Getting started
What sjTasks is
The shape of the whole product in five minutes: teams, projects, tasks, and the files, notes and time that hang off each task.
sjTasks keeps track of work: what needs doing, who is doing it, when it is due, and how it is going. It is built around the task. Everything else — files, notes, time — hangs off a task or the project it lives in, rather than off a conversation you have to scroll back through.
If you read one page, read this one. The rest of the guide is detail.
Two ideas run through all of it. Ask it the way you would say it: the questions you ask on a Monday — what did Sandy finish last week, what is on Joe's plate — are the reports, each one a couple of menus and an answer you can send as a link.
And more when you need it, not before: estimates, time, task lists and watchers are switches an admin turns on, per team or per project; tags start on and have a switch too. When a switch is off, its fields do not appear at all. Nothing is missing; it is out of sight until you reach for it.
The four things
Your team is everything you can see when you sign in: your people, your projects, your files. Most people only ever have one. If you belong to more than one — say you run your own work and a client has invited you into theirs — you switch between them from the menu with your team name in it, at the top right. Nothing crosses between teams.
A project is a body of work someone will ask "how's it going?" about: a client, a product, a push. It has its own page, its own watchers, its own files, and a progress line that reads 12 of 20 tasks done. Every team starts with one project called General, so you never have to invent a project before you can write down a to-do.
A task is one thing one person can finish. It has an owner, a priority, a due date, an
estimate, and a reference like acme-142 that you can say out loud in a meeting or paste into
an email. Most of what you type into sjTasks will be tasks.
A subtask is a piece of a task that needs its own owner or its own date. Subtasks are real tasks — same reference, same everything — that happen to live under a parent. They go one level deep, on purpose.
Which to reach for is its own page: Projects, task lists, tasks, and subtasks.
What hangs off a task
| On a task | What it is for |
|---|---|
| Notes | The discussion. What you would have emailed, kept where the work is |
| Files | Attachments — a brief, a screenshot, a signed contract |
| Time | An estimate up front, hours logged as they go. Entirely optional |
| Watchers | Who hears about it, inherited from the project |
| History | Who changed what, and when. Written automatically, never edited |
The reference: acme-142
Every project has a short key — acme — and every task in it gets a number. Together they
make a reference you can use anywhere: "acme-142 is blocked on the client."
Two things worth knowing. References are never reused, so a link in an old email never
quietly resolves to a different task. And if you rename a project's key, the old references keep
working — permanently. Type acme-142 into the search box at the top of any page and you land on
the task.
Where things are
- Dashboard — your work: what is overdue, what is due today, what you have not started, and the questions you keep one click away.
- Projects — every project you can see, with progress and open counts.
- Tasks — every task you can see, as a table you can sort, filter, edit in bulk, and send as a link.
- Docs — this guide.
- Search — the box in the middle of the top bar. Tasks, projects, and references. Press
/. - ? — the keyboard shortcuts, next to the bell.
- The bell — what changed on the work you follow.
Under your name at the top right: Profile, Notifications for choosing what we send
you, and Keyboard shortcuts, the list of keys (or press ?). Under your team's name: Team Settings, where people are invited.
What sjTasks deliberately does not do
Being clear about this saves you looking for it. There are no Gantt charts, no task dependencies beyond one subtask blocking its parent, and no running timers (you log hours, you do not start a stopwatch). Fields of your own — a budget, a stage, a PO number — are there when a team wants them: an admin switches them on in Team settings → Features (Custom fields).
Almost nothing is deleted. Work that will not happen is canceled; a project that is finished is archived; a person who leaves is deactivated; a team that ends is closed rather than wiped. All of it keeps the record, and all but closing is reversible. The one exception is debris — a duplicate or a typo — which an admin can delete from a task page. Even that is not destruction: it waits 30 days in Trash, where one click brings it back.