Regular tasks, parent tasks, and subtasks – an overview

Tasks are the building blocks of project management in Scoro. They represent a specific piece of work, an activity, or a deliverable, often completed within a set timeframe. By using tasks, you can manage your workload, track your planned versus actual time, and ensure you meet your project milestones.

1. Task types

Depending on the work planning method enabled on your site under Settings > Work and projects > Calendar and tasks, you can organize work either with regular tasks or in a two-level hierarchy with parent tasks and subtasks.

1.1. Regular task

A regular task is a standalone action item without any subtasks. 

Regular tasks are available in all work planning options and are ideal for straightforward work that can be owned and completed by one or more assignees without requiring a further breakdown of steps.

If your site uses the With subtasks work planning option, the detailed view of a regular task will also include a Subtasks section. Once at least one subtask is added, the regular task becomes a parent task.

1.2. Parent tasks and subtasks

Parent tasks and subtasks have a direct relationship:

• A parent task is a high-level deliverable or a major part of a project, with the work broken down into smaller pieces of work (subtasks) for granular execution.
• A subtask is a specific, granular step required to complete the deliverable in the parent task. Subtasks make it easy for multiple people and different roles (e.g., Designer and Developer) to work on different parts of the same high-level deliverable. You can create subtasks under any regular task, thereby making that task a parent.

Parent tasks and subtasks are available in the With subtasks work planning option and in mixed mode (for advanced workflows only).

Key things to remember about subtasks:

• Currently, you can go one level deep with subtasks. You cannot create a subtask under another subtask.
• Subtasks cannot exist without a parent task. Deleting a parent task also deletes all its subtasks and the time entries logged on them, but don’t worry – Scoro will give you a warning when you try to delete such a parent task.
• There is no limit to how many subtasks can be under a parent task – add as many as you need!
• You don’t always have to use subtasks in every project if your site uses the With subtasks work planning option – you can still keep tasks as regular ones without breaking them down further. Here’s a simple rule of thumb to understand whether subtasks may be useful in your project: 
  • Use subtasks if the deliverable requires multiple steps or different team members and/or roles to complete.
  • Skip subtasks if the action item is simple and doesn’t involve multiple steps.

2. Data subtasks inherit from parent tasks

To save you time, subtasks are designed to automatically inherit some of the context from their parent tasks:

• Fixed inherited details: Subtasks are automatically linked to the same project, phase, company, contact (company or person), and quote as the parent task (if such links exist). These cannot be changed on the subtask level.
  
• Flexible details: You can modify the activity type and billable status that the subtask inherited from its parent task. For example, a billable parent task can have a non-billable subtask for internal work that you won’t charge the client for.

3. Managing task permissions

Certain aspects of task management in Scoro are controlled by permission sets.

There are multiple permissions you can enable or disable for permission sets that affect what users with those permission sets can do with tasks:

• Delete tasks assigned by others – controls whether users can delete tasks assigned to them by others. 
• Confirm time entries and calendar events – controls whether users can confirm time entries and calendar events for any user. Relevant when the site uses activity confirmation before billing.
• View budget for the task based on the quote – controls whether users with this permission set can see the budgeted hours from the quote in the Tasks module. When disabled, the user won’t see the following details:
  • The budgeted hour bars in the time breakdown chart
  • Budget and Remaining columns in the project task list
  • Budgeted column in the Gantt chart

Additionally, when modifying a permission set, you can open the Modules and actions tab to choose how users with that permission set can access events and tasks of users with other permission sets.

For more information on modifying these permissions, see our Permission sets article.