At the heart of both Projects and Planners is a single, powerful task engine — the board you organize work on and the panel you manage each task from. Learn it once here and it works identically in Planners.
Buckets and the board#
Work is organized into buckets — the columns on the board. Create, rename, reorder, and remove them to model your workflow (stages, workstreams, sprints — whatever fits). Each bucket keeps its completed tasks tucked away in a collapsible list.
The board has two views:
- Board (Kanban) — cards in columns you drag between.
- List — the same tasks as a table.
You can group by bucket, status, or priority, edit cells inline, search and filter, and save views. The board also supports CSV export and Markdown import (below).
Changes save as you make them and show straight away — a card you drag, a status you pick in a list cell, a field in the task panel. Quick changes one after another all save, in the order you made them, and the board catches up once they're done. If the server refuses one (a task that's still blocked, say), it goes back to how it was and a message says why.
Tasks#
Create tasks in any bucket, then move, complete, and reopen them. A task carries a name and description, a status and priority, start and due dates, a progress slider, an estimate, assignees, and tags — plus a phase on projects (see Phases).
Beside the board and list views sits the timeline view: every dated task plotted as a bar on a shared week axis, grouped by bucket, with a today line and overdue outlines — the campaign-at-a-glance view for layered work. Unscheduled tasks list beneath it, one click from getting dates.
From a task's ⋯ menu you can duplicate it or move or copy it to any planner or project you can edit — subtasks come along, the task keeps its token, and its status maps into the destination's vocabulary. Copy leaves the original in place (checklist, tags, and assignees carry over); move relocates it. Moving a task from a planner (or a project with no client) into a client project asks first whether the client should be charged for the time logged on it that hasn't been invoiced yet: Make it billable, or Keep it as client time, no charge (it no longer counts as internal time in reports). The move never changes time on its own. Invoiced and approved time is never touched, nor time whose kind of work isn't billable on that project, nor (unless you can edit everyone's time or administer the project) other people's time; the dialog says how many entries will change. The bucket headers also show open/total counts so a column's real workload reads at a glance.
The ⋯ menu also offers Start timer and Add time entry (a quick date-duration-note dialog, no need to open the full panel) and, on busy boards, Move to bucket as its own submenu. Right-click any card or list row to open the same menu without hunting for the ⋯.
The task panel#
Open a task and it slides in from the right as a side panel. The list or board stays in view and keeps working beside it: click another task and the panel switches to it, without closing.
- Size it to suit you. Drag the panel's left edge (or focus the edge and use the arrow keys) to make it wider or narrower. Expand fills the page; Collapse goes back. AspirePro remembers your width on every device.
- Walk the list. Previous and Next (or the K and J keys) move through the tasks in the order the page shows them, whatever you've sorted, grouped or searched. Esc closes the panel.
- Share it. Copy link copies a link that opens this task on its board. The address bar always shows the open task, so a reload brings you back to it.
- Nothing typed is lost. If you switch tasks, close the panel or leave the page with something unsaved (a comment, a time entry, a checklist item), AspirePro asks before discarding it.
At the top: where the task lives (project or planner, list, task number), your timer, Follow, Copy link and the ⋯ menu. Under the title sit the key properties, each edited in place: assignees, status, priority, start and due dates, phase (projects), estimate, progress, whether it's ongoing, tags and followers. Anyone who can edit the task can add or remove followers; the person added is told.
Then the tabs. When the panel is narrow, tabs that don't fit go into More.
- Details — the description, subtasks and dependencies.
- Checklist — a sub-list of steps to tick off.
- Custom fields — the fields your organization added for this kind of project, with a search box and a Show empty fields switch. Only on project tasks (planners don't have custom fields). If none are set up yet, people who manage task fields see a link to add them.
- Schedule — book work sessions (scheduled blocks) that appear on the My work calendar.
- Time — log time against the task.
- Files — attachments.
- Links — related URLs.
Under every tab you'll find Comments and Activity: the discussion (with reactions, editing and, on projects, the option to share a comment with the client) and the task's change history. Add a comment is always at the bottom of the panel; click it to open the editor.
On a phone the panel fills the screen, with the same layout.
Timer#
The top of the task panel, beside the task's name, shows your timer for that task on every tab. Start timer starts one; while it runs you see the clock with Pause and Stop, and after a pause it reads Paused with Resume and Stop (stopping a paused timer keeps the time it already logged). You can run one timer at a time, so if another is running somewhere else, AspirePro asks before switching to this task. Your running and paused timers also show in the top bar on every page; see Timers in the top bar.
Dependencies#
Mark a task as blocked by another. AspirePro prevents circular dependencies and treats a task as blocked while any dependency (or a required subtask) is still open — so the board reflects what's genuinely ready to work.
Subtasks#
Break a task into subtasks, or make an existing task a subtask of another. Subtasks show as nested cards, and the parent's card wears a small done/total badge (green once every subtask is finished).
The parent task's own progress bar stays yours — subtasks never overwrite it. Their state shows in a separate read-only rollup ("3/10 · 42%") above the subtask list, and when the last subtask completes, the panel offers a one-click "All subtasks done — complete this task?" nudge.
Review workflow#
Send a task for review to one or more approvers with a note. Each reviewer can approve or request changes (with a required comment), and the task's status reflects where it stands. Great for work that needs sign-off before it's done.
Recurrence#
Set a task to recur on a schedule — preview the upcoming occurrences, and run the next one on demand. Ideal for repeating delivery work.
Markdown import#
Have a plan in a document? The Markdown import turns a markdown outline — headings, list items with optional due dates and assignees, nested checklists — into tasks and subtasks. Preview what it will create, then commit.
Bulk actions#
Select multiple tasks to update them together — status, priority, assignee, and more — up to a couple hundred at a time.