Layouts by task type
planned
Ivan Villa
Problem:
We manage different types of work within ClickUp, and how sections are organized in ClickUp Tasks do not always work across each type. In some tasks, for example I want subtasks and fields front and center, while in others, I need to bring relationships front and center.
Ask:
- Give the ability to have a different task layout for each task type.
- This would allow each type to have a layout that is better organized for that type of work.
Log In
Jenni Skarsten
There are so many restrictions on the task Status field that we've had to rely on custom fields to help add definition to the true status of a task and where it is within the workflow. We need to be able to see that at the top of a task, not dig for it within the task details. I'd also love to be able hide the task status when needed so that teams can use the field I require.
Matthew Burt
Jenni Skarsten This. Please fix. The status field is basically worthless for us. The restrictions, rules, and don't get me started on multihoming tasks to multiple lists. We just use it to close out tasks and we use Pinned Custom Fields to track various workflow statuses (aka stages, phases, steps, etc). I need these custom dropdown statuses we made to be front and center at the top, not hidden at the bottom in a Details tab. Or better yet, fix your statuses.
Tami Liss
This would be excellent, and incredibly useful so that if you rely more on Custom Fields than descriptions, or more on Checklists than Subtasks, you can ensure that section is always visible. The 3.0 update that tabbed elements in a task made it more confusing and cumbersome in the experience of many, and was effectively given a "revert to 2.0" button a year later (see https://clickup.canny.io/feature-requests/p/switch-from-tabs-for-details-subtasks-action-items-back-to-scrolling), but otherwise no significant updates or improvements were made to the open task view.
Things that would be great to see incorporated:
- Reordering sections within a task
- Expanding/collapsing sections within a task
- Adding sections to the sidebar, with max 2 items viewable at any time.
- Saving as a Task Template once arranged a certain way
- Combining or moving closer together the default fields section (Status, Dates, Assignees, etc.) and the Custom Fields section. It's always been awkward having to scroll up and down / looking in two places to see all the fields.
- Make the option to hide/show empty fields (default and/or custom) savable and the "Show/Hide Empty Fields" button ALWAYS visible (right now that options only appears on hover in the default fields and Custom Fields sections, so users easily forget additional fields exist if they're just looking at the task).
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Sam
1)in task Overview section We need the overview of all the sub tasks (with wraps version or preview of complete sentences)
why ?
I store my SOPs in clickup task view and viewing complete sop is very IMPORTANT FOR ME
2) Task list should also have complete wrap text to see sop it's daily problem
Devin Shea
maybe I'm crazy but I'd love to have real views to the subtask manager. there's lots of time where I want to manage the work around just one project, some of which last 3-6 months (a task type) and I want to be able to use things like grouping, filtering, and sorting, or the timeline view, for the subtasks of that parent project. it would make the project management workflow so much smoother.
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Keith Milner
I agree with Patricks comment below -
'Make the layout of the Task as flexible as a your dashboards - let us move the sections around.'
Please take a lesson from the SmartSuite task layout.
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Ashley Carlson
I want to be able to make my tasks, Epics, Features, User Stories, Research. Within EPICs we define more strategy level information, overall success metrics, overall $$$. Within our Features we define the scope, out of scope, and may list more fine tuned success metrics, estimates, team etc.. In User Stories we are using Scenarios, Assigned person, Designs, Acceptance Criteria, and Release Dates. Things like release dates should roll up to the overall feature and then the EPIC too.
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Patrick Holz
1st and foremost - Task view settings must be at least at the List level, not the Space level. Better yet, see my 3rd request. Thumb tacking is a big sore point for that.
2nd - Make the layout of the Task as flexible as a your dashboards - let us move the sections around.
3rd - Give us the ability to setup multiple views - different roles may only need to see different sections and even fields. Some of my tasks contain a lot of fields. So not just thump tack empty fields, we should be able hide fields within a view.
