> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://beebole.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.
# Task planning: create, organize, and track tasks
> Tasks in Beebole are independent planning entities. Create them one by one or from a spreadsheet, organize statuses and subtasks, assign owners, and track time.
Tasks in Beebole are independent planning entities — units of work that you schedule, assign, and track time on. A task is not a sub-element of a project: tasks live on their own **Planning** page, and linking a task to a project is optional. Use tasks to plan the work to be done, and let your team track time directly on them.
To work with tasks, click **Planning** in the sidebar. The same tasks can be displayed in three views: the [Gantt chart](/help/documentation/gantt) for timelines, the [Kanban board](/help/documentation/kanban) for status columns, and the [Staffing view](/help/documentation/staffing) for planning by person.
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## How tasks relate to projects
[Projects](/help/documentation/projects) describe what hours are logged *into*; tasks describe the work *to be done*. The two are connected but independent:
* A task can exist without any project. You can plan, assign, and complete it entirely on the **Planning** page.
* A task can be linked to projects through its **Projects** attribute in the task detail panel.
* Time can be tracked on tasks directly, in the **Tasks** section of the [timesheet](/help/documentation/timesheets).
For general work that isn't planned as a task, track time on projects and subprojects instead.
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## Plannings
Every task belongs to a planning — a separate board with its own statuses and its own level names for the hierarchy. New Beebole accounts start with one planning named **Main planning**, with the statuses **Backlog**, **Queue**, **In progress**, and **Done**.
* **Switch plannings** — Click the planning name at the top of the **Planning** page and pick another one from the menu.
* **Create a planning** — In the same menu, type a name in the **Name of a new planning** field and click **Add**.
Statuses always belong to a planning, not to a project: each planning defines its own workflow. See [Statuses](#task-statuses) below.
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## Creating a task
Click **Planning** in the sidebar, and check that the right planning is selected at the top of the page.
Click the **Add Task** button. A form opens in the side panel.
Type the task name, and pick a status with the status selector below the name.
Click **Add new task** (or press **Enter**). The task appears in the active view, and you can fill in dates, owner, and other details from its panel.
Press **⌘+A** (Ctrl+A on Windows) anywhere on the **Planning** page to open the add form. If a task is currently open, the new task is created as its subtask.
### Adding many tasks at once
You can import a whole task list by pasting it from a spreadsheet — there is no file upload involved.
Click **Add Task**. Below the form, find the **Or add multiple entries** section.
Copy rows from a spreadsheet — one entry per line, using **Tab** or spaces to indent sub-levels — then click **Paste**. Indented lines become subtasks of the line above.
Beebole shows the entries **Ready to import** as a tree. Remove any line you don't want, then click **Add them all**.
Imported tasks get the status selected in the add form. After the import you can click **Undo** to remove everything you just added, or **New import** to paste another batch.
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## Task statuses
Statuses are the steps of a category's workflow — the same statuses that form the columns of the [Kanban board](/help/documentation/kanban). To edit them, open the **Task statuses** modal:
* On the Kanban board, click a column's name.
* In the task detail panel, click the gear button next to the status (tooltip: **Edit statuses**).
In the modal you can:
* **Add a status** — Type its name in the **Add new status** field and confirm.
* **Rename or recolor a status** — Click a status to edit its name or pick a new color.
* **Reorder statuses** — Drag a status up or down. The order defines the column order on the Kanban board.
* **Limit a status** — Set **Max tasks** to cap how many tasks the status can hold. See [WIP limits](/help/documentation/kanban#wip-limits-are-hard-limits).
* **Delete a status** — Only possible when the status holds no tasks (including archived ones). Every category must keep at least one status.
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## Assigning tasks
Beebole distinguishes the person responsible for a task from the people it is available to:
* **Owner** — The single person doing the task. Pick them in the task detail panel (**Select the owner**); a task can only have one owner. Next to the owner you can set **% FTE**, the share of their working time dedicated to the task — Beebole uses the owner's [work schedule](/help/documentation/work-schedule) and this percentage when fitting planned time between the task's dates.
* **Potential owners** — People or [tags](/help/documentation/tags) the task is assigned to. In filters, these appear as **Potential owner** and **Potential owner tag**.
Beebole can warn everyone involved before a task with no owner starts: the task manager and the assigned people are notified — the admins when the task has no manager. Configure the number of days in [Timesheet and Planning Settings](/help/documentation/timesheetSettings#reminders).
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## Subtasks and hierarchy
Tasks nest into subtasks, as deep as your plan requires. The hierarchy is shared by all views.
* **Create a subtask** — Hover over a task name in the Gantt task list and click the **+** button that appears, or select the task and press **⌘+A**.
* **Indent or outdent with the keyboard** — In the Gantt view, select a task and press **Tab** to make it a subtask of the task above it, or **Shift+Tab** to move it up one level.
* **Move a task under a different parent** — Hover over the breadcrumb above the task's name (in the detail panel or on a Kanban card), click the edit button (**Change parent**), and pick the new parent with **Choose a task**. The list only offers tasks from the same category.
* **Expand and collapse** — Click the chevron next to a parent task. **⌘+Click** the chevron to expand or collapse all.
A parent task rolls up its children: it shows the period spanned by its subtasks and their total **Planned in hours**, read-only.
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## Scheduling dates and planned time
Open a task's detail panel to set its schedule:
* **Dates** — Pick the start and end dates with the date-range picker.
