Have you ever been assigned a task that you couldn’t complete because there was still a piece missing – a piece of work that was someone else’s responsibility and just hadn’t been finished yet? Such tasks – tasks that depend on other tasks and people – are quite common in projects and they’re often a source of frustration when workers forget to notify each other about their progress.
The solution: Task Relationships
Tasks Relationships are an easy way to visualize task dependencies and ensure task owners get notified when a task that’s somehow related to one of their own is completed.
Here’s how it works:
1. Open Project Settings, via the small arrow next to your project title, and then click on Features. Flip the switch to enable Task Relationships for your project.
2. Open a task which you’d like to add a relationship to. You can then select one of the following options:
A small orange Stop sign will appear on the task, indicating the blockade (see our example task on the left, below).
3. As soon as the blocking task is completed, the task owner of the blocked task will receive a notification to let them know that the blockade is gone.
It’s that simple! If you have any questions, just let us know in the comments below 🙂
Is there a way to filter tasks in projects by the tag? For example, I only want to see tasks that have a tag of X?
Hi Wayne,
Absolutely! You can filter tasks by task owner, due date, tag and status – or a combination of all of the above. Take a look at this short video to see how it works: https://youtu.be/S5jQpRy5zZU
Thank you. I found the filter function using the web app/site, but cannot find it on the iOS (iPad) App, does the iOS App have the same filter functions?
The filter functions are not yet available for the iOS app, but are definitely on the road map. We\’ll keep you posted!
I\’d like to suggest another road map item. Be great if it was possible to add horizontal swim lanes.
How do the other task relations work?
Hi Tomáš,
Right now, you only receive a notification for the \’Blocked\’ relationship. We\’re in the process of deciding what makes the most sense for other types of relationships. If you have any suggestions, now would be a good time!
hi there! for the \”duplicate\” task relationship, is there a way to make sure they actually are duplicates of each other (to link them together, such that what happens with one happens to the other)?
Hi Amparo, at the moment your actions on one task aren\’t automatically duplicated on the related task, but we\’re looking into this option for version two of our task relationship feature!
How do we see the detail of the task that is currently blocking a certain task?
Hi Natalie,
If you open either one of the two affected tasks you\’ll see that their relationship status is indicated in the grey area on the right side of the task dialog (underneath the \’About this task\’ info). There you\’ll find a link to the task that is blocked by / or blocking this task.
Is this what you were looking for?
I find relations very important. For me, these appear to be inconspicuous in the tasks. When I open a task, I immediately notice the tags in the right column because of the color coding. The relations, on the other hand, are quickly overlooked.
I also think it’s a pity that only the map that is blocked has an indicator. For me it would also be important to see with which tasks I block others.
Hi, I just joined meistertask, mainly because I wanted to use the Task Relationship feature. However, based on the instructions above, I cannot figure out where the Project Settings is located in order to enable this feature on my project. Please advise! Thank you!
Hi Diana,
Sorry we didn\’t make that more clear. To open project settings, please open the respective project and click on the ( i ) button in the top bar (next to the project name). When the dialog opens, go to the Features tab – there you will find the switch to enable task relationships.
Cheers!
Hi, is it possible to filter the tasks by dependency (only see that tasks that are related to a selected task)? I know I can see a basic list in the screen of the task but I would like to see them in the kanban board and be able to drag them around, see their assignees, etc.
Hi Petr, unfortunately this is currently not possible but we\’ve put it on our feature request list and will look into it – maybe there\’s a workaround we can come up with. Cheers