postpone all of them while maintaining the same plan structure. For example, if a project is postponed 20 days, we would only have to select all tasks related to the project and postpone them for 20 days.

• Filter: By Filtering your Tasks, you define which tasks will be visible and which will be hidden.
  Proceed from left to right since the content of the second dropdown menu depends on what you select in the first dropdown menu. (i.e. Filter: Assigned To: Me)

• Status: The Status Filter lets you organize Tasks by the status they are at: Pending, Completed, Overdue, etc.

• Group by: By Grouping, you define which aspect of your tasks is taken as a criteria to organize them into smaller groups, such as Same Due date, same Client, same Workspace, etc. Grouping helps you to generate task lists for many purposes.

• 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 (i.e. Group by: Due Date and Order By: Progress).

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

• 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.
• 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, a counter is shown, and you get buttons to pause or stop the time tracking.

The edit mode allows you to quickly edit the most important properties of an existing task from the list view.

This same feature will show up when you click on Add Subtask, so you can enter your Subtask's information.

• Task: Displays the Task's name.
• Assign to: Define the person who is assigned the task.
• Start Date: Define the task's start date.
• Due Date: Define the task's due date.
• Estimated time: Define the task's estimated time.
• Priority: Define the task's priority (Urgent, High, Normal, Low).
• Percent completed: Define the task's completion percentage.
• Clients & Projects: Classify the task into a client or project.
• Workspaces: Classify the task into a workspace.
• Parent task: Set a parent task.
• Previous task: Add a previous task.

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.

This section lets you add a description to the task.

You can set up a Task Repetition if you need the same Task to be done more than once. (This is very similar to defining a repeating event.)

This helps you save time and effort, since you won't have to set up the Task manually each time.

• Repeat: Interval of the occurrence of this task. You may choose to repeat the Task Daily, Weekly, Monthly or Yearly. To convert a repeating task back to a one-time only task, choose This Day Only.
• Every … weeks: This defines the interval between two occurrences of the task.
• Repeat forever: This allows you to repeat the task with no time limitation.
• Repeat … times: This option allows you to set up exactly how many times you want the repetition to be done (if you did not choose Repeat Forever).
• Repeat until…: Use this option to set up a date in which the repetition will no longer occur. (i.e. if you are planning a weekly task like “Writing status report” for a project, which must be complete at the end of the year, you may want to set up: Repeat until: December 31st)
• Repeat by: Define whether you wish to repeat by the Start date or Due Date of the Task.
• You can also set repetition to: Repeat on Saturdays, Repeat on Sundays, Repeat on Working Days

As a way of keeping up with Task's Due Dates, and make sure that they are completed on time, you can set up reminders such as Email Notifications or Pop-Up Messages. (This is very similar to defining reminders for events.)

• Choose the type of a reminder you wish to receive: Email Notification or Pop-Up Message.
• Choose when you wish to receive the Reminder (in Minutes, Hours, Days or Weeks), prior to the Tasks Due Date.
• Check Apply to all subscribers if you wish for the reminder to be sent out to all the tasks's subscribers as well.

You can set up as many reminders as you wish for any given task.

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.

In order to see how to add custom properties, please visit the following page: Adding Custom Properties

This section allows you to add Subscribers to this Tasks, which comes in very handy to follow and observe a certain process.

To learn more about subscriptions, please visit the following link: Subscribing People to Objects

This section allows you to Link or Unlik an object (Email, Document, Note, Picture, etc.) to a Task.

To see more about linking objects, please visit this Page.

Once the task has been created and you click on it, it will look something like this:

• 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: Displays a printable version of this task and calls the print command.
• View History: Lets you read the note's history.

• Task ID: Unique ID of the Task.
• Subscribers: People who are subscribed to this task. Clicking on a subscriber name takes you to the corresponding user profile.
• Task Information: Provides you with the basic task information, such as Created by, Creation and Start/End Time, Updates by, Assigned to, and more.

By default, milestones are currently disabled in order to avoid unwanted complexities, so in case you would like to use them, you must first enable them.

1. Click on your username.
2. Go to the Settings Panel
3. Go to Configuration
4. Select General
5. Search for the Use milestones option, and set it to YES.
6. Save Changes
7. Refresh browser (pressing the F5 key) to see changes.

From now on, you will be able to use milestones.

You can create a milestone in just a few simple steps:

1. Go to the Tasks Module.
2. Click on the New button on the Tasks Toolbar.
3. Select New Milestone.

After creating new milestones, in order to see them in the Tasks list, you must group the tasks by Milestones:

• In the Tasks toolbar, filter using Group by and Milestones.

In the main section of the new milestone you will be able to add the basic details of it:

• Name
• Clients & Projects it will be classified in
• Workspaces it will be classified in
• Due Date
• Description

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

In order to see how to add custom properties, please visit the following page: Adding Custom Properties

This section allows you to add Subscribers to this Tasks, which comes in very handy to follow and observe a certain process.

To learn more about subscriptions, please visit the following link: Subscribing People to Objects

This section allows you to Link or Unlik an object (Email, Document, Note, Picture, etc.) to a Task.

To see more about linking objects, please visit this Page.

Many organizations (specially businesses), require their team members to track time.

Time tracking is a good management tool for:

1. Understanding where time is spent (work-intensive organizations want to know this).
2. Accurately bill clients.

Feng Office has built in time tracking features that makes it easy for users to fill in their time sheet.

Please read this article if you want to learn further about time tracking in tasks.

Task Templates are a very powerful tool, and they take a bit of initial configuration to use.

That is why templates deserve a section of their own:

Read here if you want to learn how to configure and use task templates.

Task dependencies enable Project Managers to establish relationships between tasks.

If a task is to be executed only after a previous one is finished, we say the second task is 'dependent' on the first.

You can now define task dependencies in Feng Office.

In order to be able to set and use task dependencies you first need to activate them.

To do so, please follow these steps:

1. Click on your name (top right corner) and go to 'Administration'
2. Go to Configuration and then select General
3. Enable the option called 'Use task dependencies'
4. Save the changes

Lets go over a simple example of creating a task dependency between two tasks:

1. You would need to create a task - lets say 'Task A' - and assign a start date.
2. Then create a new task - lets call it 'Task B' - and
   1. when creating it (or later on when editing it), if you would like it to relate it with 'Task A'…
   2. when editing in full form you would have to look for 'Previous task' (within 'Task data').
3. Now you would have to click on 'Add previous task' and look for another one (lets say 'Task A').
   1. After doing this, you will not be able to complete 'Task B' until 'Task A' has not been completed.

Note: 'TaskB' start date would have to be equal or greater than 'Task A'.

Read here if you want to learn how to assign a task to multiple users.

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

Tasks can be classified in various ways. Besides the ones explained in the previous sections, tasks count with their own Drag & Drop classification feature. Please refer to this article to find out more.

This feature automatically assigns a number (or more complex code) correlative for new tasks. To make use of it, please go to Settings → Configuration → General → Use automatic incremental prefixes in names: → check Task.

If this option is enabled for tasks, then when adding a task, an automatic generated number will be prepended to the name of the task (idem for other object types if selected).

NOTE: this feature is only available for the Professional and Enterprise editions of Feng Office

Are tasks and milestones shown in the calendar?

Yes, this is the standard behavior. Tasks and Milestones appear on the calendar on their due date.