Tasks, boards & the client tasks list
Three views over the same tasks, an overview, a filterable worklist and a Kanban board, plus a dedicated tab for client work on the client list.
Tasks in Protocol live on boards. A board holds columns (like To Do, In Progress, Done) and each task is a card in one of those columns. You can have as many boards as you want: one for your own admin, one for content, one for client work.
Planning → Tasks shows the same tasks three ways, as three tabs across the top. The heading beside them always reads how many are open and how many are overdue, whichever tab you’re on.
| Tab | What it’s for |
|---|---|
| Overview | The state of your task load at a glance: open, overdue, due this week, completed, and a breakdown by priority. Where you land by default. |
| Worklist | Every task across every board as rows you can filter, sort and act on in bulk. |
| Board | One board at a time as columns you drag cards between. |
Overview
The numbers card row and the cards under it answer “how much is on me, and how much of it is late?”. Clicking through from here opens the same task editor the other two tabs open, so nothing is a dead end.
Board
Planning → Tasks → Board shows one board as columns you drag cards between. Pick which board with the selector above the columns; Protocol remembers your choice for next time. Add a task straight into a column with the quick-add row at its foot, and use the board dialog to create a board or rename its columns. Each column carries its own colour along its top edge.
This is the view to use when you’re working through a batch of tasks and want to see where everything stands.
Worklist
Planning → Tasks → Worklist shows tasks from every board as rows: the task, the client it’s about, who it’s assigned to, when it’s due, its priority and its status. This is the view for finding something specific rather than moving work along.
Across the toolbar:
- My tasks / Team tasks - the segment on the left. My tasks narrows to what’s assigned to you; Team tasks is everyone’s, yours included.
- Search - matches the task’s text.
- Priority - Urgent, High, Medium or Low.
- Overdue - a one-click toggle for “only what’s late”.
- Label - your own task labels, so a board can carry categories you invented.
- Board - narrow to a single board, or leave it across all of them.
- Sort - by due date, priority or title.
Every one of those lives in the page address, so you can bookmark a view you use often or paste it to a teammate and they’ll see exactly what you see. The page size selector at the foot of the list is remembered the same way.
Acting on rows
- Click a row to open the task in the editor.
- Click its status chip (Open, Overdue or Done) to flip it between open and done, without opening anything. Status isn’t a field you set; it’s read from whether the task is completed and whether its due date has passed.
- Tick several rows and a bar appears at the foot of the list with Complete and Delete. Complete only touches the ones that are still open, so a batch that includes finished tasks won’t reopen them. Delete asks first and cannot be undone.
Finishing a task from the editor
Open a task and, alongside editing it, there’s a green Mark Complete button at the bottom of the dialog, the same one you get when you open a task from the dashboard tasks widget. It moves the task to its board’s done column, whichever board the task belongs to.
The client tasks list
Client work usually deserves its own board, separate from your admin tasks. Protocol looks for a board named Client tasks and gives it a dedicated place: Clients → My tasks.
(The tab is called My tasks because it is the one tab on the client list that is about your own work rather than your clients’. The board it reads is still named Client tasks.)
That tab is a list already narrowed to the Client tasks board, so you don’t have to pick it every time. Its rows carry the client each task is about, which is the whole point of a board like this one. Its controls are slightly different from the Worklist, because it answers a slightly different question:
- Mine / Everyone - your tasks on that board, or the whole team’s.
- Coach - on a team, whose tasks you’re looking at. It only appears where there’s more than one coach to pick.
- Search and Sort - sort by smart order, due date, priority, title or when it was created, ascending or descending.
- A filter menu holding priority, status (open or completed), a due-date from and to range, and assignee. Turn one on and the filter button marks itself as active; Clear takes them all off.
New task sits at the top right of the screen and adds one to that board, opening the same editor you get everywhere else. Ticking rows brings up a bar at the foot with Complete and Delete, exactly as the Worklist does: Complete leaves already-finished tasks alone, and Delete asks first and cannot be undone.
What Smart order does
Smart is the default sort, and it is not “newest” or “by due date”. It puts the list in the order you would work it:
- anything overdue and still open, first;
- then by priority, Urgent down to Low;
- then by due date, soonest first, with undated tasks last;
- and newest first where all of that ties.
So the top of a Smart-sorted list is the thing most worth doing now. Switch to Due date, Priority, Title or Created when you are looking for something specific rather than working through.
If you have not got that board yet, the tab shows a Create Client tasks board button. It creates the board with To Do, In Progress and Done columns, and nothing else changes. Protocol will not create it behind your back just because you opened the tab.
The tab shows everything on the board, whether or not a task is linked to a specific client. That is deliberate: plenty of client work (“chase everyone who missed a check-in”) is not about one person.
A caveat about the board name
The My tasks tab finds the board by its name. If you rename it, the tab stops finding it and offers to create a new one. Rename it back and everything reappears; nothing is lost either way.