When managing assignments, organization is an important element of keeping everything on track. As you are added to more project teams in TaskRay, your list of assignments inevitably grows, making organization even more vital to success. So, how do you keep track of all the moving pieces?
In this guide, we’ll review some of TaskRay’s key functionality for staying on top of assignments and effectively prioritizing work. We’ll cover the following topics:
- Overview of TaskRay notifications and in-app options that can help you stay up to date on assignments.
- Tips for effectively leveraging TaskRay’s filtering functionality within the All Work views.
Task Object Details
To start, let’s review some basics from a data standpoint and take a closer look at the TaskRay Task object. When managing work in TaskRay, the Task is the main object that team members interact with. Tasks site at the core of project architecture, serving as the building blocks for structuring work and contributing to accomplishing the project's objectives.
When it comes to organization and prioritization of work, the following Task fields are important to note:
- Start Date: This is when the work on the task should be started.
- Estimated End Date: Think of this as the due date for the task – the date on which the work should be completed.
- List: This field is used to denote the status of work on tasks. As you work on assignments, you will update this field to track your progress.
- Priority: As the name implies, this field specifies the priority of the task. Keep an eye on this field when managing assignments to ensure that key priorities are addressed on time.
Of course, there are many other fields that you will interact with on the Task object as part of your workflow. For now, we’ll keep things simple and focus on the above-mentioned fields to demonstrate some of the best practices for staying organized.
Email Notifications
If enabled in preferences, you will receive email notifications whenever you are added to a project team, as well as when tasks are assigned to you. This is a good way to stay in the know on any new work that comes your way.
Additionally, you have the option to receive the TaskRay Daily Planner Email. The Daily Planner Email summarizes all of your open assignments and organizes them by their due dates.
It is also worth mentioning that there are options for configuring custom notifications for TaskRay. For example, it is possible to set up custom notifications for overdue tasks or for alerts regarding completion of dependent predecessor tasks. If there are any notifications that you think would be beneficial to your workflow, reach out to your internal Salesforce Admin to get them set up.
My Work
Now that you have a good understanding of email notifications, let’s make our way to the TaskRay app and take a look at the in-app functionality that will help you stay efficient with navigating priorities. We’ll start with one of the best places to get a list of all of your assignments, which is in My Work. Think of this as your personal workspace where you can prioritize and update assigned tasks.
As you can see, My Work is pretty straightforward for getting a quick overview of your assignments. Coupled with some of the other functionality that you will find in this view, this is a great option for managing assigned tasks in a centralized place.
Is it also worth mentioning that My Work allows customizing the grouping options for visualizing tasks. If there are any additional grouping options that you would like to see in My Work, reach out to your internal TaskRay Admin and refer to our documentation to get it added.
Filtering and Finding Your Way Around
Next, let’s shift our focus and take a look at how to navigate within other TaskRay views and effectively locate assignments.
Board Filters & Flex Filters
While My Work is designed to be a one-stop shop to review all of your assigned tasks, other TaskRay views allow viewing entire project plans to see the full picture. That being said, as you get added to more project teams and assigned tasks across multiple projects, it can get pretty busy. As your list of responsibilities grows, it can get more challenging to keep track of all the moving pieces.
The good news is that you have TaskRay - your trusted sidekick in the workplace. To help you stay efficient and keep a pulse on responsibilities, TaskRay provides a powerful filtering mechanism designed to help you find exactly what you are looking for – even across dozens of projects.
For more information on how to use filtering in TaskRay, refer to the following articles:
Custom Filters
It is also worth mentioning that TaskRay Admins can customize filters.
Custom Board filters can be configured to provide additional options for pulling specific subsets of project and task data into the app. Custom Board Filters build on top of standard filters like My Projects by incorporating additional criteria.
Below are some examples of custom Board Filters that can be set up:
- My Projects Ending This Month (My Projects + criteria to pull in projects with estimated end dates that occur within the next month)
- Prioritized Tasks within My Projects (My Projects + criteria to only pull in tasks that are currently in the Prioritized status)
- And more!
Similarly, custom Flex Filter Sets can be set up to incorporate ad-hoc filtering options tailored to the needs of any organization.
If you think of a custom Board Filter or additional Flex Filter options that would help you stay efficient in TaskRay, reach out to your internal TaskRay Admin to get it set up.
- [Admin] Create and Assign Board Filters
- [Admin] Create and Assign Flex Filter Sets
Wrap Up
Now that you are familiar with the main ways to stay up to date on your assignments and projects, we encourage you to explore and get familiar with the functionality in your own org. We hope that this article will provide helpful guidance as you try things out for yourself!