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Task Status Sets

By Jennifer Goodsell | Updated
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Overview

Allowing you to create custom task statuses and manage which statuses are available for specific types of projects, the Task Status Sets feature gives you more versatility and consistency when it comes to prioritizing and managing all your project tasks across your account.

Each status set contains the 4 standard task statuses:

  • Not Started
  • Started
  • Needs Info
  • Completed

From Settings > Task Status Sets, Account Administrators can also create custom task statuses within these status sets that will be organized within these 4 standard status types. With the proper Access Group permissions, other users can also be given the ability to create custom statuses and different status sets.

Note: If task status was included in Insights reports previous to the release of Task Status Sets, these reports now include the status type of the current status for the task. To display a custom task status name in your reports, either replace that attribute with the Task: Status attribute or add it alongside the Task: Status Type attribute.

Task status set.png

You can create up to 50 status sets for your account, meaning you can diversify which task statuses are available for your account members to utilize depending on the project needs. For example, you can use the default task status set for Project A and then create a new task status set for Project B, keeping the statuses separate per project. These statuses will apply to all tasks types—including issues.

Note: After creating task status sets, you can apply them during project creation, update existing projects from the Project Settings page, or update projects in bulk from the Project List.

Getting Started with Task Status Sets

When you activate Task Status Sets, an account default status set—which includes the 4 standard statuses of Not Started, Started, Needs Info, and Completed—can immediately be applied to your projects. By not having all projects automatically update to the default Task Status Set, you'll have time to create custom Task Status Sets for different types of projects in Kantata.

Note: If you had the Task Status Sets feature activated in Early Access before October 7, 2024, the account default status set is automatically selected for new projects. If you did not activate the feature before that date and you would like the account default to be automatically selected for projects, contact Customer Success.

When you apply a Task Status Set to a project, all tasks in that project now use the same statuses. This means that issues won't have their own unique set of statuses anymore. Instead, they will use the same statuses as other task types (e.g. tasks, milestones, deliverables). If there are special statuses you want to have available for issues, you can take this into consideration when creating custom statuses for your Task Status Sets.

Issue Statuses.png

Are you happy with the standard task statuses and not interested in using custom statuses on tasks—even issues? The only action you may need to take is selecting the account default Task Status Set on all projects containing issues.

TIP

Use the following resources to quickly find out which projects have issues:

  • Data Exporter—In the Task data set, you can select Name, Type, and Project ID for your export, then filter down to only the Issue task type in your exported file. You can search by the Project ID in the Project List to quickly locate each project and use the Task Status Set bulk action to update your projects.
  • Insights Dynamic Dashboards—In the standard dynamic dashboard Project: Task Detail, use the Task: Type dashboard filter to display only issues. In the Hours Breakdown by Top Level Task report, you can click on project names to open each project in a new tab.

If you’re ready to dive in and start using custom statuses, you’ll need to:

  • Set up your own custom Task Status Sets under Settings > Task Status Sets that you want to make available for different types of projects.
  • Add the custom task statuses you want to use in each status set.
  • Make adjustments to your Access Groups to determine who can manage Task Status Sets in the account settings, as well as who has access to update Task Status Sets for projects.
  • Set the appropriate Task Status Set for each project:
  • Train account members on which statuses should be selected for tasks based on the different Task Status Sets available to different projects.
  • Update integrations that rely on task status updates—especially for issue task types
  • Update Insights reports to include the Task: Status attribute. By default, all reports using the Task: Current Status attribute have been updated to Task: Status Type attribute—which consists of the 4 status types that were previously the only task status names.

Once you have everything set up, you’ll be able to:

  • Leverage custom task statuses for all the process-specific scenarios in your organization
  • Limit specific groups of statuses to specific types of projects
  • Add new lanes to Boards based on your custom statuses
  • View issues on Boards

How to Manage Integrations Changes

Task statuses have historically used the state field in integrations. The 4 standard task statuses—Not Started, Started, Needs Info, and Completed—will continue to leverage this same field to update tasks in Kantata OX via integrations. Custom task statuses, however, use the new status field, which means custom task statuses and Task Status Sets are not currently available in integrations.

