Updating Tasks

Task updates feed the project timeline, dashboard, schedule, time records, and history. Update the task itself instead of keeping progress in a separate note.

Complete work without tracking time

When time tracking is off, completing a task saves progress and optional notes without asking for hours or creating a time entry. Tracked and actual-hour summaries are hidden. Estimates and scheduling remain available. The hours workflow below applies when time tracking is on.

Change status

Use the status control on a task card, in the project task table, or in the full task editor. The same editor opens from My Tasks, a project, and Schedule. Common statuses include pending, scheduled, in progress, cancelled, and completed.

Status changes appear immediately after they save. If you use a Kanban board, dragging a card to a compatible column updates the same task status.

Update progress

Use the 5 percent slider for a quick change or enter an exact whole percentage. The same rules apply wherever you update the task:

• Progress from 1 to 99 moves pending or scheduled work to in progress.
• Progress at 100 opens the completion confirmation.
• Moving a task back to pending or scheduled asks you to confirm that progress will reset to 0.
• Reopening completed work suggests 95 percent and lets you change it before saving.
• Completed and cancelled tasks have read-only progress. Reactivate the task through its status control before changing progress.

Status and progress save together, so project views, My Tasks, Schedule, the Dashboard, and capacity planning show the same result.

Edit task details

Open the full task editor by selecting a task in Project or Schedule, or by selecting its title in My Tasks. Status and progress sit in a band at the top of the editor. Schedule & daily plan sits directly below it, so the start, total effort, calculated finish, and daily spread stay visible together. The main panel holds the description with comments directly below it. A supporting details panel groups priority, assignment, tags, and additional information. At smaller desktop widths, schedule controls and the daily plan remain side by side. On mobile, they stack in the same order.

When a task has custom details, expand Additional info to review them. Runnit hides internal planning fields from this panel and formats structured details as readable values.

Task name, priority, description, status, and progress save automatically when you commit the control or leave the field. The editor shows when it is saving and keeps failed input available so you can retry. On desktop, Changes not saved means an update failed, while Unsaved changes means text has not yet been saved. Errors and recovery controls also appear on narrow screens.

For a rejected task name, description or priority, choose Retry after resolving the error, or Discard changes to return that field to its saved value. Saving another field keeps the failed draft and error in place. If your access changed, ask an organisation administrator to check your permissions before retrying. Closing or reloading the editor loses unsaved drafts. Clearing the description and leaving the field saves an empty description.

Add a description link

If you can edit the task, click in Description, select the text to link, then choose Create link in the toolbar. On a narrow screen, scroll the toolbar sideways to reach the link button. Enter the URL and choose Save. If you did not select text, you can enter Anchor text in the popup. Link title is optional. Choose Cancel to keep the description unchanged.

The description saves automatically. Check the save status before closing the task. If saving fails, use the retry controls described above.

Fill or reopen a role place

You can also edit places directly in the project Table. Enable Columns → Role, then click the task’s Role cell. The column follows the current project roles of its assignees and lists unfilled reservations separately. Changing the displayed staffing role does not reprice a saved reservation.

The Role places section lets task assigners reserve a role, choose its person later, or return it to Unfilled. Changes save immediately. Each place uses the full task estimate and retains its saved role rate when staffed. Changing the estimate or shared details updates the same task for every person.

Removing someone from the normal assignee picker reopens their role. A one-for-one handover to another person transfers the filled role. If the target is already assigned, the removed person’s role reopens because a person cannot fill two places. Use Remove in Role places to remove the commitment entirely.

If another person changed the role list, Runnit asks you to reload before retrying. If a selected person is unavailable for the saved hours, change the schedule first. Other-task overlaps can be reviewed and explicitly accepted.

See reserving roles.

Update dates and assignments

Open the task or move it on the project timeline to update planned dates. Runnit checks availability and schedule conflicts when the task moves or when you change the assignee.

A schedule conflict is another booking for the same person in this workspace at the same time. Bookings the person holds in another workspace are never counted or shown here. The notice refers to other tasks, not another copy of the task you are editing. It names each visible conflicting task and the people whose schedules overlap when their details are available.

Choose Open conflicting task to open that task’s editor. This also works from My Tasks when the other task belongs to another project or is not assigned to you. If it cannot load or your access has changed, Runnit shows a message you can close. A task you cannot see is labelled as such and has no link. Your saved assignment stays in place when you open another task.

A backlog task can have no assignment, effort, or dates. Adding an assignee or estimate alone keeps it unscheduled. Add a start date when you want Runnit to create its daily plan and include it in Schedule and Capacity.

In the task editor:

1. Change Start date and Total effort. Calculated finish updates from the saved daily plan.
2. Choose Auto spread to have Runnit distribute the effort across available days.
3. Choose Set daily hours when you need exact control. Change any row’s date or hours, add a day, or use Even split, Front-load, or All on one day. Moving a row onto a date that is already present combines the hours.

Days the assignee has blocked out as unavailable can’t hold hours in either mode: automatic spreads skip them and Set daily hours rejects a row on one, even when weekend scheduling is enabled. On a partially blocked day, hours are capped at what remains and the editor shows the split, for example 2h blocked · 6h available. Reassigning a task to someone whose blocked dates overlap its schedule automatically reflows the schedule around their blocked days.

The schedule saves automatically. In a custom plan, the first day, finish, and total effort come from the daily rows, so the summary fields are read-only until you return to Auto spread.

Editing controls depend on your task and organisation permissions. Assignees can update their own task details, status, and progress. Project owners and people with task-wide update access can update other tasks. Organisation task permissions apply across projects you can access, even when you are not listed as a member of that project’s team.