Elias
Ivan Villa before working on this, in the area of tasks I would prioritize:
- subtask list on task (grouping, sorting, fields shown) per location, not per take type (would not solve any problem for me)
- relationship editing and viewing
- time blocking of tasks from task
Ivan Villa
planned
Hey Folks 👋
We're working on adding more customization options to your task views and need your help. We are looking for real-world examples to help guide us in making these improvements. 🙏
- What Items Are You Managing in ClickUp?
- When you open a task, what details need to be front and center? What can be minimized?
- If you handle different types of items, how do their visibility needs vary?
There will be many new updates this year, and your feedback, like always, is super important.
R
Rebecca Julius
Ivan Villa we mainly keep different "types" of tasks in different lists. If I could organize which custom fields are front and center PER LIST that would be awesome. For example, we are tracking bug reports and feature requests and internal technical debt and release management tasks in different lists and each has its own relevant custom fields - many get ignored on every task and we just have to know which ones to ignore.
I could also see a world where I would want to customize the view PER VIEW. Sometimes I have views of a particular list that show only customer bugs, for example. In those cases, I'd like to see customer information which is stored in custom fields front and center, but perhaps not always on the bug list.
I frequently want to see both subtasks and details side by side - not sure if that's in scope here. I sometimes set details on subtasks based on the details of the current task. I can do this with a select and bulk update, but need to switch back and forth to make sure I'm setting the correct data.
The same goes for action items - since I can't copy details from custom fields into the auto-generated checklist items from my template, I frequently need to flip back and forth between the instructions in my checklist and the version numbers I need to use to execute certain commands, where those version numbers are stored in custom fields.
I almost never need start date and due date and would prefer to be able to hide them.
It would be great to be able to pick a few custom fields that could be really TOP and center. I have to scroll to get to even the top few custom fields, when I frequently am ONLY opening a task to verify that a Github PR was created against the correct branch. (This is desired base branch is denoted in a custom field and I manually verify when approving pull requests in Github).
I also usually want to see the Design field on the top of a task, but only for tasks that have a custom field called dev type set to Design (from a drop down) - that's probably the most obscure use case I can come up with, but would be incredibly useful for us.
Feel free to contact me to discuss any of these, or to dig deeper into our processes!
Ryan P. Keane
Ivan Villa Thank you for working on this! Ross's message below says it best, what we really need is a TRULY customizable task interface. The ability to show, hide, and move anything on there freely. Maybe that works where each element of a task (ex. Title, Description, Fields, Attachments, etc.) all operate more like dashboard widgets? Able to move them around the task and resize?
Use case examples: We rarely ever use Subtasks. But there's a whole side pane on the left side that is dedicated to Subtasks, that cannot be used for anything else. Something we might want to do is put Relationships in that left panel instead, and set the task to always view that side panel no matter which task you're in. We really miss being able to access Relationships and their rollup fields within the task without having to switch between menus for Activity, and being able to have an always viewable left panel dedicated to Relationships would solve that.
It would also be AWESOME to be able to move the task pane around the screen like a 'window'. Ability to resize and snap to grid, to put two tasks side by side or have a small version of a task set to "always on top" in the corner of the screen. The ability to look at two tasks next to each other from different lists and different spaces would be incredible.
Also the ability to split and move Custom Fields and Relationships would be incredibly useful. Example: We have a list for Orders where each task is tracking a number of different things like financials, categorization, dates, etc. The ability to separate the financial fields from dates, and even place those sets of fields in different parts of the task pane would be great. Or relationships to one list on the left side, and relationships to a different list on the right side or bottom.
Essentially making the task pane more like it's own dashboard with movable and resizable widgets, as separated out as possible.
Perry Wirth
Ivan Villa One of our most used use cases is for tracking times which would never go through a workflow - almost like a spreadsheet (similar to airtable)
Nathan Boyer
Ivan Villa I'm going to plug my own feature request here, since I think this one interface change could fill most needs. https://feedback.clickup.com/feature-requests/p/move-subtasks-checklists-and-assigned-comments-out-of-the-center-of-task-view
- Center area shows description and custom fields. (Do not hide any!)
