There are a few ways that you and other people can assign tasks to you:

  • You can add a personal task via the workbox.
  • You can add a notification to your task list, via the notification workbox. This is useful if you want to get back to it later.
  • Someone can assign you a task from a task list on a Confluence page.
  • Other Confluence actions may create a task for you. For example, your Confluence site may be running a plugin that creates and assigns tasks.

Managing your personal tasks in the workbox

The workbox displays your notifications and your personal tasks in separate tabs. The task tab shows the tasks assigned to you. When you update a task that originated in a task list on a page, the update is reflected in the task list too.

Screenshot: Your personal tasks in the workbox


To manage your tasks:

  1. Choose the workbox icon  in the Confluence page header.
    • You can use the keyboard shortcut: Type g then n. (When in the Confluence editor, click outside the editor pane before pressing the keyboard shortcut keys.)
    • The icon indicates the number of unread notifications.

  2. Choose the personal tasks icon:
  3. To add a task and assign it to yourself, type the task summary in the text box and choose Add task.
  4. To prioritise tasks, drag and drop them into your chosen order. (Click a task, hold down your mouse button to drag the task into position, then release the mouse button.) 
  5. To complete a task, or mark it as incomplete, choose the check box next to the task.
  6. To add notes to a task and see further information (for example, a related page) choose the task item. The task details dialog will open.
  7. To see the tasks that are marked as complete, choose View completed.

Adding your notifications to your task list

You can flag a notification as a task. This is useful if you want to take action on the notification later.

To add a notification to your task list:

  1. Choose the workbox icon  in the Confluence page header.
    • You can use the keyboard shortcut: Type g then n. (When in the Confluence editor, click outside the editor pane before pressing the keyboard shortcut keys.)
    • The icon above shows that you have 3 unread notifications.

  2. Choose the notifications icon:
  3. Choose the notification that you want to add to your task list. The notification details dialog will open.
  4. Choose the 'add task' icon  to add this notification to your tasks. The notification will remain in the notification list too.

See Managing Notifications in Confluence for a full description of notifications.

Screenshot: The notification details dialog


Creating task lists and managing tasks on a page

Task lists on a page are useful for assigning and managing tasks in a team.

To add a task list on a page:

  1. Edit the page.
  2. Choose the task-list icon  in the editor toolbar, or press [ and then ] on your keyboard.
  3. Type the description of the task.
  4. If you want to assign a task to someone, type '@' and the person's name in the task description. (For more information about @mentions, see Using Mentions.) That person will receive a notification, and the task will appear in their personal task list in the workbox. If you @mention yourself, the task will appear in your personal task list.
  5. To end the list, press Enter twice.

Keyboard shortcuts:

  • To add a task list, press press [ and then ] on your keyboard.
  • To indent a task, press Tab.
  • To undo an indent, press Shift+Tab.

Managing tasks on a page:

  • When viewing a page, you and other viewers can mark tasks as complete or incomplete. Updates to a task on the page will be transferred to the workbox too. (See above.)
  • To be able to update a task list when in view mode, you need permission to edit the page:

What if the update fails?

This section describes what you should do if Confluence displays an error message saying that your change to a task list could not be saved. The cause is probably one of the following:

  • Your session has expired. Resolution: Log in and update the task list again.
  • You do not have permission to update the task list. Resolution: Check your permissions. You need 'Create page' permission in the space. Please check also that there are no page restrictions that prevent you from editing the page.
  • The network is down. Resolution: Please try again when the network is available.

Screenshot: A task list on a page


Managing tasks with Confluence mobile

You can view and manage your tasks on your phone or other mobile device too. See Using Confluence on a Mobile Device for more about mobile platforms.

Notes

  • Administrators can enable and disable the workbox on your Confluence site. They can also connect a JIRA site or another Confluence site, so that notifications from those sites appear in your workbox too. See Configuring Workbox Notifications.
  • The Confluence workbox is provided by a set of plugins. To remove the personal notifications and tasks functionality from your site, you can disable the following plugins. See Disabling or Enabling a Plugin for instructions. Disabling these plugins will disable the entire workbox . It is not possible to disable only tasks or only notifications:
    • Workbox - Common Plugin
    • Workbox - Host Plugin
    • Workbox - Confluence Provider Plugin
  • If you want to re-enable the plugins, do so in the following order: Common Plugin, Host Plugin, Confluence Provider Plugin.
  • There is no option to disable the workbox for an individual user.
  • The workbox is not available in clustered environments. The plugin will be installed and enabled, but it will detect that the site is in clustered mode and will not display the dialog.

  • Completed tasks in the workbox are automatically deleted after 7 days.
  • You cannot disable the functionality that provides task lists on a page.
  • There is no link between the tasks in a Tasklist Macro and the tasks described above. The tasks from the macro do not appear in the workbox.
  • Have a feature request? If you are interested in expanding the functionality of tasks in Confluence, you can collaborate with other customers, vote and view all the open feature requests for this feature in the workbox component of the Confluence issue tracker.
    For example, here are some of the feature requests on the issue tracker:

Attachments:

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