Tasks and workflows — Help

Every booking comes with a tail of small jobs that have nothing to do with the run of show. Send the deposit reminder, chase the final numbers, book the parking, post the gallery, order the extra linen. None of it belongs on the crew timeline, and all of it is easy to lose. Tasks are the plain to-do list that sits alongside your events for exactly this. Break any task into steps when the job is really a small process, save those steps as a reusable workflow, and write down how each step is actually done so somebody else can pick it up.

This article covers what a task is, breaking one into steps, working the tasks list, pinning tasks to an event, building reusable workflows, and writing the procedure into a step.

Tasks, steps and workflows

Three words, and it is worth getting them straight because the whole feature hangs off the difference:

A task is the job. "Onboard the new contractor." It owns the due date, the assignee, and the event it belongs to.
A step is one thing the job takes. "Send the welcome pack." Steps live under a task, get ticked off, and drag into order.
A workflow is a saved set of steps, your reusable checklist, that you can drop onto any task, or save from a task you have already built. Each step in it can carry a written procedure.

You do not have to use steps. Plenty of tasks are one line and stay that way. They are there for the jobs that are really a small process.

Workflows used to be called checklists in 1pm. Same feature, better name: once each step carries a written procedure, it is a documented way of doing a job rather than a list of things to tick.

What a task is

A task is a simple line of work you want to remember. It carries only what it needs to:

Title, what needs doing, for example "Chase final pax" or "Send parking map".
Notes (optional), any extra detail.
Due date (optional), when it should be done by. This shows as a small date badge on the task, and turns red and reads "overdue" once the date has passed and the task is still open. It is a reminder to your eye, nothing sends automatically off it.
Assignee (optional), whoever on your team owns it, or left unassigned. The list offers you (the owner) and anyone you have shared the account with.
Event (optional), the booking the task belongs to, or none. A task with no event is just a general to-do for your business.

That is deliberately all. Tasks are meant to be cheap to jot down and cheap to tick off, not a project management system.

The tasks list

Open Tasks in the sidebar. The sidebar entry also carries a small count badge of your own open tasks, so you can see at a glance whether anything is waiting on you from any page.

Add a task with the New task button, fill in the title (the rest is optional), and Add task. It appears in the list straight away, no page reload. Every task has:

A checkbox to mark it done. Ticking it dims the row and strikes the title through; unticking reopens it. 1pm remembers who ticked it.
An Edit button to change the title, notes, due date, or assignee.
A drag handle to reorder. Open tasks always sit above done ones, and within that you set the order by dragging.
A delete button. Deleting is immediate with no "are you sure", because a task is cheap to re-add.

Above the list are three quick filters:

Open / All, hide the done tasks or show everything.
Everyone / Mine, the whole team's tasks or just the ones assigned to you.
Flat / By event / By assignee, one single list, or grouped into sections. By event gives you a section per event (soonest event first, with a "General" section for tasks pinned to no event). By assignee gives you a section per person (alphabetical, with an "Unassigned" section last), and only appears once you have shared your account with someone, since on your own every task is yours. 1pm remembers which view you prefer.

The filters apply to tasks, not to their steps. A task that earns its place in the list always brings its full set of steps with it, done ones included, so you are never looking at half a job.

The list shows 20 tasks per page, with a numbered pager under it once you have more than that. The line beside the pager reads "Showing 1–20 of 63", followed by the open count (and the done count, if you are on All). Those counts describe the page you are looking at, not the whole list, so "14 open" on page 1 of 4 does not mean you only have 14 open tasks.

The count is in tasks rather than rows, because a task always brings its steps with it and counting rows would make "20 of 63" meaningless.

One consequence of paging a hand-ordered list: dragging reorders within the page on screen. You cannot drag a task from page 3 up to page 1. If the order matters that much, changing a filter to bring both into the same view is the way to do it.

Breaking a task into steps

Some jobs are really a short process. Under every task is a small Add a step box: type the step, press Add, repeat. No template, no setup, nothing to configure first. This is the normal way to build a workflow in 1pm, and most people never do it any other way.

Steps drag into order within their task, tick off independently, and delete with the ✕. The task shows its progress as a count, for example "3/5".

Ticking the last step does not tick the task. It will sit there reading 5/5 until you tick it yourself. That is deliberate: the moment a job is actually finished is a judgement call, and the last real act (send it, file it, tell someone) is often not one of the steps.

Deleting a task deletes its steps with it.

Saving a workflow from a task

Once you have built the steps for a job, Save as workflow turns them into a reusable set, named after the task. It appears in the Workflows column and you can drop it onto any future task. Any procedures you have written come across with it.

This is the way round most people find natural. Nobody sits down and writes fifteen workflows they might need one day; they do the job once, realise they will do it again, and save it.

Reusable workflows

Most of your bookings kick off the same handful of jobs. Rather than typing them out every time, save the steps once and reuse them.

