Finding things

The search box, and the Tasks table — sorting, filters, date windows, bulk edits, and why every view is a link.

Two tools. The search box when you know roughly what you are looking for. The Tasks table when you have a question about a group of things.

The search box

It is in the middle of the top bar, on every page. Press / anywhere to jump into it.

Type two characters or more and matching tasks and projects appear underneath. Walk them with the arrow keys, open one with Enter, dismiss with Escape.

Two things it does that are worth remembering:

A reference is an address. Type ACME-142 and press Enter and you go straight to that task — including references from before a project was re-keyed, and from before a task was moved. Old links do not rot.
Enter with nothing highlighted never dead-ends. It takes you to the Tasks table, searched for what you typed, across every status.

Search only ever finds what you could already see. It is not a way around who has access to what.

The Tasks table

Tasks in the top bar: everything in your workspace you are allowed to see, in one table.

Columns, all sortable — click a heading to sort, click it again to reverse:

Column	Notes
Status	Open, in progress, blocked, done, canceled
Project	The project key. Folds away on a narrow screen — the reference beside each title already names it
Task	The title. The reference sits beside it
Assignee	Who owns it. Changeable from the row
Priority	Sorts highest first the first time you click it. Changeable from the row
Due	The default sort. Undated work always sorts last, never as "oldest"
Created	When it was raised. Folds away on a narrow screen
Finished	Appears only when the list is about finished work, so the open list is not a column of dashes

Assignee and priority are editable straight in the row, without opening the task. A change you are not allowed to make says so on that row and leaves the value alone.

The filters

Along the top:

Status — Open, Overdue, Done, or Every status. "Open" means open, in progress, or blocked — one definition, used everywhere in sjTasks.
Project — one project, or all of them.
Assignee — anyone, a named person, or Unassigned. Unassigned open work is one of the most useful views in the product.
Due — a window (below). It switches itself off while the status is Overdue, because asking for two due windows at once means nothing.
Search — matches task titles and descriptions.
Raised and Finished — when it was created, and when it was completed (below).
Priority — a row of chips. Click as many as you like: Urgent and High together is the question people actually ask.
Created by me — a chip, for finding what you asked for rather than what you own.

Due-date windows

Window	Means
Overdue	Due before today, still open
Due today / Due tomorrow
This week / Next week	Calendar weeks, starting on the day your workspace starts its week. Next week is Monday to Sunday, not the next seven days
Next 7 days / Next 30 days	Rolling windows starting today
This month
No due date	Work nobody has committed to

All of them resolve today in your timezone.

Raised, and Finished

Two backward-looking windows, sharing one vocabulary: Today, Yesterday, This week, Last week, Last 7 days, Last 30 days, This month, Last month, and Between two dates for when no word fits. Pick Between two dates and two date boxes appear.

Raised asks when the task was created. Finished asks when it was completed — which also means "finished at all", so it quietly excludes work that never was.

"Last week" means the same seven days whichever of the two you point it at, and both resolve in your timezone, using your workspace's week start.

The one-press question

Beside those two filters is a button that reads "What did Jane finish last week?" — with whichever name is in the Assignee menu, or the team when it is nobody in particular. One press sets status to Done, sets Finished: last week, and sorts newest first.

It only ever sets filters, so what you end up with is an ordinary list at an ordinary address — one you could have built yourself, and one you can now send to Jane.

Changing a lot of tasks at once

Every row has a tick box, and the heading has one that takes everything currently listed.

Tick some rows and a bar appears: choose an action, choose what to set it to, press Apply.

Action	Needs
Set status	Which of the five
Set priority	Which level
Assign to	A person, or Unassigned
Set due date	A date
Clear due date	Nothing

A bulk edit is a hundred ordinary edits, not a shortcut around the rules: each task goes through the same checks and writes its own history entry. Anything refused is named. If a parent cannot be finished because a subtask still blocks it, or one of the tasks is in a project you cannot edit, you get "ACME-142 — Blocked by ACME-145" rather than a silent skip, along with a count of how many did change.

Adding a task from here

Add a task at the top of the page opens the quick-add box with a project picker. It defaults to the project you have filtered to, and otherwise to General, so the common case is type and press. The shorthand is the same everywhere: see Adding tasks fast.

Two habits that make the table earn its keep

Read the chips. Under the filters is a row saying, in words, exactly what the list is showing — Open work · In Acme · Finished last week. Every chip removes its own filter when you click it. A list that looks suspiciously short always tells you why it is short.

Send the link, not the instructions. Every filter, the sort column, and the direction are all in the address bar. Set up "Acme, urgent and high, due next week" once and paste the URL into an email — the person who opens it sees the same list, subject to what they are allowed to see. It is also a bookmark, and it is what Save this view puts a name on (Saved views and the standard questions).

The table shows up to 200 tasks at a time and marks the count 200+ when it has hit that, so narrow the filters rather than scrolling.