Work Items

A work item is a piece of work: a task, a job, a case, a request. Items nest, so a job can hold sub-jobs and those can hold tasks. They move through stages (see Pipelines), can be assigned to a person or a group, and can be created from a form somebody outside your organisation filled in.

Where to find it

/work needs permission to read work items. The two settings pages each need their own permission to view them, and changing intake rules needs the intake manage permission in an elevated session. The full list is in Who can do this at the end of this page.

The four ways to look at work

The board, the list and the timeline carry four tabs at the top: Board, List, Timeline and My Work. Each has its own address — /work, /work/list, /work/timeline and /work/my — so you can bookmark the one you use most. My Work's own tab bar has no Timeline tab; go back to Board first.

On the board, My Work and the list, clicking an item opens it in a side panel; Open next to it takes you to the item's own page.

My Work

Your own plate, in four groups: Overdue, Due soon, Assigned to me, and Waiting for a group member to claim. The last one is the useful one: items assigned to a group rather than a person sit there until somebody takes them. Press Claim and the item is yours — the page confirms Claimed — it is on your plate now. Only a member of that group can claim the item; anyone else is told why in plain words.

Show done adds a Done group with the finished ones. If your login has no contact identity in this space, the page says so plainly — nothing can be assigned to you here. Items you can claim still show below.

Work board

A column per stage of one pipeline, with cards you drag between them. Pick the pipeline with Pipeline, then narrow it with Type (or All types), Assigned to me, Show done and Search titles…. A done stage's column carries a ✓ after its name.

To add an item, type its title in New work item… at the top, choose its type, and press Add. The new item joins the pipeline the board is showing, in its first stage.

A column's count reads like 3 / 5 when its pipeline sets a work-in-progress limit for that stage — three items in a stage that should hold five. A move the pipeline refuses is refused on the board too: the card springs back and the pipeline's own words appear under that column's name (close them with ✕). Cards on a group-assigned item carry Claim. Items on the pipeline that sit in no stage gather in a No stage column, and Load more fetches the next page of cards.

Two empty states are worth knowing because they are not errors:

• No work items match. Stage columns appear once an item rides this pipeline. — nothing matches your filters yet;
• These items carry no pipeline stages yet — attach a pipeline from an item to see columns. — the items exist but none of them is on a pipeline.

Work items list

The ordinary list surface — sortable, filterable, with saved views (see Working with Lists). The list itself is read-only: open an item to change it. It is built on the views system, so it needs a work-items view to exist. If the space has none, the page says This space has no work-items view yet. A person who may change views gets Create the work-items view; a person who may only read them gets Open the view designer. If you lack the permission to read views at all, the page says so and points you at the board and My Work, which do not need it.

Timeline

The Work timeline draws each dated work item as a bar across the calendar, with the links between items that depend on each other. Choose the Window (Week, Month, Quarter or Custom, with From and To dates) and the Zoom. Critical path highlights the chain of items that decides the finish date, and Baseline lays a saved earlier plan under the bars so you can see what has slipped. Your choices are remembered for next time.

Items with no dates are not drawn; the page says how many are left out. If you may change item dates, you can drag a bar. Nothing moves straight away: Review date changes shows the new dates, lists every dependent item that will move with it, and warns when a pinned or conflicting item stops the change there. Apply changes makes it happen; Cancel leaves everything as it was.

A work item's own page

Open on any item leads to its page, /work/ followed by the item's id. That page is built from widgets — the header with its stage, assignee and Claim, the checklist and the comments — and each one is described on Work widgets.

Work item types

The Work item types page has three tabs: Types, Industry bundles and Blueprints.

A type is what a kind of work is called at each level, which pipeline it rides by default, what its status lanes are, and what an outside person may see. The list shows each type's Levels, Default pipeline, Status lanes, Live items and Origin. Global types are shared by every space and read global; Copy to this space makes an editable version of one, and the global row then reads global · shadowed.

Levels

Level names, top to bottom — comma separated. A type called "Project, Phase, Task" names the root a Project, its children Phases, and theirs Tasks. The last name repeats for anything deeper.

Status lanes

A type can carry several independent status lanes beside its pipeline stage. Each lane takes its values from a value list:

• a single-value lane holds one flag at a time — an approval state, for example;
• a multi-value lane stacks — exceptions, flags, warnings.

A lane can name a Permission key, and then only people holding it may set flags in that lane.

Other settings on a type

Guest-visible fields

Deny by default: a field or section an outside person may see needs a row here. Leave Level blank for every level, or give a number to scope it to one depth (0 is the root).

