Orangescrum Product Updates-Task Types and Labels

The existing Task Type and Labels were at the company level i.e. you create once and they are visible and accessible across all projects.

Well in a way it did make sense. But over time we felt to offer an exclusive project experience by allowing segregation of key features at a project level itself.

Task Types and Labels are now available to be distinctly created at the individual project level.

Custom Task Types really come in handy in terms of simpler and easier task categorization. I’ve mentioned earlier why you should use Task Type for your projects. Let me explain again.

Why you need Custom Task Type?

Our projects are made up of tasks. Tons of them!

But not all tasks are alike. Having a well-defined classification of tasks is very important to understand the overall nature of the project, the activities involved and to maintain the activities as distinctly as possible.

 

Projects constitute of all sorts of tasks. Administrative, meeting minutes, enhancements, bugs, ideas, research, documentation, etc.

Not having a track of these activities would harm the project. You will not only lose sight of your project’s alignment w.r.t the objectives but also end up with a lot of confusion within the team.

Moreover, Orangescrum offers quite a bit of analytics and reports based on task types in terms of count, time spent and resources. This information will tell you:

• which type of tasks occur more often in your projects
• which resources are assigned more of a specific task type only
• how much time and efforts are spent on certain task types
• which task types have the most billable and non-billable hours logged

These metrics have proven helpful in either reducing or completely eliminating unwanted task types, identifying process gaps or scope leaks. Overall, you are able to make your projects leaner and your project delivery efficient.

In some cases, it is very difficult to define the category through a single task type. If you want to further categorize all your tasks, then you need to use the custom task labels as well.

Task Labels are an added layer of categorization provided to better organize and label your tasks.

Task Types are typically used for a broader set of categorization and task labels can be your subcategory or specific as you want it to be.

E.g. your task type = bug, and your task label = specific feature name.

Basically, you can quickly filter out from the task list to see how many bugs you have for a specific feature for e.g. or task type is customer feedback and task label can be – enhancement.

Thus, you know how many enhancement requests you received from your customers.

You can use multiple task labels in a task, so you can get more detail reports when required.

If Task Types and Labels are used systematically by team members then it will greatly improve your organizational reporting and clear visualization of team activities.

 How do I create custom Task Types?

To create a custom task type,

• Navigate to Settings>>Project Settings
• Click on Task Type
• Click on +New Task Type
• Select project name, provide new task type name and short name
• Once clicked Add, it will create your project level task types

Note: You can disable the default Task Types if you do not like them or want to have them entirely customized.

P.S: Our existing users can find another option as Company Level Task Type. Here you can see all custom task types you have created before the release of Project Level Task Type.

Now create a new task and select the Task Type you wish to define for your task activities. Once you define Task Types, you can use them to filter and find out tasks count by Task Types and how many assigned to whom.

At the project level, you can get insights into tasks count by task types in the Project Overview page.

Similarly, you can get an organization-wide report of Task Types for all projects in the Dashboard.

Also, you can get reports on which team members spent how much time on which type of activities in the Resource Utilization report.

How do I create a custom Task Labels?

To create custom labels,

• Navigate to Settings>>Project Settings
• Click on Manage Labels
• Click on +New Label
• Select project name, provide new task label name and click Add

Also, you can add Task Labels in Create Task form or in Task Detail page.

Like Task Types, you can use Task Labels to filter tasks and get more insights on your team’s activities.

Create your Project Task Types Now

Over to you

Task Types and Labels help you organize your tasks in a meaningful manner and provide better clarity to your team. Also, at an overall project level, you have visibility to the mix of activities required to complete the project successfully.

 

Project Managers can use data from other projects retrospectively as well to assess and plan for the next project with greater insights and confidence.

Give these latest improvements a try and share your feedback on their impact on your daily task management.

In the meantime, we’re working on more product updates; I will be back with another update soon.