Tasks

A task is a workflow pausing for you. When a run reaches a checkpoint, or Alma needs an answer only a person has, it arrives here with the context already attached.

The page is a queue beside a reading pane. On a narrow window it is one column, and opening a task replaces the list until you press Back.

Three lists

The band above the queue carries three, each with its own count:

• Open — waiting on you now.
• Snoozed — put off until a moment you chose. A snoozed task comes back to Open by itself.
• Resolved — settled, with the receipt of what was decided and what came of it. A dot on the tab means a receipt you have not read yet.

Two more lists sit behind the band’s overflow, because they are places you go occasionally rather than lists you work: Archived, and Sent requests — the things you asked of other people.

Three types

Whatever raised it, a task is one of three things to you:

Type	What it asks
Approval	A run is paused for your decision.
Q&A	Alma, or a colleague through Alma, is asking you something.
Knowledge	Alma proposed something about what it knows, and wants a ruling.

The chips above the queue filter by type. The search field matches what the row and the pane actually show — the title and the line under it — and the sort offers Priority, Newest, Oldest and By type. Priority orders open work only; a settled receipt has no priority left, so the option is withheld on the other lists rather than offered and ignored.

Reading and deciding

A task is read and decided in one column: the ask, its facts, the conversation under it, and the decision row inline where you finish reading. You never have to hunt for the buttons.

What a task offers depends on what it is:

• Approve or decline, on an approval. Approving resumes the run from where it paused.
• Answer, on a Q&A, in the thread under the card — the same thread Alma replies in.
• Rule on what Alma proposed, on a Knowledge task, item by item.
• Snooze — 1 hour, Later today, Tomorrow, or Next week. The task leaves Open and comes back at the time it names.
• Archive — “doesn’t need action”. Reversible: Restore to Open is on the archived task’s own menu.

Add a lesson is on every decision. A sentence you leave there — “always check the renewal date first” — becomes a standing rule Alma reads on later runs, so a correction you make once does not have to be made again. See Lessons.

The task’s own menu also carries Properties, Mark as unread and, on an archived row, Restore to Open.

Note

Answering somewhere else counts. A question you reply to by email, in Slack, or from a connected chat app clears the task here on the next read — the task belongs to the ask, not to the form you answered it in.

A task has its own address

Every task is addressable — /{workspace}/tasks/{task} — so a notification, a Mac alert or a link from Home opens that task’s detail, with the row marked in the queue beside it. Which list you are looking at, what you searched for and how you sorted travel in the address too, so a reload puts you back where you were.

Where else tasks reach you

The same queue is behind the Mac app’s tray badge, the counts in the top bar, and whatever notifications your workspace sends. They are all one number because they are all one read.