- Attachments are made smaller and moved up to the top section next to relationships and tags. (Don't need the embedded preview: just preview on hover).
- Subtasks, checklists, and action items are moved entirely into the subtask sidebar (removed from the central area).
- This means there are no tabs in the task view, and scrolling only occurs if the task description or custom fields list is long.
Task types that are tracking widgets, tooling, people, etc. will not have subtasks or checklists (because of the limitation on subtask statuses matching task statuses), but they will have descriptions, custom fields, and attachments. In this scenario then, all the information is available with the left subtask sidebar collapsed.
Normal tasks will want the same central information (description, fields, attachments, top matter), so they can use the same central layout but with the addition of the sidebar for subtasks.
Personally, we never use Checklists or Assigned Comments since they compete with Subtasks, so it would be nice to be able to turn those off from the task view globally. However, I think a layout overhaul can greatly minimize the need for a bunch of custom toggles.
Nurri Toups
Ivan Villa I second what has been stated before. Being able to mark these customizations per list is much more helpful and flexible than trying to create blanket rules to apply to all lists / spaces. I use tasks for a variety of things, including but not limited to : development work, test coverage, administrative duties, reminders, important dates, software bugs, personal development, etc. Being able to set unique customizations for each list would be phenomenal. Because then I can simply view items from each location in a single visual in my dashboards.
Jasmine Lotomau
Ivan Villa
Items us and our ClickUp Build clients manage
- Tasks
- Tickets (client generated tasks that may need a certain level of visibility for the client)
- Clients/Locations (each task represents a client or a location)
- Campaigns (each task represents a FB ad campaign for instance and has custom fields that change based on the campaign's performance)
- Resources for clients (eg. Google docs for our consulting clients, spreadsheets, training videos, etc.)
What can be minimized
- ideally everything. I really like how AirTable's cards can have custom collapsable sections and each section can have a preset of custom fields that show.
How do their visibility needs vary?
- For resources > cards / gallery view would be amazing because people can perceive visuals faster than they do written text (exactly why YT uses thumbnails rather than just listing out the titles of videos)
- In some instances, we don't need an activity/comments section or even a description, we just need to see the custom fields, subtasks and checklist items. Sometimes we don't need to track time or use priority flags so that's a useless/distracting area in the task view
- Sometimes I want to see relationships + custom fields before the description, other times I want to see the description first and then the custom fields (like it is currently)
In general > ClickUp would be less cluttered, feel less overwhelming, and be easier to adopt for non-techy people if we could customize the view of the item (similar to AirTable) and save it to the item type.
Jasmine Lotomau
Bonus points if we can turn item views into templates and share them with other ClickUp users
Leslie Surel
Ivan Villa I would love if ClickUp could mimic what James Guitard showed below from a screenshot in SmartSuite. Which would be the ability to turn on/off and rearrange different elements within task view. My visibility needs would vary within Spaces or Lists, just like custom fields and task statuses are handled. At the very least, the ability to rearrange the details, so I could put checklists at the top and custom fields at the bottom if I wanted to, for example.
I'd l ike the title and description to be front and center. I'd like the description box to be resizable. I'd like the option to show/hide status, dates, time, assignees, custom fields, subtasks, checklists, attachments, and activity/comments.
Josué Nevárez
Ivan Villa we maneged marketing and content creation, and we always add a custom field with a link a drive folder, as well as other custom fileds. But we need to scroll down to see such fields. I would love to be able to customize what fields ar shown at the top of the tasks, instead of just having default fields that we don't use. Also, to be able to have custom fileds within the task description (but also shown in table views).
TaeLynn Perez
Ivan Villa
- I'd like the option to choose which task properties are visible above the task description.
- Depending on the task type, the list of custom fields might be more important that the task description. In other task types, it's the attachments. It would be nice to have the option to rearrange all elements of a task view to suit our preferences (and to make task templates) - like a drag and drop layout builder.
