Task Statuses and Lists
Our dynamic duo
Task lists
If you lump together your tasks into a huge list, it won't be very helpful. Infolio is meant to make your task management easier, not harder. That is why we make it possible to create several different lists for each project.
You start with one list — General, but there's a button to your right called New list. Just click it, type the new list name and hit “Enter”. You can add multiple lists one by one — nifty!
If you have a project that involves different departments — create a list per each department — for example, Marketing, Design, Sales and Development. If you have various channels related to your marketing campaign — have a list per channel — Web, YouTube, Print. The lists are custom and totally depend on your project size and ways of organizing things. In fact, you are not limited by the number of lists you may have in Infolio. Also, feel free to check out our templates for inspiration — sometimes having the right frame helps you to draw the picture easier.
Moving tasks between lists
Now you have multiple columns – each for a created task list, which are mostly empty. You can add new tasks within your lists by clicking the corresponding New task button. And you can also drag and drop a task card between lists.
You can also change the task list by clicking the task, opening it full screen and selecting the relevant list from the dropdown in the top left corner.
Setting the priority
This is one of the easiest things for you to do! In Infolio, just like in any Kanban-based board, you set the priority by moving the task higher in the list. Just click, drag and drop. Move it to the very top — and now it has become the top priority for you and your team. Whenever you decide to take up a new task — look at the top of the pile, or the top of a particular list in our case.
Task statuses
The key thing that makes Infolio different from other tools is custom statuses for your tasks. Remember how we have changed the task status from Open to Closed in the previous lesson? Well, you can actually have as many custom statuses in between as you wish, making sure your task completion stages are totally clear to your team.
Think of statuses as parts of a conveyor belt, that you set up in every project. Sometimes it's enough to have just Open and Closed. In other cases you might want to have statuses like In review, Waiting for budget, Budget approved, In development, Final testing. If any of your project's tasks go through some phases, you definitely want to set up those phases as statuses in Infolio.
Just click the Group by dropdown in the top left corner of your tasks board and select Group by Status. Now all your tasks are in one column, and all your lists have disappeared. Don't worry, they are still there, and every task has a list indication at the top now.
If you switch back to Group by List you'll see all your lists again. Lists and statuses are actually two dimensions to view your tasks in. Some projects require a list-centric view, while others — a status-centric one. However, Infolio allows you to have both for convenience.
Adding a new status
To add a new status, switch to Group by Status and click the New status button. Type the status name and hit Enter. Just like with lists, you can add multiple statuses one by one. Each status is given a random color, and all the new statuses will be added before the Closed status.
You can just as easily drag tasks between columns to change their status. You can even drag the task to the Closed column to quickly close it!
Managing your custom statuses — buckets and gates
There are two ways to think about statuses — as of buckets and as of gates. You can use either way of thinking, but it's key not to mix them in one project.
Let's take a simple project structure as an example: the statuses will be Open, Review, Development, and Closed.
If your statuses are gates, they will indicate something that has happened with a task. In this case better names would be Open, Passed Review, Development Done, Closed. So if you want to start development for a task, you will look at the "Passed Review" pile, take the top one, assign it to yourself (more on that later), work on it, then move it to the "Development Done" pile, once ready.
With your statuses as buckets, when moving a task to a specific status column, you will indicate the actual activity, happening with your tasks — or their current state. In our example above, the statuses would be more appropriately named then — Open, In Review, Waiting for Development, In Development, Closed. Notice the extra status we've added. If you want to start development for a task, you can look at the top of the "Waiting for Development" pile, assign the top one to yourself, move it to the "In Development" pile, work on it and then move to "Closed" once you're done.
