Tasks and Pipeline Steps

Tasks are used to track each unit of work that needs to be done as part of a workflow. Tasks can be linked to one parent entity in the "Link" field, such as an Asset, Shot, or Sequence. Tasks also hold schedule info, including start and end dates, and duration. Tasks are assigned to the people who need to work on them, and then automatically appear on their My Tasks page.

Tasks page

Pipeline Steps and Task Creation

Before you dive in and create Tasks in Flow Production Tracking, you should first define a Task Pipeline.

A Task Pipeline is a set of Steps that define a workflow for making a thing (eg: Assets, Shots, etc.). You can think of Pipeline Steps as containers for Tasks, or as a parent Task. Because the workflows for building different types of things will naturally have different steps, Flow Production Tracking allows you to define Pipelines per entity type. So for example, you can have a set of Pipeline Steps for Assets, and a different set of Pipeline Steps for Shots. You can create a set of Pipeline Steps that is very high-level, or very detailed, but the most common approach is to define the pipeline by the departments involved.

The screenshot below shows a Shot Pipeline consisting of five steps (Layout, Animation, FX, Lighting and Comp).

Shots

Each of the Shots shown in the screenshot has one or more Tasks linked to it. Each Task in turn, is assigned to one of the five Steps. Note that each of the Shot Pipeline Steps shown above is in its default closed state (showing only the Task status). When these columns are expanded, they show the detailed Task information, like who’s assigned to the Task, and the due date.

Pipeline step

Editing a Tasks Pipeline Step

Edit a Task's Pipeline Step the way you would edit any other Task field: double-click into the field, and then change its value. You can even set the value to “None.” The only hard restriction when you change the Step is that you must choose another Step for the same entity type. For example, if a Task is linked to a Shot, that Task can never be assigned an Asset Pipeline Step—it must be assigned a Step of “None” or a defined Shot Step.

Edit step

Creating Tasks

It's worth taking a moment to mention one of the reasons that Tasks in Flow Production Tracking are cool. When you make a Task and assign it to someone, that's not just for your schedule, but also to send that Task to someone and communicate the work they need to do. That Task will appear in their My Tasks page automatically, with links to all the info they need. Read more about My Tasks here.

Generally, you'll want to create a Task for each step in your process where you need to track something or report on status. If someone is going to ask you "what's the status on that?", you'll probably want to make it a Task.

Here we will cover the four main ways to create Tasks so you can choose the one that's most appropriate for your workflow.

1. Creating Tasks one at a time

Navigate to the detail page of a Shot in your Project, and select the Tasks Tab [tasks tab] Next select the + button to create a new Task.

Tasks tab

Fill in the necessary fields (required fields are bold) and choose create Task. We recommend at least filling in the Task Name and Pipeline Step. Note that the "Link" field is automatically populated with the Shot (or any other Task-supporting entity) whose Detail page you were viewing.

New task

2. Importing your tasks

We touched on the importer earlier when looking at the people in our project; you can import Tasks in bulk the same way by selecting "Import Tasks" under the More button of a Tasks page.

3. Task Templates

Task Templates are a great way to quickly populate your schedule. You can use Task Templates for things that tend to follow the same basic steps each time they are created. For instance, a basic digital asset creation process would typically involve Modeling, Rigging and Surfacing. You could set up a template called "Basic Asset Template" that would include those three Tasks.

Note that the Task Template field is on every entity that has Tasks. You can edit which template to use by clicking in the box. Below is an example:

Task template field

4. Creating Tasks within a Pipeline step.

Suppose you're on a Shots page looking at some or all of your Step columns, and you want to create a Layout Task on a particular Shot. You can easily do this by using the right-click context menu item “Add Task to Selected.”

Add task to selected

Note:

You can add a Task to multiple entities by selecting multiple entities prior to clicking on the “Add Task to Selected” menu item. Doing this creates a unique Task per selected entity.

Using Pipeline Steps with Task Templates

If you use Task Templates, you can edit each Template's Tasks to have a Pipeline Step assignment. Here's how:

Task template page

From this point forward, each time you use this Task Template, its Tasks will inherit the correct Pipeline Steps.

