EARLY ACCESS!
The Task Status Sets feature is now available in Early Access, giving users like you the opportunity to adopt new features early and manage change for your organization. To get started, have an Account Administrator activate the feature from the Early Access page.
Overview
Task Status Sets and custom task statuses give you more versatility and consistency when it comes to prioritizing and managing all your project tasks across your account.
Each status set contains the four standard task statuses (Not Started, Started, Needs Info, and Completed) as well as any custom task statuses you’ve added to it. All additional custom statuses you add are organized by status type.
Task: Status
attribute or add it alongside the Task: Status Type
attribute.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.
Getting Started with Task Status Sets
When you activate Task Status Sets, an account default status set—which includes the four standard statuses of Not Started, Started, Needs Info, and Completed—will be applied to all projects that don’t contain issues. Any projects with issues can be manually updated by choosing either the default set or a new set that you have created.
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 used the same statuses as other task types (e.g. tasks, milestones, deliverables).
By not automatically updating all projects to the default Task Status Set, you'll have time to create the custom Task Status Sets for different types of projects in Kantata. This also lets you create or adjust statuses specifically for issues.
Are you happy with the four 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
Quickly find out which projects have issues, using the following resources:
- 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 that you need to update.
- 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.
Note: This needs to be selected either on the Project Settings page or during project creation.
- Train account members on which statuses should be selected for tasks based on the different Task Status Sets available to different projects.
-
Update Insights reports to include the
Task: Status
attribute. By default, all reports using theTask: Current Status
attribute have been updated toTask: Status Type
attribute—which consists of the 4 status types that were previously the only task status names.
IMPORTANT
If you use any integrations—especially custom-built integrations—you may also need to update them to do the following:
- Set the Task Status Set on projects
- Set custom task statuses on tasks
If you have an integration that is attempting to set statuses that don't exist on a project—such as an issue status or a custom task status that isn't included in the project’s Task Status Set, most of these will map to Started (green), but we will give our best attempt at mapping it to the appropriate status.
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
Upcoming Releases
Throughout the Early Access period, additional features will be added to support custom task statuses and Task Status Sets. The following enhancements will be available before general release (outside of the standard monthly release):
- Custom task statuses in global Tasks Tracker
- Bulk updating a Task Status Set from the Project List
- Updating Task Status Sets from the API
- Changes to how custom task statuses display in Task History, Project History, and Recent History
- Custom task statuses in local Gantt
As the items above release, they will be removed from this list and added to the weekly Additional Enhancements in the Release Notes.
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
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.
Task Status Types
Each task status—both default and custom statuses—is organized by status type and the associated type color. The four 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.
You can quickly reorder statuses within their set type in Project Settings clicking and holding the Reorder icon to the left of the status and 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.
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.
How to Add a Task Status Set
- Hover over Settings in the left navigation and select Task Status Sets under the Customizations section.
- On the Task Status Sets page, click the Create Task Status Set button at the top of the page.
- Enter the status set Name in the Create Task Status Set modal that appears.
- Click Save. The new status set appears on the page.
How to Add a Custom Task Status
- Hover over Settings in the left navigation and select Task Status Sets under the Customizations section. The Task Status Sets page opens.
- In the desired status set, select the Add
- In the Add Task Status modal that appears, enter the Name and then click Save. The new custom task status appears in the set.
How to Assign a Status Set to an Existing Project
- Click Projects in the left navigation and then select your project on the Projects page.
- In the project workspace, click the Actions
- In the General section, click the Task Status Sets drop-down and select the set you want to use for this project.
Note: If the Task Status Sets field is not editable, you either do not have the appropriate access group set permission level or there is a task(s) that is already assigned a status from the current set and must be reassigned to a default status (Not Started, Started, Needs Info, and Completed) before the status set can be updated. - Click Update Project in the top-right corner of the page. The task status set is applied and the set’s statuses are now available to select in the project.
Related Articles
Comments
12 comments
This article has been updated to include information on attributes for task statuses that will be available in Insights today.
This article has been updated to include an Upcoming Releases section.
This article has been updated to include a video.
This article has been updated to clarify plan information.
The Upcoming Releases section of this article has been updated, as custom task statuses are now available in the Filters modal in Task Tracker.
This article has been updated to remove released features from the Upcoming Releases section:
This article has been updated to add global Tasks Tracker back to the Upcoming Releases section.
This article has been updated to remove "Task Tracker exports" from the Upcoming Releases section, as custom status information is now available there.
This article has been updated to remove "Data Exporter" from the Upcoming Releases section, as Task Status Sets information is now available there and custom task status values will be available shortly in the exported CSV files.
This article has been updated to include a new section "Getting Started with Task Status Sets", which includes information on what action is required upon activation of the feature.
This article has been updated to remove "Global Tasks Tracker" from the Upcoming Releases section—as custom task statuses are now visible, can be updated, and can be filtered in the Status column there.
Additional items have been added to the Upcoming Releases section and minor changes have been made to the new Getting Started with Task Status Sets section.
This article has been updated to include information on managing Task Status Sets permissions for Access Groups and to re-add custom task statuses on Global Task Tracker to the Upcoming Releases section, as this feature has been temporarily removed.
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