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New To-Do List collaborative tool

lenaellis
Community Member

*UPDATE 7/1 - To-Do Lists feature is now available to all talent and clients!

 

Today, we are starting to test out a new collaborative tool, To-do lists, with freelancers and clients. To-do lists can serve as a collaborative space to organize your contract’s work. Clients and freelancers will be able to create to-dos, assign an owner, add a short note, and set a due date.


We hope the due dates and notes in this tool will be helpful when managing projects and deadlines. You can toggle to view the full list or only tasks assigned to you, so this tool could also function as a way to organize your own tasks for a contract in an easy to access spot.

 

Screen Shot 2020-11-10 at 6.43.14 AM.pngScreen Shot 2020-11-10 at 6.42.53 AM.png

 

Use the tool however you’d like. It’s completely optional and the deadlines are not monitored by Upwork and do not replace your contract terms agreed upon when starting the contract. You can access the to-do list from your contract workroom. We have released this to some customers today and will expand to more very soon.


Tell us how you like it and what improvements you'd suggest with the feedback.

30 Comments
jodypm
Community Member

Hi Lena,

 

Thank you for that update and new feature - it looks very promising.

 

I plan to start testing it out today, so I will gladly let you know how it goes.

 

Best regards,

 

Jody PM

timsmith99
Community Member

Thank you, Lena.

 

At the time of this message, I see this as an option for certain clients when I log into Upwork via my browser only.

 

Is this something we can expect to see within the desktop app, as well?

It also would be nice to have the ability to thread comments related to a "to-do" with that "to-do". That way, clients and freelancers won't have to scroll through messages linearlly to find where that comment was from that particular "to-do" item from last month, or several months ago.

Adding a comment to a "to-do" item could post to both the main chat and on the "to-do" item to enable a conversation on the "to-do" that is also tracked in the main thread (similar to threads in other communication tools).

Tim

researchediting
Community Member

I can see this being useful for documenting "deadlines" for clients on jobs that require a certain amount of back-and-forth.

jodypm
Community Member

Hi Douglas,

 

Yes, that could be useful. I'm currently finding it to be handy with virutal assistants. It's great to keep everyone on the same platform without having to branch off into Trello or some other service that's overkill for just plain old to-do's on Upwork. And because it's part of both the client's and the freelancer's UI, this is easily accomplished.

 

As a web developer, I use to-do lists obsessively, even outside of things like Github; and I will tell you that the most simple to-do lists are always the best in my opinion: just a checkbox, a description, and a due date. Anything outside of that creeps into the wild and often convoluted world of project management.

 

This one is baked-in and simple. So far, like you, I see its usefulness.

 

Jody

 

ETA: typo

mekailbd
Community Member

Thank you for that update.

hieunb
Community Member

I have been looking for this feature for a while. Great work. Smiley Wink

adgcarr
Community Member

I'm a huge fan of to-do lists and I was excited to use one on my last project. I am starting a new contract today and would love to use it again, but it isn't available...or am I missing it somewhere?

AleksandarD
Community Manager

Hi Alicia,

 

We are currently testing this option out with a select group of users. We will let you know if we expand the option!

 

Thank you.

posurreal
Community Member

I really love the new to-do's tab. It's helpful to keep up with login u/p for each client's task assigned to my hourly freelancers. Instead of scrolling through messages, everything is right there. When I say client, I mean my client-- not me as an Upwork client.

1) It would be cool to have a "star" capability. So, if a freelancer marks a task as complete, s/he still knows where to find the login info for future tasks. Also, if there is a set a branding standards or client-specific protocols, they can be marked with a "star".
2) Far down the roadmap:  I could see how this feature could fold into a team project through "rooms" so those grouped together can see what each freelancer is working on.

Questions:
1) Can the freelancer still see the completed tasks like I can?
2) Are the deadlines tracked to their performance? Sometimes I have less urgent tasks that I set for a 48-hour deadline but it's not a critical, hard deadline. I don't want the freelancer to be penalized if s/he goes over a soft deadline per a message that I sent.

I notice how the messaging system is more reliable compared to past years. Great job! 

BojanS
Community Manager

Hi Mary,

 

Thank you for this valuable feedback, I'll be sure to share it with our team. I've moved your post to the announcement thread about this test so that we can keep all the feedback and discussion about it in one place for reference of our Community and team.
 
Both parties can see all the tasks unless they toggle the switch to only view tasks that were assigned to them.
 
If you missed a deadline on a to-do list we do not take any action. To-do lists are a space for you and your client to collaborate and we don't monitor deadlines set there. We do not use information from there to calculate any of your stats, such as your Job Success Score.