* **Planned in hours** / **Planned in days** — Enter the planned amount of work. Next to the value, Beebole shows the maximum the owner's schedule allows between the task's dates (**Max value per schedule**).
* **Date locks** — Lock buttons flank the date picker (**Lock start date** and **Lock end date**). One edge is locked at a time — the start by default. When planned time no longer fits between the dates, Beebole moves the *unlocked* edge: with the end date locked, the start moves earlier; with the start locked, the end extends. When planned time overflows the period, a warning pill offers two one-click fixes: **Click to extend the unlocked date to fit planned time** or **Click to reduce planned time to capacity**.
If the owner already has another task with planned time in the same period, the panel shows an **Overlapping tasks causing overload** warning so you can rebalance.
To sequence tasks — making one start after another ends — use [dependencies in the Gantt chart](/help/documentation/gantt#task-dependencies).
***
## Tracking time on tasks
Time entries can be recorded directly against tasks:
* **From the timesheet** — People add rows in the **Tasks** section of their [timesheet](/help/documentation/timesheets) and log hours on a task, just like on a project.
* **From a Kanban card** — Hover over a card and click the clock button (**Add time**) to log time on that task for today. Once time is logged, the card shows a pill with the logged total next to the planned time (for example `4h / 8h`). See [Kanban board](/help/documentation/kanban#tracking-time-from-a-card).
Which plannings accept time entries is controlled by the **Record time on these plannings** setting, in the **Categories** tab of [Timesheet and Planning Settings](/help/documentation/timesheetSettings). Tasks in other plannings don't show the time button.
You can also let task statuses drive time records automatically with **Auto Timesheet from Planning** — choose a **Start** and an **End** status per planning, and moving a task into those statuses starts and ends its time records, as suggestions the person accepts or written directly into the timesheet. Set it up in the [Auto Timesheet from Planning tab](/help/documentation/timesheetSettings#auto-timesheet-from-planning).
From a person's or a project's action menu, **Go to tasks** jumps to the **Planning** page filtered on that person or project.
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## Descriptions, custom fields, and tags
Beyond scheduling, each task carries:
* **Description** — A rich-text panel for context, acceptance criteria, links, and file attachments, with @mentions to reference teammates. See [task descriptions](/help/documentation/kanban#task-descriptions) for the editor's features.
* **Custom fields** — Organization-defined fields (text, numbers, dates, URLs, booleans) that appear in the task detail panel. Define them in **Settings** > **Custom Field** and make them visible for tasks — visibility can even be limited to specific plannings. See [Custom fields](/help/documentation/custom-fields).
* **Tags** — Label tasks with [tags](/help/documentation/tags) to group and filter them across categories, and to report on them by team, client, or any dimension you define.
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## Archiving and deleting tasks
Each task has a **⋯** action menu — hover over its row in the Gantt view or its Kanban card — with **Duplicate**, **Rename**, **Archive**, **Unarchive**, and **Delete**.
* **Archive** hides the task from active views without losing its data or its time records. Use **Show Archived** in the page header to display archived tasks again, then **Unarchive** to restore one. On the Kanban board, a column's own menu can archive or unarchive every task in that status at once.
* **Delete** removes the task permanently. A toast appears with an **Undo** button right after deletion.
A task that has time records logged against it cannot be deleted — Beebole blocks the deletion and tells you whose time records are affected. Archive the task instead to keep historical data intact.
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## Viewing tasks your way
The **Planning** page shows your tasks through saved views — tabs above the task list. Click **Add a view** and pick **Gantt chart**, **Kanban**, or **Staffing**; each view remembers its own settings (columns, grouping, period, or card fields). Use the **Filters** button to narrow any view by task, status, owner, potential owner, project, or tags — the button shows the active filter count, and toggling it off keeps the filters for later.
Schedule tasks on a timeline, link dependencies, and spot overloaded owners with the workload heatmap.
Move task cards through status columns, set WIP limits, and start time records from a card.
Book people onto projects on a per-person timeline and balance workload against capacity.
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## Related content
How people log hours — including time tracked on tasks.
Control which plannings accept time entries and configure Auto Timesheet from Planning.
Add structured data to tasks and use it in reports.
Set up the project structure your time entries are logged against.
## Frequently asked questions
No. Tasks in Beebole are independent planning entities with their own page, statuses, and hierarchy. You can link a task to projects through its **Projects** attribute, but a task doesn't need a project to exist, be assigned, or have time tracked on it.
Copy rows from a spreadsheet and paste them into Beebole. Click **Add Task**, find **Or add multiple entries**, click **Paste**, review the list, and click **Add them all**. Indent lines with Tab to create subtasks. There is no CSV file upload — the import works by pasting.
Only on tasks in the plannings selected under **Record time on these plannings** in Beebole's **Timesheet and Planning Settings**. Tasks in those plannings appear in the **Tasks** section of the timesheet and show the **Add time** button on their Kanban cards.
The **Owner** is the single person doing the task — Beebole uses the owner's work schedule and **% FTE** to fit planned time between the task's dates, and a task can only have one owner. **Potential owners** are the people or tags the task is assigned to; in filters they appear as **Potential owner** and **Potential owner tag**.
Archive it. Archiving hides the task from active views while keeping its time records for reporting, and you can unarchive it anytime. Deleting is permanent, and Beebole blocks the deletion entirely if time records exist against the task.