Tasks

Create tasks for your team and your clients, ask clients for files, forms, signatures and contracts, and review their work.

Tasks move a project forward. A task can be internal work for your team, or a request to your client, such as “Upload your brand assets” or “Sign the agreement”, that they complete in the portal. This page explains how tasks work, what clients see, and how to create, review, and complete them.

How tasks work

• Stage: every task belongs to a stage of the project. See Stages.
• Assignees: a task can be assigned to several people at once, both teammates and clients who are members of the project. See Members.
• Visibility: every task is either Visible to client or Team only. Only tasks visible to the client can appear in the client portal. New tasks start as Team only, unless you add a step for the client or create the task from a client step, and the dialog always shows which one you picked.
• Actions: a task can ask the client to do something specific. When every action on a task is done, the task completes on its own, or moves to In review if it requires review.
• Due date: a calendar day, without a time. Everyone sees the same date, whatever their time zone, and a task becomes overdue the day after its due date.
• Discussion and activity: every task has a discussion thread and an activity timeline.

Task statuses

When clients see a task

A client sees a task in their portal when all of these are true:

• The task is Visible to client and is not a Draft or Archived.
• Its stage is shown in the portal and is Active or Completed.
• The client has portal access to the project.

Clients can only complete actions on tasks that are assigned to them. Other visible tasks are shown for information.

Task actions

Add actions in the Actions section of a task to tell clients exactly what you need. Click Add action and pick a type. Clients see the actions in the order you list them; drag an action by its handle to move it.

• A task can have several File upload, Form and Embed actions, for example one upload for logo files and another for product photos. It can have one Contract and one Signature; once added, those show “One per task” in the menu.
• Give each file upload a name in What to upload, and each embed a Label. The client sees it as the title of that step, and you see it on the task, so two uploads on one task are easy to tell apart. A form action is titled with the form’s name.
• Open an action and click Preview as client to see that action the way your client will, including the form fields and the contract text.
• Changing the form on a form action the client already submitted reopens the action, so the client is asked to fill in the new form. If the task was In review or Completed, it goes back to Incomplete. The earlier answers are kept under the old form’s responses in Forms.
• Remove action removes only that action. If the client has already finished it, Upclient asks you to confirm first.
• Only workspace Owners and Admins can add a Contract action. The contract action shows whether a countersignature is required, how many blanks are left to fill in, and a link to open the contract.
• A file upload action stays complete only while the required files are attached. If a required file is removed, the action reopens.

Embedded content

Paste a link or the embed code a service gives you into Link or embed code. The preview under the field shows what your client will see.

• Share the document with “Anyone with the link” in Google or Figma, or your client sees a sign-in screen instead.
• YouTube videos play from YouTube’s privacy-enhanced domain (youtube-nocookie.com).
• Only https:// addresses are embedded. A link that starts with anything else, such as javascript:, is refused.
• Links and embed codes from the services above open as the service’s own page in a frame: the service can run its player or booking widget, but it can’t read or change the portal.
• Other embed code, including code with scripts, runs in a fully isolated frame with no access to the portal, your clients’ sign-in, or other services’ cookies. Some widgets need those to work; use the service’s link instead if one doesn’t load.

How to choose a form or contract

The Form and Contract actions use the same picker, Select a form or Select a contract. Type to search all three groups at once:

• Your forms or Your contracts: your forms and contracts that aren’t archived. Empty forms are greyed out with “Empty — add a question to use”, and empty contracts with “Empty — add the agreement text to use”; neither can be picked.
• From the library: ready-made forms or contracts you haven’t added yet. Picking one adds a ready-to-use copy to your workspace and selects it in one step.
• Create new: build a new form or write a new contract without leaving the task.

If a form or contract is emptied, archived, or deleted before you save, saving fails with a message naming it. Pick another one, or fill it in or restore it. Archiving a form or contract never affects tasks that already use it: clients can still fill in an archived form and sign a contract already sent. The same picker is used in project template tasks and for the linked form on portal pages.

How to create a task

1. Open the project’s Tasks tab and click New task, or click Add task inside a stage. New task puts the task in the first stage that isn’t finished yet; Add task puts it in that stage. In a list, press C to open New task.
2. Enter a title and, optionally, click Add description.
3. Click Add action for each thing the client should complete.
4. On the right, choose the Stage, the people under Assigned to, and a Due date.
5. Turn on Visible to client if clients should see the task. Team-only tasks can’t be assigned to clients and don’t offer review or reminders.
6. Turn on Requires review if someone on your team must approve the work, and optionally choose a Reviewer.
7. Turn on Due date reminders to email assigned clients as the due date approaches. It needs a due date first. See Task reminders.
8. Add Attachments if you want to share files with the task.
9. Click Save as draft to keep working on it, or Save & publish to make it Active.
10. If you chose Save & publish, check the Publish task? confirmation. It names the people the task will be assigned to and says whether clients will see it in the portal. Click Publish.

Publishing makes the task Active and, if it’s visible to the client, shows it to clients on the project. You can switch it back to Draft later.

If the stage you picked is already completed, the dialog says so: saving the task reopens the stage, because it has work left again.

When you edit a task, the bottom of the dialog shows Unsaved changes until you click Save changes. Cancel asks before discarding them.

