Tasks module

Task templating

You can create templates from your tasks in the Tasks module and reuse them across sites, saving hours of set-up time. Task templates are saved and managed at the system level and can be added for use on each site. You can template all the lists, sub-lists, tasks and sub-tasks from a site, enabling you to standardise and capture the key phases of work and core tasks associated with a legal matter. Smaller groups of repetitive tasks can also be templated, forming building blocks for bigger matters.
If you have particular transactions that are highly repeatable and relatively standardised and you have already used lists to categorise those transactions (along with their sub-lists, tasks and sub-tasks all containing a lot of information - priority, start date, duration and dependencies on other tasks) then task templating would let you save all these tasks to the system and use them again when creating a new site for a similar transaction.
The Hierarchy View shows the lists, sub-lists, tasks and sub-tasks.

Save a task template

The following information is saved as part of a task template:
  • Task title
  • Description
  • List
  • Start date and due date, including any dependencies - if a task start date or due date is dependent on a task outside of the template, then the dependency breaks when the template is saved
  • Sub-tasks
  • Assignees (site groups only)
  • Reminders
  • Tags
  • Status
There are three ways to save a task template.
1. A site or content admin can save the tasks created in the Tasks module as a template.
To do this use the
More Actions
 dropdown and choose
Save as task template
.
The Save template window opens.
Enter a
Template Name
 and
Description
. You can choose to set the
Status
 to Active or Draft, e.g. if the template is in a ready-to-use state then you could set the status to
Active
. Select
Add
 to save your details.
2. You can template an individual list, including its sub-lists, tasks and sub-tasks.
To do this select
Save as a task template
 in
More actions
 against any list or sub-list. You can then create a template for the list the same way as if you were creating a template in the Task module.
3. If you already have a set of tasks in an Excel spreadsheet, you can directly import and save it as a task template in System Admin.
Navigate to the Tasks module of a site and download a blank import template; click
More Actions
 >
Download task template
. Transfer your tasks into this format, following the column headers.
Then open your profile dropdown menu and select
System Admin
.
The
System admin
 screen opens. In the
System admin
 screen, navigate to
Task templates
.
The
Task templates
 screen opens.
In the
Task templates
 screen, select
Import task template
.
The
Import task template
 screen opens.
Enter the task template details and select
Next
.
Select the task template you wish to import and also select whether you want to
Import start and due dates
 and
Import assignees
.
Select
Next
. Your task template is either imported correctly, or lists errors that must be corrected before the import can be completed.
Once you have fixed the errors, or if your template was imported correctly, select
Close
.
Templates are saved at the system level which gives System Admins control over hte approved templates used across all of the sites in an instance. To see the saved templates, navigate to your profile picture dropdown,
System Admin
, then
Task templates
. The Task templates section displays with all the task templates created using the three methods above.
Any new templates are saved here. You can see the template name, status, owner, creation date and when the template was last modified.

Edit task template details

To edit the template details, navigate to your profile picture dropdown then
System admin
.
The
System admin
 screen opens. In the
System admin
 screen, navigate to
Task templates
.
The
Task templates
 screen opens.
Select
More actions
 then
Edit template details
 for the template you want to change.
The Edit template details window opens.
Make the required changes and then select
Save
.

Download, edit and re-import a task template

A system admin can download a task template to view or make changes in Excel. Use this feature is if, for example, there is a change in law and you want to make changes to the template to reflect the new changes.
From the
Tasks templates
 page found in
System admin
 (shown above) select
More Actions
 for the template you wish to download and then select
Download task template
.
Once changes are made in the Excel template, you can re-import it by selecting
More actions
 and
Import task template
 to upload the latest version. The set the status to
Active
 to make the template available on all sites.
Do not delete the IDs in the ID column
 if you edit a template using this method. The system uses the ID to match the items for import. Any existing rows without an ID are deleted and treated as a new record on import.
The
Index
 column allows you to maintain a hierarchy for
Lists
,
Sub-lists
,
Tasks
 and
Sub-tasks
 (as defined in the
Type
 column).
  • Typically a single digit (e.g. '1' or '2') represents a top-level list, any tasks in that list are numbered with a decimal point indicating a level in the hierarchy, e.g. '1.1' or '1.2'. Further levels are created by adding more decimal points, e.g. '1.1.2' or '2.1.1.1'.
Task templates are not linked to their original site; any changes made to the template at the system level are not applied to a site that used that template or the site used to create the template.

Add a template to a site

Task templates are saved at the System level. To make a task template available at the site level, a Site Admin must add it to the site under
Tasks Admin
.
Select
Admin
,
Tasks
,
Task templates
 and then choose
Manage Templates
.
The
Task templates
 screen opens.
A Site Admin can access a list of all the task templates in the instance.
Select
Add
. The
Add task templates
 screen opens; this lists all active and draft templates available on the instance.
You can select a template title to preview the list, sub-list, task and sub-task titles in the task template.
You can multi-select all the templates you expect to use on the site and make them available for use by Site and Content Admins in the Tasks module itself.
Tick to choose the templates you require and then select
Add
. The templates are displayed in the Task Templates list. Once templates have been added to the site, a Site or Content admin can now use the templates in the Tasks module.

Previewing task templates

You can quickly preview the outline of a Task Template in the
System admin
 section. System admin users can quickly determine if the template is suitable for their transaction.
In your profile drop-down menu, select
System admin
.
The
System admin
 screen opens. In the
System admin
 screen, navigate to
Task templates
.
The
Task templates
 screen opens.
Select the title of the task template to view a preview.
You can view the Task Template title, owner, description and status.
Navigate back to the
Task Templates
 screen, and select another template to view.

Remove a template

To remove a template so that it is no longer available on the site from the Task Templates screen select
More actions
 and choose
Remove
.

Using the template in the site

Once task templates are added to a site, the
Add Tasks from template
 option is available to Site and Content administrators via the
Add
 button, in the Tasks module.
The
Add tasks from a template
 screen opens, showing all the active templates that have been added to the site.
You can click on a template title to preview the list, sub-list, task and sub-task titles in the task template.
Choose the template for the transaction you are working on and select
Add
. If the template contains start dates (i.e. it was created from a site with Timeline view enabled), and the site does not have Timeline view enabled, you can either ignore the dates and add tasks from the template anyway (this risks losing any task dependencies set in the template against those start dates) or you can go back to Task Admin, enable Timeline view and add the template including start dates.

Task templates and Site templates

When a site with task templates is saved as a site template then those associations are maintained when the site template is used
within the same instance
. However, when a site template is exported you lose any site template associations and they are not imported into any other instance.

This article applies to:

  • Product: HighQ
  • Subject: Setup, Workflow