Blueprints: stamping out a whole structure

A blueprint is a tree of items you create in one go — a standard job with its standard phases and tasks. Each node carries a Title, a Type, its Level (indentation), Start +days and Due +days offsets from a start date you pick, an assignee (a contact, or a data group) and a Checklist (one item per line).

Stamp out… asks for a Start date (day 0) and, optionally, a work item to put the new tree under, then Prepare review shows a Review before creating screen. Nothing is written until you confirm: adjust titles, dates and assignees, or Skip a node — skipping a node skips its sub-nodes too. Create these items then creates each one through the ordinary create door, so every rule that applies to a hand-made item applies to these.

Save as blueprint does the reverse: give it an existing work item's id and its whole subtree is captured as a blueprint called Captured blueprint, which you then rename in the editor.

Industry bundles

A bundle is a seeded starting point — a set of types, pipelines and blueprints for a kind of business. Apply turns them into ordinary, editable rows of your space; pieces already present are kept, so Re-apply (adds missing pieces) adds what is missing and disturbs nothing else. Each bundle's card says whether it is applied, partly applied or not applied, lists its types, pipelines and lists, and names any piece that cannot be created yet.

Work item intake: forms into work items

Intake turns form answers into work items with ordered routing rules and a shared approvals inbox. The page has three tabs:

• Forms — every form, its Intake status (Enabled, Disabled or Not configured), whether it needs approval and whether it has a public link. Configure opens a form's intake settings.
• Pending — submissions waiting for approval, each with Review approval.
• Held — public submissions held back because their address is not allowed yet (below).

The form's defaults

Each form names its Target work item type, a Default pipeline (or Type default), a Default stage (or Pipeline first stage), Due in days and a Title template. Accept submissions for this form switches intake on for it.

The rules

Ordered routing rules are evaluated top to bottom (reorder them with ↑ and ↓), and the condition grammar is the same AND/OR grammar views and filters use. The rule that matters is the one about precedence: a later rule cannot replace an attribute an earlier match already set. First match per attribute wins. A rule can set the Priority value, an Assignee contact or an Assignee data group, the Pipeline, the Stage, its own Title template and Due in days.

The title

A title template uses {{answer.field_key}} placeholders — for example Request from {{answer.name}}. Inserted answer text is escaped, so a submitted answer can never inject markup into a title.

Answer mapping

Each answer maps to one writable work item column, or one standard non-sensitive custom field — or Do not map. Encrypted and computed fields are not offered — a public form must not be a way to write into either.

Approvals, and whether the approvers can actually see them

The Approval gate sets Require approval to Never, Always or When answers match…, and names who approves: Approver users, Approver groups or an Approver permission, with optional Timeout hours.

The page then does something unusual and useful: under Reach it checks whether those people can actually open the approvals inbox, and tells you in plain words when they cannot — cannot open the inbox — ask a space admin to add them to the Approvers group, or …to add the Approvers group to this space first. Add to Approvers fixes it from here, for a person who may change permission group members; Re-check runs the check again. An approval gate whose approvers cannot open the inbox is a queue nobody drains, so it is worth the extra check.

Public links

A form can have one reusable public link, once Allow a reusable public link for this form is ticked:

• Mint new link creates it — and revokes any older link for that form, so there is never a second live URL you have forgotten about. Copy puts it on your clipboard.
• Submissions per hour caps the next link you mint (empty uses the space default, 0 means unlimited).
• A Security question (CAPTCHA) can be required for the next link: Space default, None or Built-in arithmetic question.
• Revoke links kills every active link for the form.

There is also a space-wide master switch, and the page always says where it stands. When it is off the line turns red — The space-wide public intake switch is off. Turn it on in System settings before links work. — so a link minted then will not take submissions until the switch is on.

Held submissions

Under Allowed emails (public submissions) a form can only accept public submissions from listed addresses; hold every other one for review. Name the answer that carries the submitter's email, paste the Allowed addresses, and choose how many days to hold the rest.

Held submissions are kept, not dropped. The Held tab lists them with their Email and when they Expire. Bring in runs one through the normal routing — it creates its work item or sends it to approval; Add email + bring in also adds its address to the allowed list. A held submission nobody brings in expires on its date and is never deleted. Saving a wider list of allowed addresses brings in the held submissions from those addresses automatically.

Testing it

Submit sample answers runs the whole path. The page is explicit that this is a real submission: it creates a work item immediately or sends it to approval. There is no pretend mode — so test it where a real item is harmless. Recent submissions below it lists what came in.

Who can do this