Everyone needs a system to help them get things done. Having that system embedded directly in the context of your work, without the need for any setup, is what makes it just work.

The principle is simplicity: create a task from anywhere, find it exactly where you need it, and use built-in views to execute on what matters.

📺 Watch this video or read on for more information.

Activate Task Management

Task management in Capacities is opt-in. To add the task management features, you can simply create your first task like any other object or click on Add new type and select Task from the basic object type section.

Create a Task

It’s simple to create a task in Capacities. Here's a list of all the methods:

• Shortcut in text () followed by space or /task via the slash command menu
• Global Shortcut Cmd + Shift + T (Mac) or Ctrl + Shift + T (Windows)
• Quick Add in Left Sidebar Hover over 'Tasks' and you will see the + button.
• In task views Look out for the New Task button. It will intelligently fill in information based on where it is.
• Command Palette Just type task and then enter and the task modal will pop up
• On Mobile If you long-tap on the task icon in the bottom bar, you can directly create a task at any point. You can also create a task in the “+” menu in the bottom bar

Set Status and Priority

The task object type comes with status and priority properties.

Status

If no status is assigned, the task is listed as open. You can assign statuses to begin your task management workflow.

The default statuses are

• Not started
• Next Up
• In progress
• Done

These will form the columns in the Kanban views available throughout the app for your tasks. If you'd like to rearrange the order of the statuses, go to Settings > Task Management > Status Customization and click and drag the six dots to the left of each status to change the order. From here, you can also add your own statuses, change the label colors and add icons.

Priority

There are four priority levels:

• No Priority (default)
• Low (!)
• Medium (!!)
• High (!!!)

Your tasks will be automatically ordered by priority.

You can set it by clicking on the priority flag.

You can also set it in the quick task modal by typing exclamation marks.

Contextualize a Task

Tasks are relevant at different times and in different contexts. Capacities supports you in working with tasks by showing you relevant tasks when you need them. The only thing you need to do is to fill out the relevant properties in your task. There are two options to show tasks in the places you need them:

Schedule a task

By adding a date to your task, you schedule your task. Scheduled tasks will be removed from your task inbox and will be moved to the scheduled section. On top, scheduled tasks show up in your calendar on the corresponding day.

On today’s day in your calendar, you will not only see tasks scheduled to today but also

• all overdue tasks (tasks scheduled to a day in the past) so you don’t miss them
• all tasks in progress
• all tasks done today

On days in the past, you’ll see all tasks you completed on that day, so you automatically get a record of what you have achieved.

In your calendar, you can choose how to view your tasks.

On today’s calendar view, you can also move all tasks you scheduled for today to another day with the arrow icon.

Link it to your existing objects

If you create a task on a project page, it is automatically linked to this project.

If you create a task without an explicit context, you can simply link it to wherever you want to see the task in the "Context" property. All objects can be searched from this dropdown.

Next time you open that linked object, you will see the task in the blocks. You can arrange this as needed. For example, organizing your project task list by phase.

You will also automatically see a tasks tab, which you can switch between for a bird's eye view of all your tasks related to just that object.

This tab also gives you built-in views to help process your tasks accordingly. You can choose between:

• All: All tasks related to this object
• Open: All open tasks related to this object
• Status: All tasks related to this object in a Kanban board based on their status
• Scheduled: A chronological order of all scheduled tasks related to this object, similar to the calendar view.

Review and Process your Tasks

To get an overview of all your tasks, you can go to the task dashboard. Click on the task button in the left sidebar to see the task dashboard.

It works like any other object type dashboard, just with some extra built-in sections that you do not need to set up:

• Inbox: All tasks without a scheduled date or without a status, grouped by when they were created. To clear tasks from the inbox, assign either a date (schedule it) or a status.
• Today: Are all tasks scheduled for today, grouped by status and ordered by priority. You can also see this in the calendar.
• Scheduled: All tasks that have been scheduled, grouped by their date property. Overdue tasks will be at the top for you to reschedule. Scheduled tasks are ordered based on their priority and status.
• Context: All tasks grouped by their context ordered by priority and status.
• Open: All undone tasks ordered by their priority and status.
• Completed: All tasks in the order you have completed them.
• All: All your tasks. You can apply your own filter and sort choices here and save them as queries. This is the same view you get with other objects as well.

Create your own sections

Beyond the built-in sections, you can add your own dashboard sections based on queries.

Click on the + next to the dashboard sections and then click new query. You can build your own task query and save it as a section.