If you have applied Task Status Sets to your projects and are using custom task statuses, integrations that rely upon task status changes in Kantata OX may be affected by these changes. Depending on how they are set up, this could include the following integrations:

  • Kantata Connect
  • Flat File
  • NetSuite
  • Intacct
  • Jira
  • Smart Upload Manager (SUM)
  • Salesforce

Custom integrations that were not built by Kantata may also be affected. You may want to update the mapping tables for affected integrations to ensure that you are not including statuses that do not exist.

If you use integrations to manage task status updates in Kantata OX, there will be no interruptions to your integration processes. When an integration attempts to set statuses on tasks that don't exist on a project in Kantata OX—such as an issue status or a custom task status—most of these will map to Started (green), but we will give our best attempt to map to the appropriate status.

However, if you use an outbound integration to update another application based on an issue status update in Kantata OX, this integration may experience interruptions. You will need to update any custom integrations you are using to map to the appropriate task status. If you are using issues in your projects, you may want to delay applying Task Status Sets to your projects until the new field is available in integrations to avoid any disruptions.

Task Status Sets Page

On the Task Status Sets page, you can view the current status sets and their custom statuses for your account and perform the following actions:

  • Add a status set
  • Add a custom task status
  • Set a status set as the account default
  • Rename or delete a set or individual status
  • Reorder statuses within a status type

Task Status Sets page.png

Note: Account members must be added to the Account Settings Access Group set in order to create/edit new task status sets and custom statuses and select a task status set for a project.

A status set that is marked as the account default—meaning it is selected by default in all new projects—or is currently being used in a project will be tagged accordingly, giving you a quick snapshot of how your current sets are being utilized. 

Set tags.png

Task Status Types

Each task status—both default and custom statuses—is organized by status type and the associated type color. The 4 default status types and their colors are:

  • Not Started (Gray)
  • Started (Green)
  • Needs Info (Red)
  • Completed (Blue)

For example, if you add a custom status labeled Pending and assign it the Needs Info status type, the new status will appear under the Needs Info default status with a matching red font.

New status by type.png

Note: You cannot edit the status type of a custom status once it has been assigned. If you need to change the type, you will need to delete the status and create a new one with the correct type.

You can quickly reorder statuses within their set type by clicking and holding the Reorder icon to the left of the status, then dragging it to the new position in the set.

When you create a task hierarchy that has a parent task and subtasks, the status type of the subtasks will automatically roll up to the parent task. This helps save you and your team time so you don’t have to manually update the parent task status each time to match the hierarchy. 

How the subtasks’ statuses roll up depends on which status types they have. In the example below, you’ll see that the subtasks have various custom statuses that are in the Completed default type group, so the parent task’s status type automatically updates to Completed.

Completed status type.png

When there’s a combination of statuses—or the subtask statuses are all assigned the Needs Info type—the parent task status type will be Started.

Task hierarchy .png

How to Add a Task Status Set

  1. Hover over Settings in the left navigation and select Task Status Sets under the Customizations section.
  2. On the Task Status Sets page, click the Create Task Status Set button at the top of the page.
  3. Enter the status set Name in the Create Task Status Set modal that appears.
    Create Task Status Set modal.png
  4. Click Save. The new status set appears on the page.
  5. Locate the status set you just created, select the Add icon in-line with the status type you want to add the status to.
    Add task status button.png
  6. In the Add Task Status modal that appears, enter the Name and then click Save. The new custom task status appears in the set.
    Note: A maximum amount of 20 custom task statuses is allowed per set.
    Add Task Status modal.png
  7. To reorder statuses within a status type, click and hold the Reorder icon to the left of the status, then drag it to the new position.
    Note: Once you are finished with creating a task status set, you can start adding it to your projects. You can apply them during project creation, update an existing project from the Project Settings page, or update projects in bulk from the Project List.

 

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By Jennifer Goodsell
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