Tasks are a great way for you or any staff in your firm never miss an important to-do.

Tasks can be assigned to specific staff members and given due dates, creating firm-wide accountability.

If you have a series of tasks that repeat over and over every time you open a matter or work on a specific type of matter, you likely want to create a workflow. 

Workflows are a series of repetitive tasks that you can use to auto-assign Tasks based on an action or critical date. Learn more about Workflows.

Tasks Basics

• From a matter or the home screen action bar, select the Task button.
  • Assign tasks to the appropriate mater if you are creating them from the home screen. 

• There are only a few required fields to create a simple task
  • Name of the Task: What you need to get done.
  • Priority: You can set the priority level of the Task. You can set a Task to Urgent, High, Medium, Low, or No Priority. Priorities will appear on the global Tasks view, the Tasks tab on an individual matter, and Daily Digest emails. 
  • Assigned to: Select a staff member. You can assign a task to multiple people.
  • Due: Select a due date
  • Matter: The matter the task is relevant for. If you are creating a task from a matter, the matter will be tagged by default.

• Tasks have optional additional options.
  • Categories: You can create custom categories for your tasks. You can use these categories to organize your tasks in the Task View.
  • Reminders: Set reminder notifications for the task.
  • Details: Any specific notes you want to leave yourself about the task.
  • Duration: Add an estimated duration for AutoTime entries. Since you may not know how long the task will take, the best practice is often to leave this blank and manually enter the appropriate time later.
  • Sub tasks: On the right side of a task, you can add a checklist of sub-tasks
  • Attach Documents: Link to a document from your existing Files or link to a Form & Template to allow for quick creation of a template.
  • Add Comments, View Task History: Attach any file from a matter, add status comments, and see the history of the task over time.

• Select save to save the task. All tasks will appear in your Task tab of a matter
  • Use the filters on the left side to change what tasks you can view.
  • You can sort the tasks by name, category, due date, completion date, responsible staff member, date of task creation.
  • You can also review if the tasks have been assigned to a workflow by right-clicking on the gray column headers and selecting Workflow.
    • This feature is only applicable to tasks created in Smokeball Version 8.5 and above.

• Tasks can also be accessed through the Task View and Daily Digest. You can right-click on an existing task to set its priority. 

Did You Know

If you are using AutoTime, the user that completes the task will see the task appear on the entry.

You can export Tasks to Excel if you need a printable list. 

Tasks can also be assigned to a matter in other places in Smokeball.

Hyperlinks can be added to both tasks and sub-tasks. Click on the link to automatically open the website in your default web browser.