Task management in Slack: owners, due dates, and follow-ups

Task management in Slack happens at most small companies long before anyone chooses a tool for it. Someone writes "can you update the pricing page before Thursday?", the other person replies "on it", and that exchange is the whole assignment. Nobody opens a ticket or writes it down anywhere else, and that works fine right up until Thursday arrives and nobody can remember who said "on it".

We tried a few ways of managing tasks in Slack at Supertype before settling on the setup below. This guide covers what Slack's built-in features handle, where they fall short, and how to give every request an owner, a due date, and a follow-up without leaving the channel.

How to manage tasks in Slack

Good task management in Slack comes down to four steps:

1. Capture the request as a task from the message where it was made, so nobody retypes it.
2. Give it one owner, or mark it clearly as up for grabs.
3. Set a due date that triggers a follow-up in the channel when it arrives.
4. Review everything open on one board when you plan the week.

Slack handles part of the first step and none of the other three, which is the gap a task app fills.

What Slack's built-in tools cover

Slack has a few features people lean on for task management, and they're worth knowing before you add anything:

• Save for later puts a message in your personal list and lets you set a reminder on it, but the list is private, so nobody else knows you've taken the job.
• /remind pings you or a channel at a set time, though it has no idea whether the work actually got done.
• Slack Lists give you a table inside Slack with assignees, due dates, and status columns. They're good for planning, but someone has to copy each request out of its thread and into the list, then keep the list up to date.

All three depend on someone doing the bookkeeping by hand, and in a busy week that's usually the first thing to go. When we looked back at the tasks that slipped, they shared the same few gaps: nobody clearly owned them, they had no date, or the date passed without anyone saying anything.

Turn any Slack message into a task

In Viably, there are three ways to create a task, and they all open the same task form:

The task card posts in the thread, so anyone reading the conversation later can see that the request became a task and who has it. Via can also create several tasks from one planning message, which saves a lot of typing after a meeting where five things got decided.

Assign tasks in Slack, or leave them up for grabs

Every task either has an owner or sits unclaimed, and an unclaimed task shows a Claim button so whoever has time can take it. This suits small chores in a shared channel like #ops, where whoever claims a job first owns it and everyone else can see it's taken.

From there the owner moves the task along from the card itself, marking it started, blocked with a reason, or done. The card updates in place, so the thread always shows the current state, and a done task can carry a short completion note, which is handy for "done, here's the link".

Due dates that follow up automatically

Once a task has a due date, Viably takes care of the reminder: at 11am in your workspace timezone on the due date, Via posts a follow-up in the channel and tags the owner. If the task is still open after that, it follows up again on the next working day, starting with a private nudge to the owner before anything goes to the channel.

This has cut most of the "any update on this?" messages on our team, since nobody has to be the person who chases, and the owner hears about it before the rest of the team does. For work that comes around on a schedule, like a weekly report or a monthly invoice run, a task can repeat daily, every weekday, weekly, or monthly, and each occurrence becomes its own task with its own due date.

See every task on one board

Tasks created in Slack show up on the /tasks page in the dashboard, with filters for owner, status, and due date. The /kanban page puts tasks and issues on the same board, grouped by status, and you can drag cards between columns as work moves. A bug can also hold tasks as sub-tasks, so a larger fix splits into pieces with their own owners.

If your team uses the medal leaderboard, you can attach a medal bounty to a task, and the owner earns it when the task is done. Bounties work well for the unglamorous jobs that otherwise sit unclaimed for a week.

Habits that make task management in Slack work

The tool helps, but a few habits matter just as much:

• Put a date on everything. A task with no date never triggers a follow-up, which makes it the one most likely to slip.
• Create the task in the thread where it was asked, so the context stays attached and the person who asked can see the card.
• Leave small jobs unclaimed on purpose. If every chore is assigned to one person, it waits until that person has time.
• Mark things blocked. A blocked task with a reason tells the team what needs fixing, whereas a task that has gone quiet only looks late.

Frequently asked questions

Add Viably to Slack and turn the next "on it" into a task with an owner and a date. The task management docs cover due dates, claims, and the board in more detail.