To-do lists

A shared checklist for work the system does not already track for you. Write items down, hand them to people, and find out later what actually happened.

How this differs from Tasks

They look similar and they answer different questions.

Tasks are generated by the system. A payment needs approving, a contract is about to expire, a maintenance job reached your step: the workflow put it there, and it leaves when the workflow moves on. You cannot add a task by hand.

To-do lists are yours. Nothing creates an item except a person typing it. Use them for the work that falls between the features: chasing a supplier, preparing for an inspection, planning holiday cover.

The two icons at the top of the screen

The bell counts what happened. Open it, read it, it clears.

The checklist icon beside it counts what you owe. It does not clear when you look at it. The only thing that makes that number go down is finishing something, or someone taking the work off you.

That is why they are separate. A number that resets when you glance at it cannot tell you how much is on your plate.

Making a list

Go to To-do in the sidebar and choose New list. Give it a title, and decide who can see it:

• Everyone: anyone in the workspace can open it, add to it, and tick things off.
• Only some people: pick roles, specific people, or both.

Picking a role means everyone who holds that role anywhere in this workspace, so a new accountant gets access the day they are set up, without anyone re-opening the list.

Someone invited to the workspace but not yet added to any property holds no roles at all. If you want them on a restricted list, add them by name.

Items and sub-items

An item is one line with a checkbox. It can carry a note, a due date, and one owner, and its wording can be changed after it is written.

To change what a line says, use the pencil beside its words, or Edit wording in its three-dot menu. It is offered only on lines you wrote, or on any line if you own the list or are a workspace admin, so on other people's lines the words read as plain text.

The due date is optional and sits on the item's own line. Choose Add a due date to set one, or click the date to change it; Remove the due date clears it again. You can also set one while you are typing the item, from the calendar beside the Add button. Setting a date on an item someone else wrote is the list owner's call, the same rule as editing its wording, so on other people's lines the date reads as plain text.

An item can be broken into sub-items, one level deep. Sub-items are full items in their own right: each can go to a different person with its own due date. That is the point of breaking something down, so "Fix the lobby lighting" can become "get quotes" for one person and "approve the budget" for another.

Items are ordered by hand. Drag the grip handle on the left of a row to move it, or use the three-dot menu if you prefer.

Dragging a row sideways changes how it nests: pull it toward the text to make it a sub-item of the row above, or back out to promote it to a top-level item again. A guide shows where it will land before you let go. An item that already has sub-items of its own cannot be nested, since sub-items only go one level deep.

Your lists reorder the same way on the To-do page, where each one is a card. Drag a card by the grip in its top corner, so the board you use most stays first.

Pointing an item at a task

You can link any to-do item to one task from Tasks, so everyone who can see the list reaches the task straight from the item. For example, "Chase the tenant in unit 12" opens the rent collection task itself.

From the task: open it and choose Add to a to-do list, pick the list, adjust the wording if you like, and choose Add. The suggested wording names the kind of task, the property and the unit, never the tenant, because a list can be read by people who cannot see the task itself. If you have no list yet, choose Create a list.

From inside a list: choose Link a task from an item's three-dot menu, or beside the Add button while you write a new item, then search your open tasks and pick one. To take a link off, click the × on the link itself. An item links to one task at a time, so to point it at a different task, remove the current link first. A finished item cannot be linked or unlinked.

The link shows under the item's wording, on the list and in My to-do list. What it says depends on who is looking: someone who can open the task sees its kind and its summary; someone who cannot sees only the kind, such as "Rent collection". Clicking it opens the task page with its usual access rules, so nobody sees more than they are allowed to. Once the task is finished, the link opens what it was about instead, such as the contract for a rent task.

Linking and removing a link follow the same rule as editing an item's wording: the person who wrote the line, the list owner, or a workspace admin. Add to a to-do list shows while To-do lists is switched on for the workspace, under Settings → Configuration → Modules.

Handing work to someone

Every line has an assignee control next to it, on top-level items and sub-items alike. Assign to a person or to a role, not both.

A person is unambiguous: it is theirs, and it appears in their count.