What you see when you open a task

• Things to sort out: anything that stops the client from acting is listed in one box at the top, each with its own button, for example Invite Maya or Set project dates.
• Actions: each action is a row you can open and close, with its state: Done, Waiting on client, Waiting on you (a contract the client has signed and you need to countersign) or Not sent yet. With two or more actions, a progress line shows how many are done.
• Discussion and Activity: two tabs on the right. You can hide the panel to read a long contract at full width.
• What it’s waiting on: the bottom of the dialog says what the task is waiting for, for example “Waiting on Maya to sign. It completes when both of you have signed.”
• Visibility: the chip next to the title says Visible to client, Team only or Draft — client can’t see it yet. Click it to change it. Showing a task to the client asks once, “Show this task to Maya Okafor?”; hiding it doesn’t ask.
• Quick edits: click the status next to the title, Assigned to or the due date in the line under it to change them without opening Edit task. Changes save straight away. Overdue due dates are shown in red.
• Jump to signatures: on a contract, this button skips the contract text and takes you to the signature slots.

How to send a reminder

When a task is waiting on a client, click Send reminder at the bottom of the task. Each assigned client who can sign in to the portal gets an email and a portal notification that names the task, says what is still to do, and links to it. The reminder is recorded on the task’s Activity tab.

• You can send one reminder per task every 60 minutes. After sending, the button shows when the last one went out.
• The button is disabled, with the reason shown when you point at it, if no assigned client can see the project in the portal yet, a client has no email address, or the contract hasn’t been sent.
• It isn’t shown on drafts, completed tasks, tasks waiting for your review, or tasks with nothing for the client to do.
• Automatic reminders before a due date are separate. See Task reminders.

If a task is shown in the portal but no client is assigned, Upclient lists it under things to sort out. Click Assign with the primary contact’s name to assign them, or set a primary contact on the project first. See Project Members.

If clients are assigned but none of them can see the project in the portal yet, because they haven’t been invited or their access was removed, Upclient warns that they can’t act on the task, for example “Maya Okafor can’t see this project in the portal, so they can’t act on this”. The warning appears on the task and in the task lists. Click Invite Maya (or Invite 2 clients) to invite them or give them access from there; it uses the same confirmation as the Members tab. Clients without an email address, or whose sign-in is turned off, have to be fixed on their contact first.

How to review and complete a task

• Complete: set the status to Completed when the work is done. Tasks with actions complete on their own once every action is done. A task whose contract isn’t signed yet asks you to confirm before it’s marked Completed; workflows never complete it.
• Ready for review: when a task moves to In review, the reviewer gets one “Ready for review” email. With no reviewer chosen, the project owner gets it.
• Approve: a task that requires review must be In review before it can be approved. Click Approve or press ⌘+Enter (Ctrl+Enter on Windows). If a reviewer is chosen, only that reviewer can approve it or request changes; everyone else sees “Waiting for Olive to review” at the bottom of the task.
• Request changes: click Request changes, describe what the client should update, and click Send request. The task goes back to Incomplete and the assigned clients get one email, “Olive asked for changes to Upload brand assets”, with your full note and a link to the task. The portal shows your note at the top of the task with its date, and the activity timeline records it. This is available on tasks that are visible to the client, have a form, signature, or file upload action, and are In review or Completed.
  • Forms and signatures reopen so the client can fill in the form or sign again.
  • File uploads reopen so the client can upload new files. The files they sent before stay on the task, labelled Previous upload (sent back), so nothing is lost.
  • Contracts and embeds can’t be sent back this way. To get a contract signed again, edit the contract instead. See Contracts.

Discussion and attachments

• The Discussion on each task is a conversation between your team and the clients assigned to the task.
• The comment box says Clients see this when assigned clients will see your comment. Turn on the Team only switch before sending to keep a comment visible to your team only; the box then says Only your team sees this. On a Team only task there is no switch: every comment stays with your team.
• If someone else saved the task after you opened it, your change isn’t saved and Upclient says “This task was changed by Olive Owner just now. Reload to see their changes.” Click Reload, then make your change again. Task lists also refresh when you come back to the browser tab.
• From a comment’s menu you can delete it or create a new task from it. The new task is prefilled with the comment’s text.
• Task attachments also appear in the project’s Files. If the task is shown in the portal, its attachments are shared with clients too.
• The task’s activity timeline records changes such as status, stage, assignee, and due date updates, attached files, submitted forms, and signatures. The most important ones also appear in the project’s Activity panel, opened from the summary under the project name.

Task reminders

When Due date reminders is on, Upclient emails the clients assigned to the task:

• 7 days, 3 days, and 1 day before the due date, and on the due date;
• then every 3 days while the task is overdue.

Reminders are sent at 9:00 AM in your workspace time zone, and only while the task is Active or Incomplete, shown in the portal, and has a due date. Clients can’t turn task reminders off themselves.

Your tasks across projects

Tasks in the sidebar lists tasks from every project in one place, and it’s the first page you see after signing in. Switch between four views:

• Mine: tasks assigned to you or waiting for your review.
• All: every task in your projects.
• Needs review: tasks that are In review, waiting for your team to approve them.
• Waiting on client: tasks the client can see that are Active or Incomplete and have a client step still open or a client assigned, in active projects. Tasks whose client has no portal access yet are left out of the count and flagged No portal access in the lists.

Needs review and Waiting on client show how many tasks are in each view. In every view you can filter by status, assignee and due date, sort, and search to find what needs your attention. Tasks in archived or on-hold projects are hidden from the task lists and the counts.

• In the lists, the row’s Assigned to picker lets you pick several people; a task assigned to more than one person shows stacked avatars with “+N”. Clients aren’t offered on Team only tasks.
• Deleting a task warns you about the form answers, uploaded files and signatures that will be lost with it.
• List shortcuts, such as C for New task, don’t fire while a dialog or a task is open.