When to use a task board
Use a task board when the same procedure runs again for each case. Each task carries what that run needs and what it produced. Its fields hold the values that change per case, and the list it sits in says where it has got to. A task board is not a data table. It is not the place for reference data like lookups, SKUs, or region codes. If a card is not something that gets done, it does not belong on a task board.Where to find it
Every workflow has one task board, on its Tasks tab. It is created with the workflow and deleted with it. Its name, folder, and sharing are the workflow’s, so anyone who can open the workflow can open its task board. Viewers see the tasks, and editors can change cards and fields. Changes save automatically. Saving… in the top-right corner shows when task board changes are pending. A blank task board starts without tasks. It includes Title, Description, Stage, Assignee, Due date, Priority, Tags, Attachments, and Checklist. Choose Customize form when you want to shape what the task board asks for.Import from a spreadsheet
An empty task board can start from a spreadsheet instead. Import from spreadsheet appears in the toolbar while the task board has no tasks and no linked-task field, and only for people who can edit the workflow. It asks you to confirm, then the sheet’s columns replace the task board’s fields and each row becomes a task in the Inbox.
Only the first sheet is read, and each field’s type is picked from the column’s values. A file over
any limit is refused whole, with nothing imported. Import is also refused while the workflow’s
playbook mentions the task board’s fields, because replacing the fields would break those mentions.
The imported task board has no due date field until you set one.
Field types
Audimate uses the type to render the right editor and validate values. The two special types carry
behaviour the others do not, covered below.
Stage
A task board carries one Stage field, added when the task board is created. Its options are the task board’s lists. It cannot be duplicated, deleted, or changed to another type. Which list a task is in IS its status. There is no separate done or failed flag to keep in step with it: a finished task is a task in the Done list, and moving a card is how its status changes, whoever moves it. A new task board starts with four lists, Pending, In progress, Done, and Failed, but they are yours to rename, recolor, reorder, add, and delete. Renaming never loses the tasks in a list. A task with no stage sits in the Inbox instead. On a plan that includes agent runs, those four lists carry Arro’s four roles.
Open Settings in the toolbar and pick all four under Arro’s lists. Arro needs every
one, so nothing is saved until each is answered. Disconnect all clears all four
and turns it into a plain task board Arro never touches. A list holding a role cannot be deleted
until the roles are moved or cleared.
Every new task board arrives with all four already assigned, on every plan. Nothing is picked up
until the workspace is on a plan that runs agents.
Because an agent can tell which tasks are untouched and take one, several agents run at once without
two picking up the same task. A single-select field gives no such guarantee, so use Stage for the
work itself, Priority for urgency, and single-select for ordinary fixed choices.
Done and failed
A task is done when it is in the Done list, and failed when it is in the Failed list. Nothing else records it, so there is nothing that can disagree with what you see. You move a card by dragging it, or by changing its Stage field. An agent that finishes its task files it into the list you picked for that role, which is the same move by a different hand. A card in the Failed list carries a short reason. Open the task to read the full reason, then move it back to Pending to retry. Because the list is the status, putting a card back in the pick-up list is all it takes to have the work done again. That also resets its retry budget and clears the failure line.Starting agents
The roles say where agents take work from and file it. What starts them is always something a person did, because whoever hands a task off supplies the computer it runs on and the identity it runs as. There is no task board setting that picks a machine, and no way to start work on someone else’s behalf. Use Inbox to prepare tasks. With Use Arro enabled in Settings → Arro, moving a card into the pick-up list hands it to Arro. Pending is the default pick-up list; you can choose another. Dragging a card there or changing its Stage opens Hand this task to Arro?. Choose Hand to Arro to move it and queue the work. Cancel leaves it in its original list. Don’t ask again on this device remembers your choice for your account on that device, across task boards.
Arro starts as soon as a slot is free on your computer. A handoff from your browser waits for your
desktop app to be open in the same workspace. With Use Arro off, moving cards does not start work.
A card already waiting without a handoff has a Start it or Start them link in the pick-up list.
