Update task status

Last update: October 3, 2024

CREATED FOR:

  • User

You can update a task’s status to inform others about where the task is (and the overall project) and how it is progressing.

The default statuses are New, In Progress, and Complete. Your Adobe Workfront administrator can add custom statuses for your organization. For more information, see Create or edit a status.

You can manually update task statuses or you can let Workfront automatically update them when certain actions take place.

Access requirements

Expand to view access requirements for the functionality in this article.

You must have the following access to manually update tasks:

Adobe Workfront planAny
Adobe Workfront license*

New: Standard

Or

Current: Work or higher

Access level configurationsEdit access to Tasks
Object permissionsManage permissions to the task

*For more information, see Access requirements in Workfront documentation.

Considerations about updating the Status of tasks

  • When you mark a task as Complete, the percent complete of the task updates to 100%.

  • The following scenarios exist for parent tasks:

    • You cannot update the Status of a parent task to Complete when the Summary Completion Mode of the project is set to Automatic and the subtasks are not completed.
    • You can update the Status of a parent task to Complete when the Summary Completion Mode of the project is set to Manual and the subtasks are completed or incomplete.

    For more information, see Edit projects.

Manually update task status

You can update the task status in the following areas of Workfront:

  • The task header on the task page.
  • The Edit task box, when editing a task.
  • The Task Details section on the task page.
  • In a task list or report, when the Status field is visible in the view.
  • In the Summary panel of the task.

To manually update the task status in the task header:

  1. Go to an task for which you want to update the status.

  2. Click the Status field in the task header and select a new status.

  3. To provide a visual indication of task completion, drag or double-click the bubble under Percent Complete in the header of the task

    Or

    Click inside the bubble in the header of the task to enter a percentage.

  4. (Optional) Do any of the following to provide additional information about the update:

    • To add a note about the update, go to the Updates section and click New comment, then type a note.

    • To notify certain users about the update, type their names in the Tag people or teams field that appears when you type a comment. For more information, see Tag others on updates.

    • To update the Commit Date of the task, click Task Details, then edit the Commit Date field. For information, see Edit tasks.

    IMPORTANT
    Only task assignees can update the Commit Date.

Automatically update task status

Workfront automatically updates the existing status of a task to a different status when the actions listed in the table below occur.

NOTE
The statuses in the following table are default system statuses. Your Workfront administrator or a group administrator can rename the statuses in your instance of Workfront. For information about creating and managing statuses in Workfront, see Create or edit a status.
ActionOriginal StatusNew Status
Update the task percent complete to 100%New or In ProgressComplete
Update the task percent complete from 100% to a lower numberCompleteIn Progress
Click the Start Task button to accept working on a task assigned to youNew

Any status associated with the Start Task button in your Home Team settings.

For information about replacing the Work On It button with a Start Task button, see Replace the Work On It button with a Start button.

Tip: Clicking the Undo buttonafter clicking Start Task reverts the status to New.

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