Tasks
Tasks are the smallest unit of work in Socratic. Tasks live in workstreams, which is where your work phases (e.g. To Do, Doing, Done) are set.
A task belongs to one workstream at a time, though they can be moved from one workstream to another as as needed. Tasks may also optionally be associated to objectives.
Creating a task
To create a new task, click the “New task” button at the top of the sidebar menu—or simply type n + t from anywhere in the app.
You can also use the + icon at the top of any workstream board phase to create a task in that phase.
Managing a task
The body text of a task can be formatted with Markdown. To summon the Markdown editor, double click any text.
A few things to note about task attributes:
Effort: The estimated effort for a task is generated automatically.
Workstream: click to change which workstream a task belongs to. This may be useful, for example, if tasks move from one functional area to another (e.g. from Design to Engineering.)
Priority: The priority designation is binary; a task is either critical, or not. This is to avoid priority sprawl ("Very High" "Somewhat High" "High" "Medium" "Medium-Low" etc. etc.), which is only another data entry tax on task creation, and which people generally ignore if anything less than critical.
Type: For similar reasons, a task is either a defect, or not. Labels may be used to designate other work types as needed.
Blocked: A task may be marked as blocked by another task, and/or a person. The person blocker may be relevant in cases when a decision is needed, or there's an open question, or generally someone has some operation to perform before the task can be completed. When blocking a task by person, a comment is required. The blocker will receive notification. Socratic also provides an interactive dependency map for viewing and managing blocking relationships.
Attachments: Single-page attachments, such as screenshots or gifs, may be copied or dragged and dropped onto the task description itself. Other file types may be added in the Attachments section.
For each task, the detail also shows:
All task activity;
Any code activity, when Git integration is enabled.
Clone a task (and other quick actions)
In the upper-right of task detail are icons for quick actions:
Clone a task: makes a copy of the task, with all attributes except for: comments, attachments, assignee, blocked / blocking / related tasks, effort, and due date.
Copy a link to the task
Copy the task key for git branch naming (if using git integration)
Subscribe to task updates
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