Create Tasks for Use in Punches

Scenario: you want to create a list of tasks that the members of your group can choose from when they punch in so that they can record how long they spent on each task.

Introduction

We want to create a task anytime we want to know how much time we spend doing a particular thing. Without tasks in XPunch, all we would be able to do is track time. We'd know how long we worked, but that's about it. We wouldn't have any record of how we spent our time, and for some people, that is perfectly fine. Four things we're covering here:

1. First, who can create a task
2. Second, how to add a basic task
3. Third, adding a task that is associated with a project or a client
4. And fourth, assigning tasks to specific roles or members

Who can create a task?

First off, let's get the housekeeping out of the way. To be able to create tasks, you require the "can edit tasks" permission set. If you believe that you need to create task names as part of your job, speak with the person or the people in your group that can modify your permission set for you.

This person can adjust your permission set at https://app.xpunch.com/config/permission-sets or by signing in to XPunch and navigating to Menu > Configuration > Permission sets.

Creating a "Basic" Task

With the housekeeping out of the way, let's look at our second item, creating a basic task. That is, creating a task that stands on its own and is not associated with a project or a client.

And let's suppose for today's example that we are running a restaurant and want to have employees declare what they will be doing when they punch in or out.

Let's create a task called "Kitchen." We want people that are going to be working in the kitchen to punch into this task, and we want this task to appear in the member's Task field when they perform a punch.

To create this task, navigate to the "Tasks" view. You can go there directly via https://app.xpunch.com/config/tasks or you can navigate to the configuration section. It's accessible from the menu. Since we're constantly developing XPunch, your version may look slightly different than the version we show here. Next, you will want to select the "Tasks" card on the configuration page. Voila! You're now on the "Tasks" view. It should look something like this:

	—	And then, you will want to click on the "Add" floating action button. This button is in the bottom right corner of the screen. Now, we're planning on moving it to the upper left-hand corner in the future, so you may find that it has moved up there.

You'll be rewarded with a dialogue called the "Create task" dialogue. It's here in the Task field that we will enter our task, "Kitchen." In the Task field, enter "Kitchen" and click on the "Create" button:

There we have it. All of our workers can now begin tracking how much time they spend attempting to make their Baked Alaska dishes. You may wish to purchase several thousands of pounds of ice cream.

But what if we want to be more granular?

Let's suppose that our business is a catering business. We serve the best Baked Alaska at our buffet luncheons. And, what if we want to be more granular and be able to account for how much time was spent working in the kitchen for specific clients?

What would we do?

This is where our third point comes into play.

Adding a task that is associated with a project or a client

Let's look at how to assign a task or a project, or a client. It's the same process for either one. If I show you how to do this for a client, you will also be able to do this for a project.

Let's return to our "Kitchen" task. To do so, return to the "Tasks" page that we were on earlier and click on the task.

Then, click on the "Edit" icon. It looks like a pencil:

You'll see that last time we didn't click on those tiny switches beside "Projects" or "Clients." Those things are called "toggle switches." The words sound stranger the more often you say them.

We're going to associate this task with one or more clients. That is, we're going to tell our workers that when they punch into the task "Kitchen," they can select one of these clients specifically. That way, we'll know how much time they spent working in the kitchen for each of our clients.

To do this, we activate the "Client" toggle switch: we click on the toggle switch beside "Client."

Now, if we want, we see right away that we can associate this task with "all" of our clients. If that was our case, we could click on the "Update" button, and we'd be done.

But, since we said we want to be granular, let's suppose that only some of our clients use our kitchen service. So, we're going to associate our task with just those clients.

Right now, our group doesn't have any clients at all in it, so when we place our cursor in the "Clients" field, nothing shows. This is normal. This group has no clients... yet. Now, either our restaurant will go out of business because it has no clients, or we need to add their names to XPunch. We "could" go to the "Clients" page and add them in on there and then return to this task and select them.

That would work. We could do that. But, we're going to add our clients right here on the tasks tab.

We can do this by typing the name of a new client in the "Clients" field and then clicking on the "plus" (+) icon. This will both add the client to the Clients page on XPunch, and associate the client to the task: the client is now connected with the task and is recorded as a new client on XPunch:

Now, you may have seen another toggle switch called "Client selection is required."

We need to make a choice here, and the question is, "Do we want our workers to absolutely choose one of these clients that are associated with the task, or do we want them to be able to just punch in without selecting any client at all?"

If we don't mind our workers just punching into the task "Kitchen" without specifying a client, we will leave this switch unselected. We know it's unselected because it's gray.

On the other hand, if we're insistent on our workers specifying which client they were working for in the kitchen, we will activate that toggle switch. We will click on that switch, and it will change its position:

There. We're done. We click on the "Update" button to save our changes, and our workers can now indicate for whom they were working in the kitchen.

Assigning tasks to specific roles or members

What if we only wanted some of our workers working in the kitchen? Perhaps not everyone is qualified to work in the kitchen.

We can do that, too. This will be our fourth step.

Let's return to that same task and edit it again.

This time, we're going to deselect the "Assigned to everyone" toggle switch. We will click on that switch, and it will turn grey:

Now this routine should start to look familiar. We can select which members we trust to work in the kitchen without burning themselves, or we could choose those members by the role they fulfill. Only these members will be permitted to perform this task: the people we add to this dialogue are the only ones that will see "Kitchen" as a possible choice in their Task field when they go to punch in.

And there we have it. We've just created an extremely granular task.

So, we've covered:

1. Who can create a task—we know that members need permission to create new tasks;
2. We learned how to add a basic task;
3. We then associated those tasks with a project or a client; and
4. We saw how tasks can be assigned to specific roles or members.

It's now up to you to decide what type of tasks your members will do. Be creative, and your team will love you for it.