Work with tasks

Tasks are the unit of work in Onplana. Every project view (list, board, Gantt, calendar) is a different lens on the same tasks, so the patterns you adopt here propagate everywhere. The teams that finish projects on time aren’t using exotic tools, they’re keeping titles short, assignees real, and statuses honest. This article covers the five statuses, four priorities, the field set, and the small habits that make the difference.

Statuses

A task is always in one of five statuses:

• To Do: not started. Every new task begins here.
• In Progress: actively being worked.
• Review: done but awaiting a check.
• Done: finished. Done tasks drive the project’s progress rollup.
• Blocked: cannot proceed until something is resolved.

Change status from the task’s edit view, by dragging the card on the Kanban board, or inline in the task list.

Priorities

Four levels: Low, Medium (the default), High, and Critical. Priority is a sorting and filtering signal across the list and board views; it does not change any scheduling math.

The fields on a task

• Assignee: one project member responsible for the task. Filter any view by assignee to see a person’s plate.
• Start date and Due date: drive the calendar, the Gantt timeline, and overdue indicators.
• Estimated hours: feeds capacity planning, and when every task in a project has an estimate, project progress becomes effort-weighted (see Manage project status and progress).
• Description: free text with room for context.
• Tags: shared, color-coded labels. See Tag work with shared labels.
• Custom fields: your organization’s own fields, if any are defined. See Create custom fields.

Subtasks

Any task can be broken into subtasks: open the task and use the Add subtask and press Enter quick-add at the bottom. Subtasks carry their own status and progress and roll up into the parent. They are one level deep by design; if a subtask needs its own subtasks, it probably deserves to be a task.

Tip

The new-task form is deliberately short: title, priority, assignee, dates. Status, dependencies, and subtasks live in the task’s edit view, because they only make sense once the task exists. Create fast, then enrich.

Create a task

1. Open a project and go to the Tasks tab (or any other work view).

2. Select the add-task button, give the task a title, and set whatever else you know now: priority, assignee, dates, estimated hours.

3. Open the task afterwards to add subtasks, link dependencies, attach files, or set a repeat rule.

Best practices

1. Write the title as the outcome, not the action. “Implement webhook signature verification” reads as “this is what’s needed”; “Sign webhooks” is ambiguous (sign with what? for whom?). The clearer title saves a Slack DM at standup the next morning.
2. Estimate every task you intend to finish this sprint. When even half the tasks have estimates, the project progress rollup gets dramatically more accurate. The Onplana progress math is effort-weighted only when estimates are present; without them, every task counts equally regardless of size.
3. Use Blocked as a flag, not a parking lot. A Blocked task should have a comment explaining what’s blocking it and who owns the unblock. The status turns the card red precisely so it stands out and gets addressed at standup; leaving tasks Blocked silently for two weeks defeats the purpose.
4. Promote subtasks to tasks when they outgrow one level. Subtasks are deliberately one level deep. If a subtask is developing its own subtasks, that’s a signal it should be a task with its own subtasks instead. Don’t fight the depth limit; refactor.

Troubleshooting / common pitfalls

• The task I just created isn’t on the Gantt. A task only appears on the Gantt timeline when it has a start date. Open the task, set both start and due dates, and it shows up immediately. The List, Board, Calendar, and Burndown views all work without dates; only Gantt requires them.
• The progress percentage doesn’t change when I mark a task Done. The project progress is auto-calculated from all tasks; a single Done task on a 50-task project moves the number by ~2%. If you expected a bigger jump, check whether you’re looking at project progress (rollup) versus the individual task progress (single task).
• My assignee dropdown is empty. The dropdown only shows members of the project, not the whole organization. Open the project’s Members tab and add the person there first. Members + project membership is intentional, it prevents “drive-by assignments” to people not on the project.
• I lost a task and it’s not in the recycle bin filter. Two causes: (a) someone changed the task’s parent so it’s now a subtask of another task (open the original parent and look inside); (b) the task was archived as part of a sprint closure, in which case it lives on the completed sprint. Search by exact title in the global search bar to locate it.

How this combines with other features

• Tasks + Sprints. When tasks have estimated hours, dragging them into a sprint lets the team see capacity vs commitment immediately. The sprint board shows the sprint’s burndown chart, and undone tasks at sprint end can be pulled back to the backlog in one click.
• Tasks + Custom fields. Org-wide custom fields appear on every task in every project; project-scoped fields appear only inside the project they belong to. Both kinds are filterable in the list view and exportable to Reports. See Create custom fields.
• Tasks + AI Assistant. Ask the in-app AI assistant “what tasks are overdue on <project>?” or “summarize tasks tagged bug across my projects”. It uses the same task data you see; the answers cite the tasks back. See Chat with Onplana AI.
• Tasks + Agents. When an AI agent is connected over MCP, it can be assigned to tasks the same way a human is. The agent picks up the task on its next poll (or immediately if the agent has a registered webhook). See Assign work to an agent.

Coming from another tool

Tool	Mapping
Asana	Tasks ≈ tasks; sections ≈ epics (Pro+); subtasks one-deep here vs Asana’s unlimited
Jira	Issue types map to tags; status ≈ status; subtasks ≈ subtasks (Jira allows deeper hierarchies, refactor)
Trello	Card ≈ task; checklist items ≈ subtasks; labels ≈ tags
Microsoft Project	Task ≈ task; duration ≈ start+due dates; %Complete ≈ progress (auto-calc); Resource ≈ Assignee (one only)
Linear	Issue ≈ task; cycle ≈ sprint; priority levels map directly

FAQs

Can a task have more than one assignee? A task has a single assignee, which keeps ownership unambiguous. When several people share a piece of work, split it into subtasks and assign each one.

What does Blocked actually do? Blocked is a visibility signal: the card turns red on the board and the task stands out in every view. It does not freeze the task or stop edits; it tells the team where to look.

Who can edit a task? That depends on your role in the project. By default, project members edit the tasks assigned to them, project managers and owners edit any task, and viewers are read-only. Your admin can tune these defaults in the organization’s permission settings.

Can subtasks have their own subtasks? No, subtasks are one level deep by design. If a subtask develops its own structure, promote it to a top-level task with its own subtasks underneath.

Do tasks have a hard limit on size or count? Practical limits are very high (10,000+ tasks per project is fine). The Gantt chart starts to feel slow above a few thousand tasks; if your project is that big, breaking it into multiple projects under a single portfolio is usually a better mental model anyway.

Can I bulk-edit tasks? Yes. In the list view, select multiple rows (Shift+click for ranges, Ctrl/Cmd+click for individuals) and use the bulk-action toolbar that appears at the bottom. Bulk changes for status, priority, assignee, and tags are supported.

What happens to a task when its assignee leaves the org? The task stays; the assignee field becomes empty (marked “Was <name>” for the historical audit). Reassign the task to a current member from the task edit view, and any history of the prior assignment is preserved.

Related

• Use the Kanban board, drag-and-drop status changes for the same tasks
• Plan on the Gantt chart, timeline view with dependencies (Pro+)
• Link task dependencies, connect tasks with finish-to-start and the three other link types