Working with Pipeline Steps in page layouts

Each Pipeline has a default way of rendering its Pipeline Steps: one for Assets, one for Elements, one for Shots, etc. This ensures that every time you add a Shot Step to a page layout, its appearance conforms to something that you expect to see, regardless of the project. Examples of display settings that are stored in the Step column layout default include:

Note:

Once a Step is added to a page layout, you can modify its layout and save your page without altering the default Step layout.

Adding and removing Step columns

Click on the Pipeline button, and then choose the Step you'd like to add or remove from the menu. When you add a Step, the Step column (in its default layout) will appear in the right-most position of the grid.

Pipeline button

Showing all Step Columns in a layout

To show all Step columns, click on the Pipeline button, then choose “Show All.” Doing this adds all Steps for the given Pipeline to the page layout. If any Steps are already visible, all remaining Steps—except ALL TASKS—will be inserted to the right of the visible Steps, and they'll appear in their relative Step order.

Step display modes

To change the display mode, right-click on a Step column’s header to bring up the context menu, then choose one of the three available display modes: Show Details Only, Show Summaries Only, or Show Details and Summaries.

Step display mode

Reverting a Step layout to the stored default

Sometimes, you may wish to edit a Step column, and then revert that Step back to default. You can do this by hiding the Step, then showing it again.

Reverting all Step layouts to the stored default

To make all visible Steps match the stored default layout, right-click on any Step's column header, and then choose “Revert all Steps to the Default Layout.”

Saving a new default Step layout (for a single Pipeline)

You can create a new default Step layout by doing the following:

From that point forward, any Step within the same Pipeline that gets added to a page layout will acquire its display settings from the layout you just saved.

Updating other Step layouts to match something other than the default layout

To update other Step layouts:

This instantly applies the display settings of one Step column to all other visible Step columns on your page, without modifying the default Step layout.

The All Tasks view

In many cases you may want to access all the Tasks at once instead of going through the Steps first. For example, you may want to see:

You can add the special Step “All Tasks” to the page to see all Tasks, or filter through it. In the example below, you can see the Asset is linked to a number of tasks, all of which are visible and editable from the “All Tasks” Pipeline Step.

All tasks

You can filter “All Tasks.” Common filters include:

Tomorrow filter

Me filter

tasks upstream status

Linked Pipeline Steps

Linked Pipeline Step fields allow you to see summaries of Tasks on the things linked to entities you're viewing. Suppose you're looking at an Asset on an Assets page, and want to know the status of all the tasks on all the Asset's linked Shots.

You can do this by adding a Linked Pipeline Step summary field to your Assets page. Add a Column, and select Linked Pipelines > Shots Steps > ALL TASKS > Status.

Status

By default, this will show you the default summary (percentage complete) of all Tasks on all Shots that are linked to the Asset.

Status summary

Adding Step Summary fields to detail page layouts

Step summary fields show summarized Task data. For example, from an Asset detail page, you can see the status summary of all the Asset's Tasks (using the ALL TASKS Step). You can also see a summary of all the Asset's Lighting Tasks (using the Lighting Step). After you add a Step summary field to a detail page, you can click on it to drill down into a detailed view of the Tasks that the field summarizes.

  1. Go to a detail page.

    Right-click in a field’s widget and click “Configure fields…”

Configure fields 2. Add the Pipeline Step Summary field

On the left side of the Field Properties overlay, locate the field you'd like to add, and check its box Pipeline > ALL TASKS > Status. Choose a summary calculation, select whether you would like to show the Percentage - Rounded or Percentage - Decimal, and optionally override the default label, and then click “Apply.”

New field

You'll see the Task Status Summary field added to the fields widget.

Task status summary 3. Click the summary field

This launches a focus window that shows a detailed view of all Tasks summarized by the Step Summary field. You can edit Tasks in the focus window.

Summary field

Parent page: Scheduling Tasks & Tracking Resource Utilization