A task assigned to someone else asks before it starts, because it runs on your computer with your
plugins. Choose Run it myself, or Run them myself for several, to go ahead. This question
replaces Hand this task to Arro? and appears even with Don’t ask again on this device turned on.
Open a task to see Run by, the person who started its latest run.
Two other ways to start work exist, neither of them task board settings:
- A personal schedule. Point one of your own scheduled tasks at the workflow, when its playbook mentions the task board’s fields. Each scheduled time adds a task with the details you gave the schedule, and it runs on your computer, as you.
- Run agent. Use a card’s
...menu and choose Run agent on this task, or select rows in Table view and choose Run. The card moves to the top of the pick-up list and starts on your computer, as you. Both need edit access and appear only in the desktop app.
What a card runs
Every card runs the task board’s workflow, following its playbook with the card’s values filled in. With an empty playbook, the card’s own fields are the instructions. The agent can open the files attached to its card, such as images, PDFs, and Word, Excel or PowerPoint files. A link attachment gives it the address to visit. A card runs the workflow’s working copy, the playbook as it is now. To run a snapshot instead, pick it under Runs on the new task form or in the open task. Runs appears once the workflow has a snapshot. A reserved card keeps its version until it is filed or leaves the pick-up and working lists. Pages the playbook links to are always read as they are now. Setting up a task board is free on every plan. Free includes 10 workflow runs, so agents can work a few cards before you pay. Each card an agent picks up counts as one run. Paid plans remove that limit, and the Tasks tab says where you stand.Who is running a card
Open a card to see whose agent has reserved it: Your agent, or a teammate’s name. The reservation does not mean work has started. The card can still be waiting for a free slot on their computer, since Cards run at once under Arro’s settings takes 1 to 4 and starts at 2. Nobody else’s agent takes a card that is already reserved. A card can be reserved and still not moving. If the workspace is out of its monthly usage, or the computer is already running as many tasks as it allows, the card keeps its reservation and tries again a few minutes later. Waiting like this costs the card none of its three attempts. A reservation is also what protects a running card: while a card is reserved, only the person who reserved it can move it. Anyone else who tries is told the card is claimed, so a teammate cannot drag work out from under an agent mid-run. Filing a card releases it. A card that lands in Done or Failed loses its reservation automatically, whether an agent filed it or you dragged it there yourself.Stopping a running card
Only the person whose computer runs a card can move it while it runs. To stop it, they drag it out of the working list into the Inbox or a list with no role. That releases the reservation, and the agent stops within about a minute.
Anyone with edit access can delete a card, so deleting a running card also stops its run.
If a card is reserved by someone who is not coming back, open its
... menu and choose Clear
dispatcher. It confirms, then releases the reservation. The card stays where it is, and anyone can
start it again.
Clearing never hands the card to someone else. It is not offered while the card is still running on
another member’s computer. Once it stalls, anyone can clear it.
Priority
The Priority field type carries a fixed four-level scale: Low, Medium, High, and Urgent. The levels are built into the type, so every Priority field means the same thing, and sorting by it orders tasks by urgency rather than alphabetically. When a task board has a Priority field, agents take the most urgent waiting tasks first, and the position you drag a card to breaks ties within the same priority. Without one, pickup order is the order of the cards in the pick-up list.Board view and Table view
A task board opens in Board view, a column of lists with one card per task. Switch to Table view with the toolbar toggle for the spreadsheet grid, which is better for editing many cells at once. The choice lasts for that visit to the Tasks tab. Switching back to Board view clears any sort and grouping you set in Table view, because a card’s position in a list is the pick-up order and a sort would disagree with it.Lists
Each list is one option of the Stage field. Click a list’s name, or use its... menu, to
rename it. The menu also recolors and deletes it, and Add list appends a new one. Drag a list by
its header to reorder. Deleting a list asks for confirmation and moves its cards to the Inbox.
A list Arro uses carries a robot badge in its header, such as “Arro picks up here”. Hover it to see
which step of a run that list is for. The four are set in Settings, under Arro.
