Work and its stages
Track what you are delivering for a customer, step by step.
Work is one thing you are delivering for one customer: a renovation, a treatment plan, a brand refresh. Each piece of work belongs to a kind of work, and each kind has its own ordered stages — the steps that kind goes through from start to finish.
The Work page
Work opens on Work under way, with everything grouped by what it needs from you rather than by what kind it is:
- Needs you — something here is yours to move.
- Waiting on a customer — noted Nothing needed from you.
- In progress — moving normally.
- Live and under care — noted Delivered — still yours to look after, for work that is finished as a project but ongoing as a service.
- Finished — folded away, most recent first.
Above them, counts summarise the same set, and a line links to Action items across all your work. Below them are your archived work and your kinds of work.
When there is nothing yet: Nothing is under way yet. Work appears here once you start something for a customer.
Starting work
Create work asks who it's for and which kind of work, then the name, which stage to start at, an optional Owner and an optional first step.
Moving through stages
Open a piece of work and its Stage section, noted Where this work is in its workflow, holds the whole mechanism: choose a stage under Move to and press Update stage.
Stages carry meaning as well as order. A kind of work can mark a stage as waiting on the customer, as delivered but ongoing, or as the stage that completes the work.
CLEO refuses a move it can't honour, and says why:
is archived, so its stage was not moved. Restore it first.
was cancelled, so its stage was not moved. Reopen it first.
That stage is no longer in use for this kind of work.
Six words that are easy to confuse
| What it is | Where it lives | |
|---|---|---|
| Stage | Where the work has got to in its own workflow | The Stage section |
| Next step | One line saying what happens next, with an optional date and time | Details |
| Action item | One thing that needs doing, which can be assigned and dated | The work's action items |
| Owner | The person on your team responsible for this work | Details |
| Blocked by | A note saying what is holding it up | Details |
| Waiting on the customer | A tick that says the next move is theirs, not yours | Details |
The first is about progress; the rest are about who does what, and when.
Details, in one form
Owner, Next step and its date, Blocked by and Waiting on the customer all live on the Details tab, and are saved together with Save.
A next step with a date that has passed puts the work under Needs you. Ticking waiting on the customer moves it out of your list and into what is with them.
Finishing, cancelling, archiving
- Finishing is a stage move, as above.
- Cancel work records that it isn't happening, with an optional reason. The record is kept.
- Archive this work takes a finished or abandoned piece of work out of your lists. Restore to Work brings it back.
Neither cancelling nor archiving deletes anything, and both can be undone. Archived work can't change stage until it is restored.
Inside a piece of work, the individual things that have to happen are its action items.