A role means everyone holding it sees the item, marked Unclaimed, and any of them can pick it up with Assign to me. Use this when you do not mind who does it, only that someone does. Whoever takes it puts their name on it, so the rest of the team can see it is covered.

Whoever took an item can hand it back: Give back to … returns it to the role it came from, where it shows as Unclaimed again for everyone. That undoes taking an item and nothing more, so an item assigned to a person directly is changed by the list owner from the assignee control instead. That control now appears only to the list owner and the person who wrote the line, where before it appeared to everyone and then refused to save.

You can only assign to someone who can already see the list. If you try to assign to someone outside it, you will be asked to share the list with them first, because otherwise they would be notified about something they cannot open.

Finding your own work

Inside a list, the filter above the items narrows it to Assigned to me or Unassigned. Filtering keeps a parent visible when one of its sub-items matches, so a task assigned to you is never hidden behind a heading that is not.

Reordering is switched off while a filter is on, because dragging a partial list would move the rows you cannot see.

The To-do page has two views: Lists shows every board you can see, and My to-do list shows everything assigned to you, pulled from every list and every workspace you belong to. The checklist icon in the header opens that same view.

My to-do list is grouped by when things are due: Overdue, Due today, Upcoming, then anything with no date. That grouping is the reason to set due dates at all, and an item with no date is never buried, it simply sits in its own group at the bottom.

You can choose whether that icon sits in the header, the sidebar, or both, under Settings, Preferences. Choosing header only removes the To-do row from the sidebar, the same way the notification setting works.

Saying what happened

Every item has an Updates thread. This is the part that makes a list worth reading a month later.

Add an update whenever something moves: "Called them, their AP runs 30 days", "Paid, ref 88213". The most recent update shows on the item itself, so the whole board can be read at a glance without opening anything.

Updates are append-only, so the record of what happened stays honest. If one goes in by mistake, the person who wrote it, the list owner, and workspace admins can delete it.

Ticking an item records who ticked it and when, so even an item nobody wrote an update on still says who closed it.

Who gets told what

You get an inbox notification when:

• someone assigns you an item, or assigns it to a role you hold
• someone shares a list with you
• an item you created gets completed
• someone posts an update on an item you created or own
• anything happens on a list you follow

Only an assignment alerts your phone: when an item is assigned to you, or to a role you hold, you get a phone alert as well as the bell. Everything else here stays in the bell. Updates in particular stay quiet on purpose: one item can carry twenty of them, and if to-do chatter competed with payment approvals for your attention, you would end up muting both.

Use Follow on a list to keep an eye on a board you are not on every item of. Following never sends phone alerts.

The list owner and workspace admins can rename a list or change its description from the pencil beside its title.

Changing an item's wording does not rewrite notifications that already went out. They keep the words they were sent with, and still open the right item.

What happens to finished items

Ticking an item moves it out of the working area into a collapsed Completed group at the bottom of the list, newest first. One click expands it. Nothing is deleted, and the list stays short no matter how long you use it.

Each finished item shows when it was added and when it was closed, and by whom. That is recorded for every item from the moment it is created, so a list read a year later still answers "how long did this sit open, and who dealt with it".

Finishing with a list

Archive it when the work is done. Everything stays: items, updates, who did what. It just leaves your active view, and you can restore it any time.

Delete is permanent and takes the update history with it. Only the person who created the list, or an admin, can do either.

On your phone

You can act on to-dos and organise them from the phone: create a list and choose who can see it, see what is assigned to you, open any list, tick things off, and post updates from wherever you are.

You can change an item's wording by tapping its words.

From version 1.0.4 of the app, a linked task shows on its item, and tapping it opens the task, or what it was about once the task is finished. To put a task on a list from the phone, open the task and choose Add to a to-do list. Linking an existing item to a task, or removing a link, is done on the web.

To reorder, hold an item until it lifts, then drag it up or down. Drag it toward the text to make it a sub-item of the row above, or away to promote it back. A line shows where it will land and at what level before you let go. Finished items do not drag.

Due dates are set on the web app; the phone shows a due date once it is set.