Tasks

Tasks are the unit of work in Ceum. A task has a status, an optional type, a priority, optional start and deadline dates, and can be linked to any number of projects, to another task as a subtask, or to other tasks through directional relationships. Tasks also collect comments and time entries.

What you can do

Browse all your tasks on the Tasks page, with sortable, filterable columns. The projects column lists each linked project as a clickable chip, collapsing to a "+N" you can click when a task spans several. Create a new task using a two-column form. Open a task to see its subtasks, comments, time entries, and relationships, and to edit it or open its full edit history. The board (kanban) view now lives on its own Kanban page, reached from the sidebar (below Dashboard) or the B shortcut; you manage and configure boards on the Kanban boards page — see Task kanban. To update several tasks at once, use Bulk edit; see Bulk edit. You can also import tasks and export them to a file.

Fields you fill in

Basic info:

Name — required (max 500 characters).
Description — optional (max 50,000 characters).
Projects — optional, and you can pick more than one. Add each from the picker; remove one with the × on its chip. A task without any project is "floating".
Tags — optional.

Status section:

Status — required; drawn from Custom statuses, configured under Task statuses.
Type — optional; drawn from Task types. Whether a type is billable and whether it can be used at the top level or only as a subtask is controlled in settings.
Priority — high, medium, or low. Defaults to medium.

The status and type pickers only show options valid for the task's current projects. Statuses and types can be scoped to specific projects; when a task spans several projects, only options that cover all of them appear, and changing projects in a way that would leave the current status or type invalid is blocked with an explanation until you pick a valid one (or change the projects). A floating task can use only options available to all projects.

Start date — optional, and empty by default when creating a task from the standard new task form. A task created directly on the calendar gets its start date set to the day it was placed on. When a task is moved out of a backlog status into a non-backlog one, Ceum sets its start date to today if it was still empty — much like the finished date is set when a task is completed. The same happens when you first track time against a task: attaching a task with no start date to a time entry sets its start date to when the tracked work began. An existing start date is never overwritten or cleared automatically.
Deadline — optional. Must come after the start date if both are set.
A task with neither a start date nor a deadline does not appear on the calendar.

Other:

Parent task — optional; makes this task a subtask. The parent's type must allow embeddable children.
Flagged + flag description — an optional toggle (max 500 characters) to mark a task for attention. Flagged tasks are highlighted in the list and surface in Alerts, where the description is shown as the reason.
Relationships — directional links to other tasks using configured relationship types.
Custom fields — if the task's type defines any custom fields, they appear on the form too. The set of fields changes with the task's type.

Each task gets an ID like T-7, which sorts numerically.

Workflows

Create a task

Open the new task form.
Enter the name; pick the status (required) and optionally one or more projects and a type.
Set priority, start date, deadline, and tags if relevant.
Save. The task gets the next ID and appears at the top of the list.

Add a subtask

Open the parent task and use the subtasks section to add a new task inline or attach an existing one. When creating one inline you can set its type (required) and optionally a status and start/deadline dates. Subtasks must use a type marked embeddable. A standalone task can be turned into a subtask by setting its parent in the edit form; detaching it makes it top-level again. Drag subtasks within the section to reorder them.

Mark a task done

Pick a status marked finished. Ceum records when the task finished; moving it back out of a finished status clears that.

Delete a task

Use the Delete button on the task's detail page or its edit page, then confirm. On the kanban board you can also delete a task from the card's detail view. Deleting a parent deletes its subtasks — detach a subtask first if you want to keep it. Any time entries that pointed to the task stay; they just lose this task, and your tracked-time totals are unaffected.

Comment on a task

Open the task and use the comments box. Cmd+Enter or Ctrl+Enter submits, and only the author can edit or delete their own comment. See Task comments for the full thread behavior.

Track time against a task

Start the timer from the Time tracker and select the task, or attach existing time entries from the task's time-entries section. A single time entry can be linked to several tasks at once, and it still counts as one entry of one duration — see Time tracker.

