Doing the work
Notes on tasks
The discussion, kept where the work is: how to write a note on a task or a project, edit one, mention someone, and what happens to it.
A note is what you would otherwise have emailed. It lives on the task, so the next person to pick the work up reads the reasoning without you having to forward a thread.
Notes are on every task, in a panel called Notes — and on every project, in the same panel on the project page (see Notes on a project below).
Writing one
The box sits at the top of the panel and is always open — there is no Add a note button to find first. Type, press Add note. The thread underneath reads newest first, so coming back to a long discussion costs no scrolling.
Markdown works. Not the whole encyclopedia, but everything you actually use:
**bold** and *italic*
- a list
- another item
`acme-142` for a reference
> a quotation
[a link](https://example.com)
Anything that looks like markup but is not is shown as the text you typed rather than acted on, so you can safely paste anything into a note.
If the project's news posts to a Slack channel that hears notes, a Keep this off Slack box sits under the note; tick it and that one note stays in sjTasks, with everyone told as usual and the task's history saying it was kept off Slack.
Editing and removing
Your own notes have Edit and Delete beside them. An edited note says it was edited. Deleting asks first, because a note is somebody's reasoning and losing it by mis-click would be irritating.
Admins can edit and delete anyone's note — for taking out the phone number that should not have been pasted in, not for rewriting history. Every one of these is recorded.
Mentioning someone
Type @ and the person's name to bring them into a note — @jane, the way you would in a
task line. They are told about it, whether or not they were watching the task, as long as they
can see the task themselves. A name only reaches people in your team who can see the work,
so there is no way to mention somebody into a project they are not part of.
Any of these work, and capitals do not matter:
- their first name —
@jane - their full name run together, or joined with a dot or a dash —
@janeparker,@jane.parker,@jane-parker - the part of their email address before the
@—@jparker
A full stop straight after the name is fine ("ask @jane."). If nobody answers to the name you typed, the note is saved exactly as written and nothing else happens — an address that matches no one is just text, never an error.
Who writes notes
Everyone who can see the task, including guests. That is the whole point of the guest role: a client can read the work and write on it, but cannot change it. If you have invited a client into a project, notes are how they talk to you inside sjTasks rather than in your inbox.
Finding the conversation
The task table on a project page has a Notes column showing how many notes each task has, so you can see where the discussion is happening without opening anything.
Writing a note puts you on that task's watcher list, so you hear about what is said back. If you would rather not, Stop watching this task is in the task's sidebar — see Watchers.
Notes on a project
A project has a thread of its own, in a Notes panel on the project page, below its task lists and above its files. It is for what belongs to the whole project rather than to one task: the brief, the decisions about scope, what the client said on the kick-off call. It works exactly like a task's thread — the box at the top, newest first, Markdown, edit and delete on your own notes — and everyone who can see the project can read and write there, guests included. Writing on a project's thread does not change who watches its tasks.
What to put in a note, and what not to
Put in a note: decisions and why, what the client said, what you tried, what you are waiting for.
Do not put in a note: the due date, the owner, or the priority. Those are fields — they are filterable and reportable, and a note saying "this is urgent" is invisible to every report in the product. If a task is blocked, set its status to Blocked; the page then asks what is it waiting on?, and your answer becomes a note. You can skip the question — the status has already changed — but the note is what tells whoever picks the task up next why it stopped. The status is what shows up in a list; the note is what explains it.