ActionComplete Tasks 5
User Manual
Main Menu (the “hamburger” icon in the top left of the screen)
Reset Importance on Conversion
ActionComplete Tasks is a streamlined personal task management app that is inspired by several productivity frameworks such as David Allen’s Getting Things Done, Stephen Covey’s quadrants, and OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) popularized by John Doerr.
The three key task types in ActionComplete are:
An Action is something that needs to be done or otherwise requires your attention for the time being, for example, a phone call to make, an item to buy, or a doctor appointment to schedule. An Action can exist by itself or be a part of a Project.
A Project is something that requires more than one step before it can be completed. A Project can have child Actions and/or nested Projects.
An Idea is a catch-all bucket for sudden recollections, interim thoughts, and everything else that requires some contemplation before it’s ready to be acted upon.
ActionComplete provides a way for you to associate metadata (different types of supporting information) with each task (Action, Project, or Idea). The metadata can be used to filter your lists to get a crisp picture of a certain aspect of your life or view things that need to be done at a particular place.
A Tag is a short text that you use to create a category, describe an area of responsibility, or label something for easy access. Among other things you can use tags as your GTD contexts such as "@home", "@work", "@phone", "@computer", "out and about", etc.
Any task in ActionComplete can be assigned a due date. Tasks that need to be done at a particular time constitute a part of your "hard landscape" and should generally be placed on you calendar.
Task importance ranges between Marginal (the least important) and Critical (the most important). The options in the order of increasing importance are: Marginal, Low, Medium, High, and Critical. Task importance is visualized by a meter on the right side of a task card.
Once you have signed in with your Google account, your tasks and preferences are seamlessly and instantly synchronized across all your Android and iOS devices. AC Tasks remembers exactly where you were in the app last time so that when you open it on another device later you pick up right from where you left off before.
All the task lists have a similar structure and show a number of items we are going to refer to as cards.
At the top of a card is the task name that describes the task. This is the only required task attribute.
If the task belongs to a project, the parent project name is displayed below the task name.
Due column at the lower left of the card shows the task’s due date, if set.
Tags column on the lower right of the card shows a comma-separated list of tags attached to the task.
Tap the checkbox in the top right corner of the card to complete the task.
Tap a card to view or edit the task.
The main application menu consists of the following items:
Featured Tasks screen shows tasks that are most relevant in your current context. It’s based on our proprietary algorithm that takes into consideration a number of factors such as time of day, urgency and importance of your tasks, and surfaces tasks that require your attention.
Important Tasks screen shows tasks with the importance set to Critical.
When you add a task from this screen, it’s importance defaults to Critical.
Urgent Tasks screen shows past due tasks and tasks due today. On the task card, past due tasks have a red border. Tasks due today are displayed with a blue border.
When you add a task from this screen, it’s due date defaults to today’s date.
All Tasks screen shows all your tasks grouped by type (Actions, Projects, Ideas) and allows you to sort and filter tasks in a number of ways.
When you add a task from this screen, it’s tags and project are pre-populated from the currently active filter.
Tags screen shows all the active tags (i.e. tags that have not completed tasks attached to them) and, for every tag, the number of active tasks.
Settings screen shows application settings.
The Default Importance setting allows you to select the pre-populated value of importance for tasks that are being added. You can choose out of the following five options: Marginal, Low, Medium, High, and Critical.
To choose default importance:
The Reset Importance on Conversion setting allows you to choose what happens when a task is converted to another type, e.g. from an action to a project. The default behavior is to reset the importance to the value of Default Importance option.
The rationale for this behavior is that once you change the task type, the task needs to be re-prioritized among the new peers.
If you want to keep task importance intact during conversions, make sure Reset Importance on Conversion setting is unchecked.
Help screen displays this document.
This screen allows you to set up a new task or change an existing one. You can specify the following task attributes: Name, Notes, Project (parent task), Tags, Importance, and Due Date.
The screen also shows the date and time the task was last updated.
To mark the task complete tap COMPLETE button in the bottom right corner of the screen. This button is only available when editing an existing active task.
To delete the task tap DELETE button in the bottom left part of the screen. This button is only available when editing an existing task.
To change the task type (Action, Project, Idea) tap CONVERT button in the bottom right corner of the screen and choose the new task type. This button is only available when editing an existing task. For projects with child tasks this button is not shown.
To mark the task as active tap UNCOMPLETE button in the bottom right corner of the screen. This button is only available when editing an existing completed task.
To move a task out of sight temporarily tap SNOOZE button and choose for how long you want the task to be hidden. All the snoozed tasks are visible in the Snoozed tab.
To returned a snoozed task back to where it belongs tap UNSNOOZE button.
This screen allows you to set up filtering criteria for tasks and adjust task viewing options.
You can filter on a tag, an importance range, a due date range, and a project. The filters have AND semantics, i.e. when 2 or more filters are set at the same time, only the tasks satisfying all filters are displayed.
You can adjust the following task viewing options: Show Completed Tasks and Tasks Without Due Date Are Due Now.
Show Completed Tasks option specifies whether completed tasks are displayed on All Tasks screen. The option has no effect on other task lists. Featured Tasks, Important Tasks, and Urgent Tasks screens never show completed tasks. Tag Tasks, and Project Tasks screens always show completed tasks.
Tasks Without Due Date Are Due Now option specifies app behavior in the situation when a filter on due date is present. If the option is enabled, tasks without due dates are displayed regardless of the choice of the Due filter.
This dropdown allows you to set the display order for the tasks. The options are Name, Importance, Urgency, and Update Time.
Urgency option sorts by due date in ascending order so that past due and due today tasks appear at the top of the list. Update Time option sorts by the date/time the task was last updated so that the most recently updated tasks appear at the top of the list.