Subtasks

Subtasks go one level deep — a subtask can't have its own subtasks. Their behavior:

Hidden from the main list by default; visible inside the parent task. They do still alert in their own right — an overdue or flagged subtask appears in Alerts and counts toward the bell.
Configurable board rendering — nested inside the parent card, or laid out as separate cards in a dedicated column; see Task kanban.
Embeddable type required — only task types marked embeddable can be used for subtasks.
No project of their own — inline subtasks aren't attached to a project, so their status and type pickers offer only all-projects options.
Detach — removing a task's parent makes it top-level again, keeping its current status.
Reorder by dragging — drag subtasks within the parent's subtasks section to change their order.
Deleting a parent deletes its subtasks — detach a subtask first if you want to keep it.

Status, types, and priority

Status comes from your Custom statuses. The finished and backlog settings control whether tasks count toward your active workload and whether they show in default views.
Types come from Task types. Each type sets whether it's billable, standalone (allowed as a top-level task), and embeddable (allowed as a subtask). The list shows a $ indicator on billable types.
Priority is fixed: high, medium, low. The column is sortable and you can filter by multiple values.

Deadlines

Deadlines compare against today in your timezone. Overdue tasks show in red on the list, surface in Alerts, and appear on the Calendar. Tasks in a status marked finished are left out of the overdue check. A backlog status is not exempt — a backlog task past its deadline is overdue like any other.

Task-to-task relationships

Configure relationship types per workspace on the Task relationships page. Each link has a direction (from one task to another), can't be duplicated for the same pair and type, and a task can't link to itself. The relationships section on the edit and detail pages manages incoming and outgoing links.

Import and export

Bulk edit — select rows on the list, then move through edit and confirm steps on the Task bulk edit page. You can update name, project, status, type, priority, start date, and deadline. Description, tags, relationships, and subtasks aren't bulk-editable.
Import — bring tasks in from a CSV file. Columns include ID, name, description, project, status, type, priority, start date, deadline, and tags. See Import CSV.
Export — choose columns (name, description, tags, project, status, type, priority, dates, tracked time) and a format (CSV, XLS, or PDF) on the Tasks exports page; exports are prepared in the background. See Export data.

Change history

Every field change — name, status, type, priority, projects, dates, tags, and the rest — is recorded in the changelog with the actor (you or an MCP token) and a timestamp. Attaching or detaching a subtask shows up as a parent change on the subtask. Comments and time entries aren't part of the changelog; they have their own surfaces on the task. Changes made through MCP are also captured in the MCP audit log; see Integrations and MCP.

Tips and edge cases

A task can span several projects. Useful when one piece of work feeds more than one engagement; the task shows up in each project's task list, and a filter for any of those projects matches it. Removing a project (or deleting it) leaves the task linked to the rest; a task left with no projects becomes floating.
Subtasks are one level deep. You can't add a subtask to a subtask.
Type filters the subtask pickers. The subtask form only offers embeddable types; the top-level form only offers standalone types.
Finished tasks never alert. A finished task drops out of alerts whether it was overdue or flagged; the flag stays on it, it just stops asking for attention.
Comment authorship sticks. Revoking an MCP token doesn't delete or anonymize the comments it created; they keep their original attribution.

Billing tasks

Select tasks on the list and the bulk toolbar offers Create invoice. It resolves which client the selection belongs to, then opens the new-invoice form with one line per task — the task name as the description, its tracked hours as the quantity, and the resolved rate as the unit price.

A task is billable only through a project that has a client. A task in no project, or only in projects with no client, cannot be invoiced; it is listed in the dialog with that reason rather than dropped. A task with no tracked time still gets a line, at a quantity of 1 for you to price.

Invoicing workflow covers both entry points in full.

On mobile

Create and edit tasks in a native bottom-sheet form rather than the two-column page form. The same fields are there — name, projects, status, type, priority, dates, tags.
Cached tasks stay readable offline, but creating, editing, and deleting a task need a connection — only transactions and time entries can be changed offline. See Offline support.
The relationships UI is simplified to add (via a bottom sheet) and delete; the side-by-side incoming/outgoing detail layout is web-only.
Comments open as their own deep-linkable screen rather than an inline section — see Task comments.
List rows respect compact density.