Creation, general editing, assignment, scheduling, and deletion use separate permissions. Task dates are commitments other people plan around, so changing start dates, estimates, daily allocations, or dependencies needs schedule authority: the project owner, a project admin, or someone with both task-wide update and schedule management access. Being assigned to a task does not let you move its dates. If you can’t move a date, you can ask the project owner to move it from the Runnit Today feed on the dashboard, when your organisation allows asking. Assignment requires task assignment access, and deletion requires task deletion access. Being assigned to a task does not grant either of those actions.

You can resize your table columns without task-edit permission. Widths save for you and the project in this browser.

In a project’s Table view, select one or more tasks to use the bulk toolbar. You can bulk-change status or priority when you can update every selected task, including a selection containing only tasks assigned to you. If the selection also contains a task you can’t update, those actions stay unavailable.

Assignment controls also follow client staffing rules. Project team members appear first, followed by active organisation members on the client’s staffing list. An eligible client-listed person can receive a task without already being a formal project member.

For a client with a staffing list, add any other active staff member to this project’s Team first. They become eligible for assignments on this project only. This doesn’t change the client staffing list or make them eligible for other projects for that client.

Share a task with several people

You can assign several people and reserve multiple role places on the same task. Use Assignees for known people and Role places for commitments you want to staff or reopen later.

Open Assignees in the editor or the assignment cell in the project’s Table view. Choose each person, or select a chosen person again to remove them. Changes save automatically. Unassigned clears the full list.

The task stays as one item with shared title, description, status, progress, dates and discussion. Opening it from either person’s schedule edits that same task. Saved changes appear in everyone’s view, subject to your edit permissions. Each person reserves the full estimate, so four hours for two people uses eight hours of team capacity. Removing one person removes their allocation. Automatic schedules respect everyone’s availability, and custom daily plans are checked against each person’s leave and working pattern. The task completes for everyone when one authorised person completes it. Record each person’s actual time separately through time tracking.

If the assignees change while you are saving a custom daily plan, reload the task and try again. Your stale plan does not replace the saved allocations.

Add dependencies

Use the task table’s Dependencies cell to choose predecessor tasks from the same project. Runnit prevents self-links, cross-project links, and cycles.

A dependency is finish-to-start. If a predecessor moves later, dependant tasks that no longer fit are pushed forward through working days, closure dates, each assignee’s blocked-out dates, and their existing allocation pattern. Tasks with spare time before their start are left alone. Undated, completed, and cancelled tasks never move automatically.

Record progress and discussion

• Update the estimate when the expected effort changes.
• Use comments for decisions, blockers, and handover context.
• Start a timer or add a manual time entry for work already completed.
• Keep the task description focused on the deliverable and acceptance criteria.

Comments are the task’s chat: they show the author and timestamp, support replies and @mentions, notify the assignee and project owner, and remain with the task for later review.

Changing a planned start rebuilds the working-day schedule and recalculates the planned end. Changing an estimate on a task with a custom daily plan keeps its planned window and rescales each day’s hours in proportion, as long as the new total fits the window at the organisation’s daily capacity; when it does not fit, or the task uses an automatic schedule, Runnit rebuilds the schedule from the start date and the planned end moves. A project’s target date is a delivery marker, not a lock. Tasks can extend beyond it and are marked overdue, and an authorised user can still move the start or reduce the estimate.

Schedule weekend work

For an automatic schedule, select Include Saturdays and Sundays in the task editor, or enable Allow weekend assignments before dragging the task in a project Capacity view. Runnit saves that choice with the task and uses it again when you change the estimate, move dependencies, or edit the task in another view. In Set daily hours, select the exact Saturday or Sunday date on a daily row.

The daily plan shows the actual saved days, including Saturday or Sunday. The Project Table, Gantt, Capacity, Schedule, Dashboard, and task editor update from the same schedule without a browser refresh. Organisation closure dates and the assignee’s fully blocked-out days are excluded, and partially blocked days keep their reduced limit, even when weekend work is allowed.

Successful updates do not open a confirmation toast. Runnit reserves toast windows for schedule conflicts, warnings, and errors that need action.

Complete a task

Choose Mark complete and review the completion dialog:

1. Confirm or change the actual hours. Runnit suggests a starting value from your recorded actual hours, tracked time, or the estimate, using the first of these that is above zero.
2. Compare actual hours with the estimate.
3. Add completion notes if they help the project record.
4. Confirm completion.

Completing a task records the hours as a time entry. This keeps planned and actual reporting aligned without requiring a separate timesheet update. If you confirm completion with zero actual hours, Runnit completes the task without recording a time entry, and removes any time entry recorded by an earlier completion of the same task.

After you confirm, a brief completion animation plays and the dialog closes on its own. Click anywhere on the dialog to skip the animation.

Completed work also feeds each person’s professional project history. When a task or project is completed, Runnit adds or updates an entry on the assignee’s profile recording the project, client, their role, and the deliverables they completed. Entries added this way are marked Auto on the profile’s Project history tab, where they can also be edited or extended manually. Your own Profile & Portfolio > Projects tab shows the same task lists, client, role, dates and project name. Long lists expand on demand. See your project work history.

Multi-day work

A task that spans several days remains one task. Calendar and schedule views can show a segment for each day, while the task list keeps one shared status, assignees, description, and discussion.

See Task Management for prioritised task lists and Time Tracking & Planning for schedule and time records.

If a role change fails or needs overlap confirmation, the task header shows Changes not saved. Saving the title or another field does not acknowledge that role change. Resolve the role message or cancel its overlap confirmation.