The ... menu also sorts a list by any field, except attachments, linked tasks, assignees, checklists, and Stage itself. A
sort changes only how the list is displayed, never the order agents pick tasks up in. To change
pickup order, drag cards, or set priorities on a task board with a Priority field. A sorted
list shows a “Sorted by” note with a Clear link, and dropping a card in clears the sort.
The Inbox
A task with no stage sits in the Inbox, always the first list and always shown, so there is a consistent place to drop work for triage. The Inbox is outside the lists agents use and an agent never picks up from it. Tasks imported from a spreadsheet land here, and dragging a card into the Inbox clears its stage, pulling it out of the pick-up list without deleting it.Card actions
Hover a card for a... button, or right-click anywhere on it, for Open task, Delete task,
and the agent actions the card qualifies for. Deleting needs edit access, and without it Delete
task is greyed out rather than hidden. There is no confirmation: the task goes straight away, and
the message that follows carries an Undo button, as does Ctrl+Z or ⌘+Z.
Grab a card anywhere to move it. Dropping it on a list sets that stage and its position in one step.
A reserved card moves only for the person who reserved it, and taking it out of the working list
stops its run.
The toolbar’s Background button sets the task board’s canvas color. New task boards start on Lavender, and
Plain turns the wash off. It belongs to the task board, so everyone sees the same color.
Stalled tasks and retries
An agent’s claim on a task lasts five minutes, renewed for as long as a worker is genuinely running. A claim that runs out means the app doing the work stopped, not that the work is slow. Two thirds of the way through, the task shows an amber Needs attention indicator. When the claim runs out the task returns to the pick-up list keeping its reservation, so the same person’s agent picks it back up. A card you drag into the working list yourself has no agent to renew its claim, so it is held about thirty minutes rather than five before returning to the pick-up list. An agent may start the same task three times. If the third attempt also stops, the task is filed into the Failed list like any other, so a task that reliably breaks whatever is working on it comes to rest somewhere visible. Putting it back in the pick-up list with Retry task in the card menu, or by dragging it, gives it a fresh three. Retry asks for the same handoff confirmation and queues a fresh attempt. A run that ends in an error is not retried. Its task goes straight to the Failed list, because the agent may already have done part of the work, such as creating an invoice. Check what it did before you retry it. A failed card shows a short failure message. Hover it or open the card to read it in full.
Audimate checks a card before starting it. A handoff or Run names missing required values and
leaves unready cards unstarted. The two empty-field reasons are the backstop for a card that got
past those checks, either because something changed after it was reserved or because it was handed
off through the API.
Missing plugin prerequisites leave cards queued without marking them failed.
Install and enable the named plugin, then connect or reconnect its app in your current workspace.
Each runner uses their own plugin settings and accounts. Your agents identify the missing setup without changing the card.
A refusal like this costs none of the card’s three attempts.
Dropping an unfinished card into the pick-up list does not fail it either. It stays where you put it,
unstarted, with a message naming what it needs. Fill in the missing values, then use Run agent on this task.
The intake form
New task opens the task board’s intake form, so whoever adds work is asked for exactly the fields that task board needs. Choose its destination with Stage. A list’s + Add task preselects that list; the toolbar starts with Inbox. The title and description span the form. Shorter controls share a row when space allows; an unpaired control fills the row. Descriptions use a larger plain text box. Create another task keeps the form open and retains your chosen list after creation. Customize form opens the Intake form builder, where you set the heading, Description, and Button text, add or remove fields, and drag them into order. Each field carries a switch for whether it appears on the form; its … menu holds Required, Show on card, Use as task title, Edit field, and removal. Adding, editing, or removing a field saves immediately, while the heading, description, button text, toggles, and order apply when you press Save. Editing the form needs edit access. Each list also has a + Add task composer that captures a title only and reopens after every Enter, for typing several in a row. If the form has any other required field, that button opens the full form instead, so structure you asked for cannot be skipped.Fields
Use the + at the right of the field headers to add a field, then configure its type-specific options. Drag a field header to reorder. Click the chevron on a header, or right-click it, for Edit field, Duplicate field, Insert left, Insert right, Sort A to Z, Sort Z to A, Set as primary field, Hide field, and Delete field. A task board supports one each of Assignee, Priority, and Stage. Unavailable types appear at the bottom of the type picker. Hover a greyed-out choice to see why it is unavailable. Click a header to select a field, and Ctrl-click or Shift-click for several. Right-click a selected header to act on all of them, for example Delete 3 fields. Two fields cannot be deleted, and Delete field is absent for them: the primary field, which stays fixed at the left while the rest scroll sideways, and the Stage field, whose options are the task board’s lists.How a field behaves on the intake form
The field editor carries three settings under On the task form.
