About todo.vu tasks

The best way to approach todo.vu is to treat everything you need to do as a task. This includes everything from a sales lead to your tax return, a phone call you need to return, and a meeting with a client.

Either you need to do these tasks yourself, or you need to delegate them to one of your team members or contractors. You need to make sure they are done on time and, if required, bill for that time appropriately.

When everything you need to do is recorded in todo.vu as a ‘task’, you can:

• track and record the time spent directly on tasks at your charge-out rates
• raise billing reports from your tracked time and charge-out rates
• delegate and collaborate on every activity
• keep a detailed record of task activity and project progress
• and more.

You can create a task in todo.vu in a number of ways.

Here are three most common ways to create tasks:

How to create tasks

Create a task directly on the Task Dashboard

todo.vu’s Task Dashboard is the default “home” page of your todo.vu workspace, where you will land as you first log in, and where your tasks are displayed in three different columns, or Kanban lists, according to their workflow state: ‘Snoozed’, ‘To do’, and ‘Done’.

While on todo.vu’s task dashboard, you can create a new task simply with the Task Adder bar at the bottom of your dashboard, or with a keyboard shortcut.

When you are ready to add your task, simply hit [Ctrl]+[Enter], or place your cursor in the Task Adder at the bottom of your screen. Type in your task.

Now, you can do one of three things:

1. To quickly add the task, simply press [Enter], or click the right arrow. Your new task has been created.
2. Press [Shift]+[Enter] to add a description before you create the task. Then, create the task by pressing [Enter] or clicking the right arrow.
3. Press [Ctrl]+[Enter] to create and open a draft task, to which you can add further details. Draft tasks are only visible to the task creator, until you click ‘Create task’.

You can add more details to your tasks at any time; use the keyboard shortcut [Ctrl]+[Enter] from the Task Adder as you create the task, as above, or click on an existing task.

If you abandon a task in draft mode, todo.vu will keep the draft in the column, or workflow state, in which it was created. Delete the draft task by clicking on the task to open it. You will see the option to ‘Discard’ at the bottom right-hand side.

Tip

The Task Adder bar appears only in the middle column of your Kanban lists, what we call the Primary column. To change the Primary column, click the chevrons (> or <) that appear as you hover your mouse over the current left or right column headings of your three task listings within the Task Dashboard.

Create a task via email

To create a task via email, simply email the details of the task to your unique todo.vu email address. You can also forward (or CC or BCC) emails to this address to automatically create them as new tasks in your todo.vu workspace.

To find and copy your unique todo.vu email address, simply click on the letter icon underneath your comment editor, and select ‘copy to clipboard’ on the right-hand side.

Or, go to your account settings at todo.vu/your-settings/workspaces. Next to ‘Add tasks via email’, you will see your unique todo.vu email address.

Your email address will always follow this structure: addtask@yourworkspacename.taskby.email.

Create a task via todo.vu’s Calendar

While on your Calendar, you can create a new task through an existing time record or as you add a new time record.

Select an existing time record or click the calendar to add a new time record. Select then client/task field beneath the time entry note field to open todo.vu’s Task modal.

Now, you can create a new task within this modal.

Here’s how:

Tip: todo.vu autopopulates

New tasks are created with specific task elements pre-filled to help you save time. This takes into account the user who’s creating the task, as well as the existing layout of your workspace while you create the task.

For example, the task creator automatically becomes the ‘Assignee’ of a new task. And, if you create a task while you have filtered the Task Dashboard to display tasks for a specific client and project, your new task will automatically categorise that task according to that client and project, unless you choose to change it.

Task elements

Tip

You can also copy/paste a list of items into the Checklist field, and these will be automatically converted to a checklist. This works with plain text lists, HTML lists and a copy/paste from spreadsheets.

You can also add or change a task’s due date from the Task Dashboard with todo.vu’s bulk edit function. Simply select the task’s avatar, and then choose ‘Change due date’ from the list of options that appear on the drop-down bar.

You can do this to multiple tasks at once.

Tip: todo.vu auto saves

Everything you type is saved in real time, so there should be almost no data loss if your connection is poor.

Private

When you search to add followers to your task by clicking ‘Followers’, as in the step above, you will notice that you also have the option to mark the task as private.

When a task is marked as private, only the creator, assignee and followers can see the task.

If there is just one sole user on a Private task (i.e., the creator and assignee are the same person), then this task will only show up in that person’s ‘Personal tasks’.

Labels

Adding Task labels can help you to better organise your tasks.

If you create the label “Copywriting”, for example, when you click on the label “Copywriting”, you will see all tasks that have that label.

To add a label, simply click on the label icon and search or add new labels from the drop-down list. It is entirely up to you and your workflow as to the labels you choose to use.

Important

You can flag top priority tasks as Important with one click.

When you mark tasks as Important, they can be grouped at the top of your ‘Snoozed’, ‘To do’, or ‘Done’ workflows, so long as you have enabled that option on your dashboard.

Important tasks will display a distinct tag on the task dashboard, no matter where they appear on the task list.

Bookmark tasks

You can bookmark tasks in todo.vu so that they can be easily found at a later date.

Just click on the ribbon above the task Avatar on a task you would like to bookmark; your task will need to be open. The ribbon icon will turn grey once it has been selected and thus bookmarked.

Your bookmarked tasks are listed within one place on the Task Dashboard. Click the ribbon icon on the top right-hand corner of your workspace, next to the arrow (Recent tasks) icon. A sidebar will open to the right of your workspace, where you will see a list, and can open any of your bookmarked tasks.

The Bookmarked tasks list is personal to your own workspace, and you can remove a task’s ‘Bookmarked’ status simply by clicking one again on the ribbon within the opened task.

Project templates

Users can also create multiple tasks quickly and easily with todo.vu’s Project Templates. Learn more about Project Templates.

Task settings

Navigate to a task’s settings by selecting the 3-dot menu at the top right-hand side of an open task.

Here, you can change your default task view, make a copy of the task, archive the task, add a dependent task, and delete the task. You can only delete tasks which have no time logged.

Your default task view settings are displayed at the top of the drop-down list; you will see three icons. Your current default task view is highlighted. Your task view options are:

a) Full screen, where individual tasks will display in full-screen view.
b) Window, where individual tasks will display in a pop-up window on your Task Dashboard.
c) Side-by-side, where individual tasks will open beside your task listing on your Task Dashboard.

Learn more about task views here.