Blog | Backlight

New Available Tasks workflows to empower your team to self-serve tasks

Written by Chris McMahon | 04.11.24

The “My Tasks” page on ftrack is designed to simplify your artists’ day-to-day. Here, artists and creatives can quickly see what’s next, using a Kanban board to get a visual snapshot of tasks sorted by status. This setup helps artists instantly understand their workload and focus on tasks needing attention.

The Available Tasks column on the My Tasks Kanban board displays all relevant tasks ready for an artist’s attention, enabling them to choose what to tackle next. If an artist spots a task that fits into their daily workflow and is ready for them to work on, they can simply drag it into their “In Progress” column and start working.

We’ve now made it easier for admins to set up the Available Tasks workflow and to create new associated task types. This ensures that the tasks available to users are highly relevant to their work, groups, and roles.

This update is about enhancing project flow and, crucially, empowering artists with the autonomy to shape their workday. With Available Tasks, they can pick tasks at their own pace while ensuring projects move ahead swiftly and efficiently.

The new Available Tasks workflow was exactly what our small team needed, and it was coincidentally released the very moment we asked for support with plans for this feature. It helps keep our small team nimble and allows our artists more freedom.

Santeri HolmTechnical Artist, Younite-ai
 
 

Setting up Available Tasks with new associated task types

To use Available Tasks, head to your System Settings and enable “Available Tasks”.

A new column will appear on the My Tasks Kanban board. This column, positioned on the far left, will be populated with task cards that artists can drag and drop into their “Not Started”, “In Progress”, or “Done” columns (or whatever statuses you have set for those column labels).

The big change we’ve made is that we understand that you wouldn’t want every artist to see every task available on a project. An animator doesn’t need to see available rendering tasks, for instance. As such, you can customize what shows in the Available Tasks column and to whom. You can do this by toggling the following options in your system settings:

  •  Project Team: Only displays Available Tasks associated with a specific Project team to which users are assigned.
  • Group Assignments: Only displays Available Tasks associated with an assigned group to which users are assigned.
  • User Skills: Only displays Available Tasks related to a skill set (e.g., compositing, etc.) with which users are associated.
  • Selected Statuses: Only displays Available Tasks with a corresponding status (e.g., “Ready to go” or “Not started.”)

You can toggle multiple options, creating a tailored list of Available Tasks that align with each artist’s skills and project roles.

Learn more and see the Available Tasks workflow in action in the video below.