- Also, I know this isn't task-view-related, but it drives me nuts that Dropdown options are center-justified in columns (list view) when everything else is left-justified. Like, why
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Heather
Ivan Villa We mainly use clickup as a to do list tool, with recurring tasks, easy links to the relevant doc (instructions) in the description. As others have said, we have a lot of custom fields for different lists and it would be great to only have the relevant ones visible. We also use subtasks a lot and my biggest irritation with these at the moment is that we can't remove the priority and due date columns (that we don't use for subtasks) from the list of subtasks when the parent task is open. Also, the sort order in the view with the parent task open isn't the same order as when they are viewed as subtasks in the list view. We use a numbering system 01. 02. 03. for subtasks so we can sort by name, and the most common order of processing but we can't seem to save this sort option when we open the parent task. We have to select it again. And we can't turn on text wrapping for subtasks when in the parent task - or we couldn't last time I tried, which was a while ago. We never use track time. There is a lot of white space in the middle of my screen when the activity panel is open - when it's closed the status/assignees etc collapse into two columns which is a much better use of space but either way, I have to scroll to get to anything useful like custom fields, description, subtasks.
We don't manage projects, it's not even used company-wide. It's just a few admin staff, who mainly have our own tasks, but it's really useful to be able to see everyone else's tasks if they're off sick or on leave, and sometimes we have overlapping tasks with subtasks assigned to different people.
We only have one list where we regularly attach items.
Some of these issues were introduced in V3. V2 was far superior for the way we use clickup.
All comments relate to the windows desktop app. I rarely use the mobile app except when I'm on the run and think of something I need to do when I get back to the office, and only use the browser version when I want to open a different task while leaving my current one open.
EDIT: And having said all that, I might have totally missed the point, since all our tasks are tasks, so having a different layout for different task types won't help us necessarily, but more customisability (is that a word) would be most welcome and truly appreciated.
Leon Taheny
Ivan Villa Our main task types:
CRM Task
- custom fields are most important, would be great up top with a picture of the client
- description for note taking
Contact DB
- only custom fields are important
Workshop PO
- current layout works well
Design Task
- would be great to rearrange to have details and subtasks more promenant
A
Amanda Hyer
Ivan VillaI was quite disheartened to realize that "task type" as it currently exists was only a superficial change to the task icon. While it is helpful (more helpful now that you can use task type in dashboards and incorporate it into automations) it would be more helpful to actually modify the task attributes based on task type.
For example, some types of tasks for us are primarily informational, so we'd want to emphasize our custom fields and relationships, but wouldn't need subtasks or checklists.
I'd also like to see a change in how sub-tasks and checklists are handled. While I can see the intent with detailed subtasks, it nearly always results in more confusion and extra work for my team to copy and transfer information from the parent task into the sub-tasks. I love the simplicity of the checklists, since that's often, in effect, how we're using the sub-tasks, but the pitfall there is they feel very hidden away, you can't create automations around them in the same way, and (most importantly) you can't add due dates to them.
I'd love to see a modified version of a subtask (or a task) where I could totally modify every aspect about how a task appears and what features a task has--even the ability to add attachments or comments. That way, I could make sure that my assignees are all seeing the same information, in the same place, and can easily extract the portions they need to execute their tasks. Then, when it's time for collaboration or uploading of files, they have no choice but to add it to the parent task, so all the information stays together, rather than getting lost in sub-tasks.
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Amanda Hyer
Totally separately, while we are primarily using ClickUp to house action-oriented items and tasks, I'd also like to be able to use it for more "database" information. As an example, I work in marketing at a university and we recruit models from our own student body. We're currently using Airtable to store their information since we can create a gallery view there to view their photos and other relevant information as we're selecting who to hire. We have a few times a year where we're actively using and adding to this database, but otherwise, it primarily exists as a place to hold this information until it's needed again. If ClickUp had a gallery view where you can customize which custom fields and attributes appear on the cards, I could see us moving this to ClickUp, as well as creating other, similar styles of databases (equipment inventory, project portfolios, etc.)
