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Organizing your tasks

Lesson 6 of 11 · 4 min 11 s. Episode 6 of the Jaah tutorial series: keep a week of your team's tasks in order. Keep an idea as a draft and start it later, stop work that went the wrong way and reset it, search the list, narrow it to a period and group it, decide what runs next in the queue, look back as a table, share what shipped as release notes, and see what a piece of work cost.

Before you start​

  • A project connected to Jaah, with a Tasks list to open the new-task form from. The example is TimeSaver, a time-tracking app for small teams.
  • A few tasks already on the list, including at least one finished one, so there is something to search, group and look back over.

Steps​

  1. Open the new-task form and write the idea as usual. Ours is: Show yesterday's total next to today's at the top of the timesheet. Then press Save instead of Go. The task is kept on the list as a draft: written down but not handed over, so nobody starts on it until you say so.
  2. When you're ready for it, start it from the list. The mark at the start of a draft's line is also its Start button, so click the mark. The task now waits its turn, and an agent takes it on as soon as one is free.
  3. To stop work that went the wrong way, open the menu at the end of the task's line and choose Stop. The console asks you to confirm, and says the task will be paused and can be continued later. Confirm, and the work stops.
  4. Read the line. It now shows the task as paused: stopped by hand, with everything done so far kept. A task can also show as failed, when the agent couldn't finish on its own, and then its Outcome on Details says why and how far it got. Either way, the next move is yours: start it again to carry on, or reset it to begin cleanly.
  5. To begin cleanly, open the task's menu and choose Reset. The confirmation says what that means: the answers, report and outcome of the earlier attempt stop being shown, and your description and attachments are kept. Confirm, and the task is a draft again, ready to change and start whenever you like.
  6. To find a task, click Search tasks, at the top, and type a word from the task you're after. We want everything about the timer, and the list narrows to the tasks that mention it. Typing a task's number finds that one task.
  7. To look at a stretch of time, open Filter and view and choose Period. You can limit the list to today, the past seven days, the past thirty, or dates of your own. Choose Recent, and the list holds only the past week's work, which is the view for a weekly catch-up.
  8. To group the list, open Filter and view, choose Group by, and then Recency. The tasks now fall under what's running now, the last hour, today, this week and older, so the newest work is always at the top.
  9. To see what runs next, open Filter and view, go to List style, and pick Queue. It shows what's being worked on, then what's waiting, in the order it will be picked up. The priority beside each waiting task decides that order: open the priority beside your task and set it to High, and it moves to the front, so the next free agent takes it first.
  10. For a look back over the month, set the period to Wider, the past thirty days. Open Filter and view, choose List style, and then Table. Each task is now one compact row, with its number, who asked for it, and what it cost.
  11. To share what shipped, open Filter and view, go to List style once more, and pick Release notes. At the top is what's coming soon. Below it is everything that shipped, each with a summary of what changed.
  12. To see what one piece of work took, open a finished task and go to Details. Task Run Metrics shows how long it ran, the tokens it used and what they cost. Those are the figures to look at when you decide whether a kind of work is worth handing over.

What you learned​

  • Save keeps a task as a draft until you click its mark to start it; Stop pauses work by hand and keeps what was done; Reset puts a task back to a clean draft with your description kept.
  • A paused task was stopped by hand; a failed one is a task the agent couldn't finish on its own, and its Outcome on Details says why.
  • Search tasks finds a task by a word or its number, and Filter and view narrows the list to a period, groups it, and switches the list style between Queue, Table and Release notes.
  • The priority beside a waiting task in the Queue decides what runs next, and Task Run Metrics on Details says what a task cost.

Next​

Next lesson: Scheduled tasks. Previous: Approving sensitive changes.

Related: Task board · Stop, restart or reset a task · Start a task.