Your workflows live in a column down the right of the Tasks page, beside the task list, so building one and using it happen on the same screen. Usually you will get there by saving one from a task, as above. You can also build one from scratch:

Type a name in the New workflow box at the top of the column, for example "Two weeks out", and Create.
Click it to open it, then add each step in the Add a step box.
Drag steps to reorder, click any step to write its procedure, use the pencil to reword it, or remove one with the ✕.

Use the pencil on the workflow row to rename it or file it into a category, and the ✕ to delete the whole thing. On a narrow screen the column drops below the task list rather than beside it.

You can hold up to 200 workflows, each with up to 100 steps.

Writing the procedure into a step

A step title says what to do. The procedure says how, and it is the difference between a workflow that reminds you and a workflow you can hand to somebody on their first day.

Click any step inside a workflow and a box opens under it. Write one line per action:

Check the cool room reads under 4 degrees
Log it on the sheet by the door
Tell the duty manager if it is over

1pm numbers the lines for you as you type, so you never type "1." yourself and never have to renumber when you insert something in the middle. Keep the lines short. A procedure is a paragraph or a short list, not a policy document.

The important part is where that text lives. It is stored once, on the workflow, and read live by every task made from it. Correct a procedure today and every task already spawned from that workflow shows the corrected version, immediately, with nothing to re-apply. There is no drifting copy on last month's task saying something different.

Two consequences worth knowing:

Reordering the steps in a workflow also reorders them on the tasks already created from it, for the same reason. The workflow is the master copy.
Deleting a workflow leaves the tasks you made from it intact, with all their steps, but the written procedure goes with the workflow. The confirmation says so before you commit.

Sorting workflows into categories

Once you have more than a handful, give them categories: Safety, Setup, Service, Pack down. The Workflows column then groups under headings, and you set both the order of the categories and the order of workflows inside each by dragging.

That order is not decoration. It is the running order of your procedures manual, which prints your whole workflow library as a document you can hand over. Until you file something into a category, the column stays one plain list with no headings.

Tasks on an event

Every event's planner page has its own Tasks section, tucked in an accordion below the run of show. Open it and you get the same add, tick, edit, reorder, and delete, but every task here is pinned to that event automatically. This is the planner's private to-do list for the booking (the admin, the marketing, the client care), and it is separate from Requests, which are the things you ask your crew to send back. Your crew never see tasks.

A task pinned to an event also shows up in the main Tasks list, so you can work everything in one place or drill into a single booking, whichever suits. If you delete the event, its tasks are not lost, they simply fall back to your general list.

Applying a workflow

Each workflow row ends with an Add button. Click it and you get one new task, named after the workflow, with every step in it ready to tick off. Your filters stay as you had them.

That matters when you use the same workflow repeatedly. Run "Onboard New Contractor" for two different people and you get two tasks you can tell apart and rename, rather than two batches of identical loose lines with nothing to say which is which. The new task is an ordinary task, so Edit renames it, gives it a due date, and assigns it.

Applied from the Tasks page, the task arrives with no event and no assignee, ready for you to fill in.
Applied from an event (see the next section), the task and its steps are pinned to that event.

Automations that create tasks work the same way.

Applying several workflows to an event at once

A new booking rarely kicks off one workflow. It kicks off four: the deposit chase, the two-weeks-out run, the kitchen brief, the pack down. So the event's own Tasks section takes them in a batch.

In the Tasks section on the event's planner page, click Apply workflows. A panel slides in from the right with your whole library in it:

Search narrows the list as you type, which matters once you have more than a screenful.
Category chips filter to one section of the library. They only appear when you have filed workflows into categories.
Tick as many as you want. Each row shows its step count, so you can see what you are letting yourself in for.
Add creates them all in one go, and the button counts what you have ticked ("Add 3 workflows"). Clear unticks everything, which is quicker than hunting back through a filtered list.

Each ticked workflow still becomes its own task, named after the workflow, with its own steps. Ticking four gives you four tasks rather than one long merged list, which is what keeps "Onboard new contractor" run twice for two different people readable.

The task and its step titles are yours to edit, tick, reword or delete, and renaming a step on a task does not reach back into the workflow. The written procedure behind each step is the exception: that is read live from the workflow, so it is the one thing you change in one place rather than on every task.

What tasks do not do (yet)

Worth being clear so nothing catches you out: tasks do not send reminders or emails, and they cannot be assigned to crew or suppliers, only to you and the people you have shared the account with. The due date is a visual flag, not a trigger. If you want 1pm to email a client automatically on a schedule, that is a different feature, see automations.

Steps are deliberately lighter than tasks. A step has a title, a tick, and the procedure it inherits from its workflow. The due date, the assignee and the event live on the task, because the task is the job and the steps are how it gets done. Steps also stay put under their task; you cannot drag one across to another job.

Printing your procedures manual turns your whole workflow library into a branded PDF you can hand to a new starter.
Automations sends scheduled emails to a client, where tasks are your own private to-do list.
Asking crew for documents and info covers Requests, the crew-facing counterpart to tasks.
Sharing your account covers adding the teammates you can assign tasks to.