Ben Porter
Ivan Villa Example task types:
Contact - primarily show custom fields for contact information, relationships, and activity feed. Subtasks and checklists hidden
File - only show attachments section and custom fields, all other fields (description, activity, subtasks) disabled/hidden
Florian Schardt
Ivan Villa Great you will start working on that!
If we could customize the task view depending on the task type that would be a big benefit for us!
Use case: We have a project review meeting in which each project manager presents his project in 5 minutes. Currently we use a PowerPoint slide for this (one page per project). This allows us to show all required information on one page. Disadvantage is that a lot of information needs to be copied from ClickUp into the PowerPoint.
What we need in the task view (based on task type) (descending order of importance):
-Select which custom fields are shown.
-Select if Activity is shown by default or not.
-Group custom fields (e.g. 3 custom fields showing budget; 5 custom fields showing a traffic light for status, time, ressources, time; 3 custom fields that show project KPIs)
-Arrange custom fields (similar to cards in the ClickUp dashboards)
-Add dashboard cards to the task view (pie chart, line chart, bar chart)
-Add a Gantt chart (e.g. embed an existing ClickUp Gantt chart)
-Calculate and show progress of the project (e.g. percentage of tasks, sprint points or time estimates in a set location (folder, list)).
-Have custom fields that can contain text AND pictures.
-Milestone Trend Analysis
-Task list (name, status, due date, progress) with all milestones of the project (using a filter for a set location)
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Andrew Tomassetti
Ivan Villa
Some items we're currently managing in ClickUp: (all are task types)
Intake Requests, Epics, User Stories, Builds (think of these as features for development), Bugs, Meetings, Contacts, Releases, Project, and some less popular ones.
None of our task types have fields that are relevant to the others, so this is an upgrade we are really hoping for, as its very difficult to find the right field, when there are so many. Bug tasks for example may have 8-10 fields that are specific to identifying the problem, evidence, issue resolution status, etc. and when seen on other tasks like Intakes or Builds, it takes away from the relevancy of the fields our users need to be looking at.
Our way of solving for this currently, is that when someone is looking to fix bugs for example, we've created bug lists that contain the columns relevant to bugs only...and vice versa, if doing any development/creation, they can go to a build/backlog list to see the columns/fields related to builds.
So to answer your question about what needs to be front and center, in our case, it depends on the task type.
Pascal Kuratli
Ivan Villa We are a digital agency and manage the following types of tasks in ClickUp:
- Customers/ Accounts
- contacts
- Tickets
- Deals
- projects
- Assets
- Subscriptions
- invoices
...
However, accounts, contacts and tickets are by far the most important. If ClickUp such as monday.com or Notion offered an individual layout for tasks, this could open up new possibilities and simplify some processes.
Matthew Burt
Ivan Villa I've already commented on this in various different ways and lots of other people are doing a great job here. Just going to say:
Please let us pin custom fields to the top of the task (not top of the details pane) and remove junk up there we don't want from the top.
Ivan Villa
Merged in a post:
Customize Task View Completely
Ross McConeghy
Allow users to design a
completely
customized task view.The default task view "form" should be saved per task type and allow for overriding at the list level.
Completely customizable
- as an extreme example - a user should be able to set up a task view to only see a single checkbox custom field with no task name, no description, no other intrinsic or custom fields or relationships shown. The only feature of the task view form that should be required is a border with a close button.
Stop assuming that the Status, Task Name, Description, Priority, or Due Date will even be present in the task view at all and let the user decide the grouping and sorting of all fields.
Don't assume that because you have to do more processing to handle relationships the user expects them to be in a separate presentation from custom fields. The user should be able to pull in any property of the linked task as the value of the field, or a calculated or rollup value.
The table of subtasks should be available as an option to insert at any point in the form. It should have customizable rollup columns. Or the user should be able to have a simple count of subtasks or calculated/rollup displayed if that's all they want for the use case.
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