Create a task report

Welcome to Create a Task Report. In this video, you will learn how to create a task report with a complex filter and how to find the reports you create. Using existing filters, views, and groupings and or built-in reports may not always give you the information you need, so you need to build your own report from scratch. Go to Reports, click on New Report, and Task Report. You need a report so that people can focus on tasks they’re assigned to that are late. Ideally, this report would be empty, but if you did see any tasks on it, you’d probably want to look into them quickly. You will name your report, Late Tasks Assigned to Me. You will fill in the description as well. This is where you can provide more details about the report than may be included in the title alone. We’ll start with the Filters tab. This is where you define what information you want to show in the report, and it’s a popular place to start. Remember, you want to see late, incomplete tasks on current projects where you are one of the users assigned. This means you need one filter rule for each condition. Where the task progress status is late, this means the planned completion date is in the past, Task Progress Status equal Late. Where the task is incomplete field is False, Task is Complete equal False. Where the project status equates with current, notice that we’re using the project field source here, Project Status Equates with Current. Where the logged in user is one of the users assigned to the task, for this you want to look at the assignment user’s field source. The ID field shows a list of the user IDs of the users assigned to this task. Using the equal qualifier with the ID of the logged in user, or $user.id, will tell you if the logged in user’s ID is on the assignment list. Assignment users, ID, equal, $user.id. Next go to the Columns or View tab. There are several common columns provided by default. You can use them, move them, or delete them. You can also add your own columns. You want to add a column to provide some important information about tasks that show up on this report. When you see a task here you know it’s late, and it’s assigned to you, so you probably want to see what the holdup is. One of the first things you’ll want to find out is if the task has any predecessors that you’re working on. An easy way to do this is to add a column called Can Start. A task can start when all predecessor dependencies are met. This usually means the predecessor tasks are complete. If they are not complete, this may be the reason your task is late. You may want to open the project to look into any predecessor tasks. This field will show true when all predecessors for this task have been completed, and false if there are one or more predecessor tasks that are not completed, thus making it so your task could not start. When you see a task in your report with the Can Start column showing false, you know you want to open the project to see more details. You decide to add another column to show the project name. Not only will it display the project name, but it will hyperlink the project if you click on the name. Choose the Name field from the project field source, then drag the column to the left of the task name. When late tasks appear on the report, it might be helpful to see those that are the most past due their dates at the top of the list. To do this, select the Due On column, then click Sort by this column. The default of ascending puts the most distant dates at the top of the list. As you’re building your report, every so often it’s a good idea to click the Apply button. This saves your report without closing it. Once everything is set up, click Save and Close to look at the report. You can access your new report from the My Reports section of the Reports page. Make it a favorite or pin it. Now you have a report that shows you late tasks assigned to you, sorted so the most past due tasks are at the top of the report, with a handy column showing if they can start yet and a hyperlink to their project to make drilling down easy.