Cases and tasks

A case is where the day-to-day work actually happens. Once the first two fields are filled in and the record exists, you will come back to it repeatedly: adding services, ticking off tasks, checking what the agent has noticed. This page covers that routine work.

Moving between statuses

Every case has a status, shown as a badge next to its name. It defaults to First Call and moves through the stages a file naturally passes through: Arrangement Conference, Arrangements Confirmed, In Care, Pending Documents, Service Scheduled, Service Complete, Aftercare, and Closed.

The status is not just a label. The family sees it in their portal as “where things stand”, so keeping it current is part of keeping the family informed without having to write to them about it.

The tabs

Once a case is open, its work is split across tabs: Overview, Services & Tasks, Documents, Notes, Agent, and Assistant. Most of your daily work happens in Services & Tasks, which is where this page focuses.

Note

Overview and Documents are covered in Creating your first case. The Agent and Assistant tabs are covered in Working with the agent.

Tasks

Tasks are the to-do list for a case: things someone needs to do, with an optional due date and an owner. They sit below the case’s services on the Services & Tasks tab, split into an open list and a done list.

• Quick add. Type a title into the field at the top and press Enter. The task appears immediately; there is no separate form to fill in.
• Inline editing. Click a task’s title to edit it in place. Press Enter to save, or Escape to discard the change.
• Drag to reorder. Grab the handle on the left of a task and drag it up or down. The order you set is the order the list keeps.
• Checking one off moves it from the open list to the done list, struck through, rather than deleting it.

Due dates and assignment

Hovering a task reveals its due date and assignee controls.

• Due date and time. Click the calendar icon to pick a date, and optionally a time from a set of quick options or your own choice. A task with a passed due date is marked overdue in red.
• Assignee. Click the assignee icon to hand the task to a colleague, or to the family. Tasks assigned to nobody have no assignee icon showing until you hover.

Sharing a task with the family

A task can be shared with the family so it shows up as a to-do in their portal, for things like “sign the release form” or “send us the photos for the slideshow”. Sharing is the icon next to the assignee: it turns solid once a task is shared, and the family sees it, checkbox and all, on the details tab of their portal.

Note

A task must have an assignee before it can be shared. If you assign it to the family directly, sharing is automatic since there is no one else it could be for.

The timeline

Every case keeps a timeline: a record of the calls, emails, and messages that have happened on it, grouped into threads. Each thread shows its channel, when it was last active, and how many events it contains. Expanding a thread shows every message or call in order, with any attachments.

The timeline is not something you maintain by hand. It fills in as the case is worked: an email the agent drafts and you send, a reply that comes back, a call you log. It is the place to look when you need to reconstruct what was actually said and when, rather than relying on memory or a scattered inbox search.

Next

Putting services and meetings on the calendar: Scheduling.