Capacities Pro

Task Management

Everyone needs a system to help them get things done. Having that system embedded directly in the context of your work, without the need for any setup, is what makes it just work.

The principle is simplicity: create a task from anywhere, find it exactly where you need it, and use built-in views to execute on what matters.

📺 Watch this video or read on for more information.

Activate Task Management

Task management in Capacities is opt-in. To add the task management features, you can simply create your first task like any other object or click on Add new type and select Task from the basic object type section.

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If you want to continue with your own task management processes or you don’t want to see tasks in Capacities, you can hide all task management features in the Task Management settings.

Create a Task

It’s simple to create a task in Capacities. Here's a list of all the methods:

• Shortcut in text () followed by space or /task via the slash command menu
• Global Shortcut Cmd + Shift + T (Mac) or Ctrl + Shift + T (Windows)
• Quick Add in Left Sidebar Hover over 'Tasks' and you will see the + button.
• In task views Look out for the New Task button. It will intelligently fill in information based on where it is.
• Command Palette Just type task and then enter and the task modal will pop up
• On Mobile If you long-tap on the task icon in the bottom bar, you can directly create a task at any point. You can also create a task in the “+” menu in the bottom bar

Set Status and Priority

The task object type comes with status and priority properties.

Status

If no status is assigned, the task is listed as open. You can assign statuses to begin your task management workflow.

The default statuses are

• Not started
• Next Up
• In progress
• Done

These will form the columns in the Kanban views available throughout the app for your tasks. If you'd like to rearrange the order of the statuses, go to Settings > Task Management > Status Customization and click and drag the six dots to the left of each status to change the order. From here, you can also add your own statuses, change the label colors and add icons.

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If you want simple task management, you can ignore the status property and just mark your tasks as done using the checkbox.

Priority

There are four priority levels:

• No Priority (default)
• Low (!)
• Medium (!!)
• High (!!!)

Your tasks will be automatically ordered by priority.

You can set it by clicking on the priority flag.

You can also set it in the quick task modal by typing exclamation marks.

Contextualize a Task

Tasks are relevant at different times and in different contexts. Capacities supports you in working with tasks by showing you relevant tasks when you need them. The only thing you need to do is to fill out the relevant properties in your task. There are two options to show tasks in the places you need them:

Schedule a task

By adding a date to your task, you schedule your task. Scheduled tasks will be removed from your task inbox and will be moved to the scheduled section. On top, scheduled tasks show up in your calendar on the corresponding day.

On today’s day in your calendar, you will not only see tasks scheduled to today but also

• all overdue tasks (tasks scheduled to a day in the past) so you don’t miss them
• all tasks in progress
• all tasks done today

On days in the past, you’ll see all tasks you completed on that day, so you automatically get a record of what you have achieved.

In your calendar, you can choose how to view your tasks.

On today’s calendar view, you can also move all tasks you scheduled for today to another day with the arrow icon.

Pro-Tip

When you create a task, you can set priority and date by simply adding it to the title of your task. You can, for example, name your task “Prepare weekly meeting !! tomorrow 2pm,” and Capacities will automatically fill the date (”tomorrow 2 pm”) and priority (medium, !!) for you.

Link it to your existing objects

If you create a task on a project page, it is automatically linked to this project.

If you create a task without an explicit context, you can simply link it to wherever you want to see the task in the "Context" property. All objects can be searched from this dropdown.

Next time you open that linked object, you will see the task in the blocks. You can arrange this as needed. For example, organizing your project task list by phase.

You will also automatically see a tasks tab, which you can switch between for a bird's eye view of all your tasks related to just that object.

This tab also gives you built-in views to help process your tasks accordingly. You can choose between:

• All: All tasks related to this object
• Open: All open tasks related to this object
• Status: All tasks related to this object in a Kanban board based on their status
• Scheduled: A chronological order of all scheduled tasks related to this object, similar to the calendar view.

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If you are already in an object and you create a task, the task tab will also be created, and the 'Context' property will automatically be filled in.

Review and Process your Tasks

To get an overview of all your tasks, you can go to the task dashboard. Click on the task button in the left sidebar to see the task dashboard.

It works like any other object type dashboard, just with some extra built-in sections that you do not need to set up:

• Inbox: All tasks without a scheduled date, grouped by when they were created.
• Today: Are all tasks scheduled for today, grouped by status and ordered by priority. You can also see this in the calendar.
• Scheduled: All tasks that have been scheduled, grouped by their date property. Overdue tasks will be at the top for you to reschedule. Scheduled tasks are ordered based on their priority and status.
• Context: All tasks grouped by their context ordered by priority and status.
• Open: All undone tasks ordered by their priority and status.
• Completed: All tasks in the order you have completed them.
• All: All your tasks. You can apply your own filter and sort choices here and save them as queries. This is the same view you get with other objects as well.

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For all built-in views, you can change the view from the default list with the view button on the right-hand side.

Create your own sections

Click on the + next to the dashboard sections and then click new query. You can build your own task query as desired.

Customize your dashboard

To adjust the layout of these sections, click on the settings cog on the right-hand side of the screen. From here, you can select which sections should be shown and which should be hidden. Click and drag the six dots to the left of each section to rearrange the order.

Roadmap

The current version of task management is a “Version 1”. We have ideas and plans to extend task management in Capacities.

If you're looking for a more dedicated task management solution, you can use task actions in combination with a task management app.

We want task management to be simple and effective. If you want to know more about the philosophy behind tasks in Capacities, we recommend our blog post. Nevertheless, there are a few ideas we have in mind.

WARNING

We are not sure when and in what form these ideas will be added to Capacities. If you are interested in these features, please vote on them but don’t expect them to be added in the near future.

• Deadline or Due Date: Add an additional date for a deadline. You can vote here.
• Recurring tasks: Allow tasks to be recurring so they pop-up in your views on a repeated schedule. You can vote here.
• Collections for tasks: At the moment, we aim for simplicity but we could imagine collections to serve as high-level areas for your tasks like “work” and “private”. You can vote here.
• Reminders: Get notified for scheduled tasks. You can vote here.
• Synchronization with your calendar: Similar to events, synchronize tasks from Capacities with tasks from your calendar. You can vote here.

FAQs

• Can I use my own object type with the additional features that Capacities' task management offers? This is not possible and it is not planned.
• Can I add properties to the Capacities Task Object? This is not possible and it is not planned.
• Can I put tasks into collections? Not at this time. More in the roadmap section above.
• Are recurring tasks supported? Not at this time. More in the roadmap section above.
• Are reminders supported? Not at this time. More in the roadmap section above.
• How can I work with subtasks? You can use checkboxes or tasks within tasks. There is no explicit concept for sub-tasks in Capacities.
• How can I add my own statuses? You can add your own statuses in Settings > Task Management > Status Customization. You can also change the label colors and icons too.