Placeholder is offered for text, long text, number, currency, percent, URL, email, and phone,
because a checkbox or a dropdown has no empty state to hint into.
A field looks on the form the way it looks in the table. A currency input carries its symbol, a
percent input carries its % and its progress bar, and URL, email, and phone inputs carry a
button that opens the link, the mail app, or the dialer once what you typed is valid.
Required can also be toggled from a field’s … menu in the intake form builder, alongside
Show on card. The title field is always on the form and always required. Stage appears as a list picker, including the Inbox.
Linked tasks and system fields never appear on the form, and the editor hides these settings for them.
Due dates
A task board can designate one date field as its due date. Every new task board opens with its Due date field already designated and set to show on cards. The designation is a setting, never a guess from the column’s name: a field called Due date on a task board Arro builds for you is an ordinary date field until you say otherwise. Only the blank task board scaffold designates one for you. To set or move it, open Settings in the toolbar and use Due date in the General card. A task board has one due date field, so picking another replaces the current one, and changing that field’s type gives the designation up. Dates appear beside a calendar icon in the card footer, such as Apr 12. Hover or focus a date for its full date and due status. Untick Show on card to hide it. Other visible date fields use the same compact style.Card appearance
Descriptions appear on new cards by default and truncate after 2 lines. Tags and priority appear as coloured pills below the description. Visible fields show their values without labels. The footer groups the assignee, dates, files from runs, and checklist progress. Use a list’s Appearance menu to choose its icon and colour, including the Inbox. The Stage selector in task forms and the Arro’s lists selectors in Settings show the same icon. Only the icon uses the list colour; the text and control stay neutral. The agent icon appears when you hover an enabled agent list. Agent information also remains available in the list menu. Choose Background in the toolbar for 4 illustrated backgrounds, a colour, or Plain. The choice is shared across the task board.Assign tasks and track steps
Choose Assignee in the task form or click a card’s avatar to assign one current workspace member. Choose Unassigned to clear it. In Table view, assignees appear as avatars. Double-click the cell to search for and choose a workspace member. Assignment records responsibility; it does not start an agent or change whose computer runs the task. In Table view, checklist cells show a progress bar and completed-item count. Finished checklists turn green with a checkmark. Double-click a checklist cell to open its checklist editor without opening the full task. A single click selects the cell. Checklist additions, checkmarks, reordering, and removals save automatically. Text edits save when you leave the item or press Enter. Saving… appears beside the checklist name while changes are saved. Completing every item does not move the task to Done. If someone changes the task while you edit, your checklist remains available for review before you replace the latest version.Move several tasks
Select cards with their circles, or use Ctrl-click (Command-click on Mac). Shift-click selects a range in the visible board order. Select up to 100 cards, then drag a selected card or use Move to…. Clear or Escape clears the selection. If any selected task cannot move, the entire selection stays in place. Cards already in the destination queue are not restarted.Edit cells
Click any cell to edit. Audimate opens a type-specific editor: a date picker, a dropdown, a rich-text panel, or a file upload. Press Enter to commit, Escape to cancel, or Tab to move on. Changes save automatically and broadcast in real time. Click a card, or the expand icon on a grid row, to open a task in a detail modal: the stage picker up top (moving the task between lists is how you record what happened to it), then every field as its own editable control. If the last run failed, the reason is shown in full beneath it. Use the arrows in the top bar to step through tasks without closing the modal. Select cells and use the Color button, or right-click and choose Fill color, to give them a background. Colors save with the task board and sync live.Bulk paste
