Tasks assigned from Google Docs and Chat

When someone assigns you a task inside a Google Doc (a checkbox with your name on it) or in a Google Chat space, Google creates the task in your own Google Tasks account and TasksBoard shows it right away. These tasks are a little different from the ones you create yourself: Google manages the assignment, and it restricts what can be changed on them. This page explains what you see on the task card, how to get these tasks onto your team’s shared list automatically, and what Google does not allow.

A task assigned from a Doc or a Chat space carries two chips on its card:

• Assigned from Google Docs (or Assigned from Google Chat): tells you the task was assigned to you outside TasksBoard. The assignment is Google’s: it cannot be edited or removed from TasksBoard.
• The document title or space name: opens the Doc or the space right where the task was assigned, so you can jump back to the context.

You are also shown as the task’s assignee, with your avatar, exactly like a task a teammate assigned to you in TasksBoard. On a shared list, everyone else sees you as the assignee too (see below).

Google always places a task assigned from Docs or Chat in your default list (“My Tasks”). Nothing in Google Tasks lets you pick another destination, and until now you had to move each task to your team’s shared list by hand.

On the Team plan, each member of a shared list can turn on automatic routing for themselves:

1. Open the shared list’s Shared List dialog (the person-add icon next to the collaborator avatars in the list header, or “Share list” in its ⋮ menu).
2. Turn on “Route tasks assigned to me from Docs/Chat into this list”.

From then on:

• Every task assigned to you from a Doc or a Chat space is moved from your default list into this shared list: while TasksBoard is open on your device, and otherwise by TasksBoard’s sync service the next time the shared list syncs, so you do not need to be signed in. Subtasks are not moved.
• The task keeps its chips and its Google assignment: TasksBoard uses Google’s own “move to another list” action, so nothing is re-created.
• Your teammates receive the task on their copy of the shared list with you as the assignee, so the whole team can see who is responsible.
• Completed tasks are never moved. A task you later move by hand to another shared list stays there; a task found again in your default list (or, while the app is open, in any of your non-shared lists) is routed again.

Each member chooses this for themselves, and for one shared list at a time: turning it on for another list turns it off on the previous one. The owner of the list and its editors can all use it; it requires a Team plan seat. Viewers should leave it off: tasks routed into a view-only copy are removed at the next sync.

Google applies a few restrictions to tasks assigned from Docs and Chat, and TasksBoard cannot lift them:

• No notes. Google rejects any notes on such a task. Because TasksBoard stores labels, attached files and TasksBoard assignees inside the notes, these cannot be added to the task either. In the task editor the notes field, the label, file and assignee buttons are shown greyed out with an explanation; the title and the due date remain editable, and the task can be completed, reopened and moved like any other.
• The assignment is read-only. The “Assigned from” chip and the link to the Doc or space come from Google and cannot be edited or removed from TasksBoard. Reassigning the task is done in the Doc or the Chat space.
• Moving is “all or nothing”. If Google refuses to move an assigned task (it occasionally does for tasks with special properties), TasksBoard leaves it where it is, and tells you when this happens in the app, instead of re-creating it in the destination list: a re-created task would lose its assignment, and deleting the original would remove the task from the Doc.

On a shared list, these limits apply to your own copy of the task only. Your teammates’ copies are ordinary tasks: they can add labels, files and extra assignees on their side, and those changes sync between them. They cannot reach your copy, because Google blocks notes on it: you will always see yourself as the single assignee, with the chips linking back to the Doc.

• Tasks linked to Gmail, Docs, Chat and Drive: every chip a task card can carry.
• Tasks assigned from Docs, Chat and Gmail: where these tasks land and how to move them by hand.
• Assign a task: assignees on shared lists.