How task management software works: a task from raised to approved
Four things to set up, six stages a task passes through, and a clear answer to who does which part. No jargon and no tour.
Four things to set up, in this order
Structure before content. Every hour spent here saves several hours of retrofitting once there are two hundred tasks in the system.
Departments
They decide who is eligible for which queue and how reports group. Creating them after people means reassigning everyone, so they come first.
Roles
Built from the permissions people actually need. A base role of Admin, Manager or Employee is a seeding template and grants nothing at runtime.
People
Added individually, or imported from a spreadsheet in one pass. Each gets a role and a department at the moment they are created.
Task forms
One per request type you handle regularly, built from twenty field types, with questions that can appear only for certain answers. Every workspace starts with a default form, so work can be raised before you build anything.
The reasoning behind the order — and what to do in each of the first four weeks — is in the task management guide.
Six stages, one task ID
A task keeps the same ID and code through all of these, which is what keeps its history, its audit entries and its timing figures attached to a single record.
- 1
Raised
Someone creates the task — from the New task button on any screen — against a form, with a priority and a due date. They name an assignee, several people, or a whole department.
- 2
Accepted
The assignee — or the first eligible department member — accepts. That moves the task to In progress and stamps when work began. There is no separate start action.
- 3
Worked
Progress updates, comments and attachments each write an activity entry with a timestamp, so the trail builds itself rather than being maintained. Attaching files and videos needs the Media Library module and paid storage.
- 4
Handed over, if it moves
A handover records the previous owner, the next owner, work completed, work pending, notes and the progress figure at that moment — on the same task ID.
- 5
Blocked, if it stalls
Unable to Complete with a reason moves the task to Blocked and puts it on a manager’s queue. Being stuck stops looking like being slow.
- 6
Reviewed
Submitted work is approved or rejected by the creator, or anyone with the review permission. Rejection returns it as Reopened, and a completed task can be reopened later the same way.
The three roles, and what they can reach
Access always comes from the permission list stored on a role — this table describes the seeded defaults, not a hard-coded hierarchy.
| Employee | Manager | Admin | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Raise a task for a person | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Raise a task for a department | No | Departments they manage | Any department |
| Accept or join department work | Yes, where eligible | Yes | Yes |
| Hand a task over | Whatever they hold | Yes | Yes |
| Review submitted work | Only tasks they raised | Yes | Yes |
| Run the 22 built-in reports | No | Yes | Yes |
| Read the audit log | No | No | Yes |
Any of these can be narrowed or widened by editing the role, and custom roles can be built from individual permission keys — see how roles and permissions work.
What the app does while you work
Three things that are true on every screen, once the setup above is done and tasks are moving.
You are told, and kept current
Assignment, handover, creator notes, work waiting on your review, overdue tasks and department claims all raise a notification in the app — and while you are signed in, task lists, the open task and dashboard figures update in place rather than waiting for a refresh. With the WhatsApp module, reminders before a deadline, overdue alerts and a daily list of each person’s pending tasks can reach their phone.
The manual is inside the product
Where the Guide module is switched on, a searchable help centre with screenshot-led articles covering tasks, team, departments, reports and WhatsApp. Each person sees the articles that match what their role and their workspace actually have, so nobody reads instructions for a screen they cannot open.
Light or dark, per person
The interface follows your device’s light or dark setting and can be switched by hand at any time. It is remembered per person, so one teammate working in a dark warehouse office does not change anyone else’s screen.
Which events raise a notification, and how the in-app centre differs from the optional WhatsApp channel, is set out on the notifications page. Work that takes several steps can carry a checklist on the task itself.
The capabilities behind each stage
Read any of these for the detail the summary above deliberately leaves out.
Task management
One task ID from the moment work is raised until it is approved, with an owner, a due date and a status at every point.
See the featureTask handovers
Move work between people without duplicating the task — the previous owner, what they finished and what they left are all recorded.
See the featureDepartment tasks
Raise work for a whole department instead of guessing a name. Eligible members are notified and either one claims it or several work it together.
See the featureWorkflow management
A defined lifecycle every task follows — assigned, accepted, in progress, handed over, reviewed, approved — with illegal transitions refused.
See the featureFrequently asked questions
Departments, roles and an imported staff list are usually an hour for a team of twenty to thirty. Task forms and recurring schedules take another hour or two, and are worth doing before the first real task rather than after fifty of them.
No, and it is usually a mistake. Let in-flight work finish where it started and raise only new work in TaskIt. A migration produces a day of data entry and then two systems in parallel, and the old one wins because it already has everything in it.
Open their dashboard, accept the work assigned to them or claim something from their department’s queue, update progress as they go, hand a task over if it moves, mark it Unable to Complete if they are stuck, and submit it when it is done.
No. TaskIt runs in a web browser on a phone or a desktop, and each workspace has its own address on the app domain. If you want an icon on your home screen or desktop, you can install it as an app from Chrome, Edge or iPhone Safari — no app store needed.
Where the Guide module is switched on for your workspace, there is a searchable help centre inside TaskIt, with screenshot-led articles covering tasks, team, departments, roles, forms, recurring work, reports, WhatsApp, files and settings. Each person is shown the articles that match what their role and workspace actually have, so an employee is not reading instructions for screens they cannot open.
Yes. The interface follows your device’s light or dark setting and can also be switched by hand. The choice is remembered for that person on that device and does not affect anyone else in the workspace.
Nothing is deleted. You choose a billing term — monthly, six-monthly or annual — and pay ₹45 per active team member per month plus GST. The three terms are feature-identical; the term only changes how often you are invoiced.
Going deeper
Task management guide
How to introduce task management to a team that has never had it — the sequence, the decisions and the ways it usually fails.
OpenEmployee productivity guide
What to measure for task-based work, what measuring the wrong thing does to a team, and how to have the conversation.
OpenWorkflow management guide
How to write down a process people will follow, decide which steps to enforce, and avoid building a workflow nobody can change.
OpenTask management software
What this category of software does, how it works, what to look for, and how to tell the kinds apart.
OpenSet it up this afternoon
Departments, roles and an imported staff list are usually an hour. The trial gives you thirty days to decide whether it fits.