Copy a range from another spreadsheet and paste it in. Audimate detects the shape and prompts before expanding the task board to fit. Cell background colors travel both ways, so fills survive a round trip through Excel or Google Sheets. Pasting Stage values that name the pick-up list asks for the same handoff confirmation, once for the affected tasks. Cancel keeps their previous stages; the other pasted fields still save. Hand to Arro queues only the tasks in that paste, after their other fields have saved.Undo
Press Ctrl+Z (⌘+Z on a Mac) to undo cell edits, pastes, fill colors, and task or field deletions while the task board is open. Ctrl+Y (⌘+Shift+Z) redoes. Deleting several fields at once asks for confirmation first, since it removes their data from every task. In Board view the only thing to undo is a deleted task, so undo works back through the ones you deleted. Cell edits and pastes belong to Table view, and each view keeps its own history.Attachments
Attachment fields hold files. Add them from a cell, from the expanded task view, or from the intake form, and drag files straight onto the field in the latter two. Each file uploads with its own progress bar, and images show a clickable thumbnail. Closing the dialog or leaving the page does not stop an upload. It finishes in the background, lands in its task, and a card in the bottom-right corner shows how it went. Closing the intake form is different: the task does not exist yet, so any upload still running is cancelled. Switching workspaces cancels running uploads too. Files are stored per task board rather than per task. The add dialog’s Task board files tab lists everything already uploaded, so attaching a file to a second task is a matter of ticking it. The Link (URL) tab attaches a file that lives somewhere else.
The file limit is the same on every plan, and a file over 100 MB is refused before it uploads. Storage
is the total size of every file attached to any task board in the workspace, and grows with each
seat. The figure for each plan is in Plan limits. Common
document, image, video, audio, archive, and data formats are accepted. Anything a browser would run
or render as a document is refused: executables, HTML, and SVG always, and XML whenever the browser
labels it as XML.
Manage a task board’s files
Task boards with an attachment field get an Attachments button in the toolbar, opening the task board’s file manager. Search the files, download one, or delete one permanently. Anyone who can see the task board can browse and download, and uploading and deleting need edit access. The manager also shows how much of the workspace’s storage is used, warning at 75%.Files from runs
In the desktop app, a card shows how many files its runs saved on this computer. Open the task to see them under Files from runs, each with Open and Show in folder. The list covers every run that worked the task, including the agents it started. Files saved on another computer, or seen in a browser, do not appear. A workflow can also attach a file it made to an attachment field on the task. Everyone who can see the task board can open and download an attached file, while Files from runs lists only the files on this computer.Hide fields, filter, group, and sort
View controls only affect what you see. They do not modify the data, they reset when you reload, and
sorting and grouping reset when you switch to Board view. A hidden field stays active in any filter,
group, or sort that uses it.
Working with other people
Task boards sync live across everyone with the task board open. You see remote cursors, a brief flash on a cell someone is editing, and presence avatars for who else has it open. Ask Arro on the desktop to change a workflow’s task board. It adds, updates, and deletes tasks, and adds, renames, or removes fields. Edits apply live with no preview and no separate save step, and it deletes only the tasks and fields your request names.Linked tasks
A linked-task field points to tasks on another workflow’s task board. Click the cell to search and pick tasks to link. Because every card on a task board is a piece of work, a linked task is how one points at another: a dependency, or the task another was produced from. Making that other workflow private, or deleting it, removes the linked-task fields pointing at its task board, along with the links stored in them.Plan limits
A task board comes with its workflow, so the workflow limits are the only cap on how many there are. Each task board holds a limited number of tasks, which is per task board and does not grow with seats. See Plan limits for the per-plan figure. Some limits are the same on every plan.Related
Workflows
The workflow each task board belongs to and every card runs.
Scheduled tasks
Point a schedule at a workflow to add a task on a cadence.
Workspace requests
Ask Arro to change a task board’s fields and tasks.