Task planning: create, organize, and track tasks

Tasks in Beebole are independent planning entities — units of work that you schedule, assign, and track time on. A task is not a sub-element of a project: tasks live on their own Tasks page, and linking a task to a project is optional. Use tasks to plan the work to be done, and let your team track time directly on them.

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How tasks relate to projects

Projects describe what hours are logged into; tasks describe the work to be done. The two are connected but independent:

• A task can exist without any project. You can plan, assign, and complete it entirely on the Tasks page.
• A task can be linked to projects through its Projects attribute in the task detail panel.
• Time can be tracked on tasks directly, in the Tasks section of the timesheet.

For general work that isn’t planned as a task, track time on projects and subprojects instead.

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Task categories

Every task belongs to a task category — a separate board with its own statuses and its own level names for the hierarchy. New Beebole accounts start with one category named Main plan, with the statuses Backlog, Queue, In progress, and Done.

• Switch categories — Click the category name at the top of the Tasks page and pick another category from the menu.
• Create a category — In the same menu, type a name in the Name of a new plan field and click Add.

Statuses always belong to a task category, not to a project: each category defines its own workflow. See Statuses below.

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Creating a task

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Adding many tasks at once

You can import a whole task list by pasting it from a spreadsheet — there is no file upload involved. Imported tasks get the status selected in the add form. After the import you can click Undo to remove everything you just added, or New import to paste another batch.

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Task statuses

Statuses are the steps of a category’s workflow — the same statuses that form the columns of the Kanban board. To edit them, open the Task statuses modal:

• On the Kanban board, click a column’s name.
• In the task detail panel, click the gear button next to the status (tooltip: Edit statuses).

In the modal you can:

• Add a status — Type its name in the Add new status field and confirm.
• Rename or recolor a status — Click a status to edit its name or pick a new color.
• Reorder statuses — Drag a status up or down. The order defines the column order on the Kanban board.
• Limit a status — Set Max tasks to cap how many tasks the status can hold. See WIP limits.
• Delete a status — Only possible when the status holds no tasks (including archived ones). Every category must keep at least one status.

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Assigning tasks

Beebole distinguishes the person responsible for a task from the people it is available to:

• Owner — The single person doing the task. Pick them in the task detail panel (Select the owner); a task can only have one owner. Next to the owner you can set % FTE, the share of their working time dedicated to the task — Beebole uses the owner’s work schedule and this percentage when fitting planned time between the task’s dates.
• Potential owners — People or tags the task is assigned to. In filters and on Kanban cards, these assigned people appear under the Assignee label.

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Subtasks and hierarchy

Tasks nest into subtasks, as deep as your plan requires. The hierarchy is shared by all views.

• Create a subtask — Hover over a task name in the Gantt task list and click the + button that appears, or select the task and press ⌘+A.
• Indent or outdent with the keyboard — In the Gantt view, select a task and press Tab to make it a subtask of the task above it, or Shift+Tab to move it up one level.
• Move a task under a different parent — Hover over the breadcrumb above the task’s name (in the detail panel or on a Kanban card), click the edit button (Change parent), and pick the new parent with Choose a task. The list only offers tasks from the same category.
• Expand and collapse — Click the chevron next to a parent task. ⌘+Click the chevron to expand or collapse all.

A parent task rolls up its children: it shows the period spanned by its subtasks and their total Planned in hours, read-only.

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Scheduling dates and planned time

Open a task’s detail panel to set its schedule:

• Dates — Pick the start and end dates with the date-range picker.
• Planned in hours / Planned in days — Enter the planned amount of work. Next to the value, Beebole shows the maximum the owner’s schedule allows between the task’s dates (Max value per schedule).
• Date locks — Lock buttons flank the date picker (Lock start date and Lock end date). One edge is locked at a time — the start by default. When planned time no longer fits between the dates, Beebole moves the unlocked edge: with the end date locked, the start moves earlier; with the start locked, the end extends. When planned time overflows the period, a warning pill offers two one-click fixes: Click to extend the unlocked date to fit planned time or Click to reduce planned time to capacity.

If the owner already has another task with planned time in the same period, the panel shows an Overlapping tasks causing overload warning so you can rebalance. To sequence tasks — making one start after another ends — use dependencies in the Gantt chart.

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Tracking time on tasks

Time entries can be recorded directly against tasks:

• From the timesheet — People add rows in the Tasks section of their timesheet and log hours on a task, just like on a project.
• From a Kanban card — Hover over a card and click the clock button (Add time) to log time on that task for today. Once time is logged, the card shows a pill with the logged total next to the planned time (for example 4h / 8h). See Kanban board.

Which task categories accept time entries is controlled by the Record time on these task categories setting, in the Categories tab of Timesheet settings. Tasks in other categories don’t show the time button. You can also let task statuses drive time records automatically with Auto Timesheet — choose a Start and an End status per category, and moving a task into those statuses triggers a time record to start and end. Set it up in the Auto Timesheet tab of Timesheet settings.

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Descriptions, custom fields, and tags

Beyond scheduling, each task carries:

• Description — A rich-text panel for context, acceptance criteria, links, and file attachments, with @mentions to reference teammates. See task descriptions for the editor’s features.
• Custom fields — Organization-defined fields (text, numbers, dates, URLs, booleans) that appear in the task detail panel. Define them in Settings > Custom Fields and make them visible for tasks — visibility can even be limited to specific task categories. See Custom fields.
• Tags — Label tasks with tags to group and filter them across categories, and to report on them by team, client, or any dimension you define.

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Archiving and deleting tasks

Each task has a ⋯ action menu — hover over its row in the Gantt view or its Kanban card — with Duplicate, Rename, Archive, Unarchive, and Delete.

• Archive hides the task from active views without losing its data or its time records. Use Show Archived in the page header to display archived tasks again, then Unarchive to restore one. On the Kanban board, a column’s own menu can archive or unarchive every task in that status at once.
• Delete removes the task permanently. A toast appears with an Undo button right after deletion.

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Viewing tasks your way

The Tasks page shows your tasks through saved views — tabs above the task list. Click Add a view and pick Add a Gantt chart or Add a Kanban board; each view remembers its own settings (columns, grouping, scale, or card fields). Use Filters in the header to narrow any view by task, status, owner, assigned person, project, or tags.

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Related content

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Frequently asked questions