Because a dashboard section is “just” a saved query, you can customize both:

• What you see: filter conditions (e.g., status, tags, date present/empty)
• How you see it: list vs kanban, grouping, sorting, and hiding empty groups

Here are some examples.

“Someday” (or any status) section

If you use a Someday style workflow, you can create a section that shows all tasks with that status:

• Filter: Status includes Someday (or your chosen status)

This same pattern works for any other status you want quick access to (e.g., “Next Up”).

A custom “Inbox” definition

If the default inbox doesn’t match your workflow, you can build your own inbox query. This can be useful if you want an inbox that specifically represents “unprocessed tasks” rather than “tasks without date/status”.

GTD-style “contexts” using tags

Capacities’ built-in Context section is based on the objects tasks are linked to (via the Context property).

If you also use “contexts” in the Getting Things Done sense (e.g., Home, Office, Desk, Work laptop, City center), you can model these using tags on tasks and then build sections such as:

• “Work laptop”: Filter tasks where Tags includes work laptop

The goal is to quickly jump into a set of tasks you can do where you are, without spending time deciding what’s possible in that moment.

Roll up open tasks from specific objects (team or projects)

You can also create sections that pull tasks from a set of objects using Backlink objects. This is useful if tasks are scattered across multiple people or project objects, but you want one place to review them.

For details, see the Backlinks reference.

A typical setup:

• Filter: exclude completed tasks (e.g., Status is not Done)
• Filter: Backlink objects includes the objects you care about (e.g., team members or projects)
• Grouping: group by Backlink objects to get a clean overview per person/project

Note that a task can show up more than once if it appears in multiple objects (for example, referenced in both a project object and a related asset object).

Customize your dashboard

You can click on a tab in the dashboard and click 'Remove' if you do not want to see it. Removing a section only hides it from the dashboard. Your saved query is not deleted and can be added back later via the + button.

Note that you cannot remove the 'All' section.

You can click and drag the tabs around to rearrange them.

You can see this and the examples above in practice in this Youtube video

Roadmap

The current version of task management is a “Version 1”. We have ideas and plans to extend task management in Capacities.

If you're looking for a more dedicated task management solution, you can use task actions in combination with a task management app.

We want task management to be simple and effective. If you want to know more about the philosophy behind tasks in Capacities, we recommend our blog post. Nevertheless, there are a few ideas we have in mind.

• Deadline or Due Date: Add an additional date for a deadline. You can vote here.
• Recurring tasks: Allow tasks to be recurring so they pop-up in your views on a repeated schedule. You can vote here.
• Collections for tasks: At the moment, we aim for simplicity but we could imagine collections to serve as high-level areas for your tasks like “work” and “private”. You can vote here.
• Reminders: Get notified for scheduled tasks. You can vote here.
• Synchronization with your calendar: Similar to events, synchronize tasks from Capacities with tasks from your calendar. You can vote here.

FAQs

• Can I use my own object type with the additional features that Capacities' task management offers?
  This is not possible and it is not planned.
• Can I add properties to the Capacities Task Object?
  This is not possible and it is not planned.
• Can I put tasks into collections?
  Not at this time. More in the roadmap section above.
• Are recurring tasks supported?
  Not at this time. More in the roadmap section above.
• Are reminders supported?
  Not at this time. More in the roadmap section above.
• How can I work with subtasks?
  You can use checkboxes or tasks within tasks. There is no explicit concept for sub-tasks in Capacities.
• How can I add my own statuses?
  You can add your own statuses in Settings > Task Management > Status Customization. You can also change the label colors and icons too.
• Nothing happens when I type /task
  This will only work if you are using Capacities in English. If you are using a different language, please switch to that (e.g. Aufgabe, Tâche, Tarea)
• Why can't I see the task tab?
  You need to create a task first, or add the task type.
• Can I remove the tasks from the content tab?
  No, this is required for the context property to work. If you wish to hide them, a workaround would be to create another blocks property called 'Tasks'. Tasks will be appended to that second blocks property and you can toggle that task section closed.
• Can I change the default view of tasks when they are embedded in notes?
  You can. Go to Settings > Object types > Task > Change default view.
• Can a block or a toggle be used as context?
  No, context is for objects only. Blocks (such as toggles, numbered lists or bullet points) cannot be used as context. The context will be taken from the object they are found in.
• Can I filter to find all projects with open tasks?
  Not at this time. The backlinks object filter is just for specific objects, You cannot filter backlink objects by their type.