Search documentation

Search BriefFlow's documentation by page title, section heading, or content.

What this does

A task is the unit of work in BriefFlow. Every task belongs to a project, has an owner, and can have one or more assignees.

Before you begin

Creating a task requires the tasks.create permission (Administrators by default). The project you want to create it under must already exist — see Projects if you need to create one first.

Owner vs. assignee

These are two different roles on the same task, and BriefFlow keeps them distinct on purpose:

  • The owner is accountable for the task overall — typically the manager who requested it. Owners review submitted understanding and are notified of status changes.
  • Assignees are the people actually doing the work. A task can have multiple assignees, and each one submits and tracks their own understanding of the task independently.

One person can be both — a self-owned task still goes through the same understanding and QA workflow.

Creating a task

Administrator permission required

Requires the tasks.create permission.
The Tasks list — every task in the workspace, with status and Understanding visible at a glance.
  1. Open Tasks in the sidebar.
  2. Select Create Task.
  3. Enter a Title.
  4. Choose the Project it belongs to.
  5. Choose the Owner — defaults to you.
  6. Choose a Type — Feature, Bug, Improvement, Testing, Technical, Research, Internal, or Other.
  7. Choose a Priority — Low, Medium, High, or Critical.
  8. Optionally add a Description and Acceptance criteria.
  9. Optionally add one or more Assignees.
  10. Optionally set a Due date and Est. effort.
  11. If the project has releases, optionally link one under Release.
  12. Leave QA required and Release required checked unless this task genuinely doesn't need one — both default on.
  13. Select Create Task.
The Create Task dialog — QA Required and Release Required are on by default.

What happens next

You land on the new task's detail page. If you added assignees, each one now needs to submit their understanding of the task before it can move into In Progress — see Understanding. They'll also see it appear on their My Board.

A task's detail page — description, activity timeline, assignment, and delivery metadata.

Status

A task moves through a defined sequence — Backlog, Assigned, In Progress, Blocked, Ready for QA, QA In Progress, Changes Requested, Ready for Release, Done — and BriefFlow enforces which moves are valid. Notably, a task can't move into In Progress until every current assignee's understanding of it has been approved.

If a task is blocked, the person marking it blocked records why; that reason is visible to everyone with access to the task.

Comments and activity

Every task has a comment thread (for discussion) and an activity timeline (an automatic, factual record of what happened — status changes, assignment changes, understanding and QA events, release changes). The activity timeline can't be edited; it's the task's audit trail.

Common issues

I can't move a task into In Progress. At least one assignee's understanding hasn't been approved yet. Check the Understanding section on the task detail page.

The Release dropdown is empty. Releases are project-scoped — create one for this task's project first, or select the project before picking a release.