HOW TO USE PODIO and where do I input TASKS?


In Podio you can post and assign tasks to different people from anywhere, within a workspace, or project by simply pressing T.

1. Workspaces are on your left where you can set up departments and project sections
2. Within a workspace you have apps which will show on your right
3. In apps you have projects
4. In projects you can add tasks

When you create a task from anywhere that you are located in PODIO:
1. You can add it to a workspace
2. You can add it to an APP (you will need to know its name though! > at the loupe section you can type it in or see selections that it will suggest)
3. You can add it to a project or entry within an APP (here as well you need to know where you want to place your task)

You can also create labels for sorting purposes.

Else you can also click around, go to workspace > select app > select project and enter task instead of using the T function.

It’s always best to put the tasks to where they are most related to for the sake of remaining well organised.
For example if you want to delegate a task to a colleague for a certain project, find the related workspace > app > project. It also depends how you have structured your workspaces.001-Screenshot-Dashboard-TasksEach workspace also has a Dashboard. You can also have a section there that shows tasks that have been added to the workspace and when you click on the title of that box you can then have an overview of all tasks of this workspace and its apps.

002-Screenshot-Tasks within a workspaceYou also have your own section at the top navi with the tick symbol ✔ called Tasks. In this section you will get all your tasks listed which you can sort with various filters.

003-Screenshot-My Tasks sectionIf you want to know who is working on what in your team, I would add for each workspace in the dashboard section a tasks box so that you can access with one click all tasks that are part of that particular workspace and get an overview who is doing what.

Workspaces > All Tasks > My Tasks

It took me quite a while to grasp this so I’ll mention it again: the tasks shown in each workspace when you click on all tasks will only show for that workspace and not all other workspaces. I would have liked Podio to have a function where you can have a global overview of ALL tasks in ALL workspaces.

Misconceptions of expecting Projects to show up in tasks filters
When you create a workspace, and create an app as a project as long as you have not input ANY task into that project, don’t expect the project to show up in your tasks sections. Your task sections will display tasks of projects that you have to complete but not a whole project to complete. Since Podio offers you many options how you can structure your categories you can also make an APP where you input various projects and each project can have different tasks.

Getting lost amidst notifications
Podio offers you a powerful notifications section. You have various ways to filter the notifications that you receive. When you work with a team of 5 you will soon see that you will have 100s of notifications. It’s also very easy to send someone a notification, you can do that for example at the home feed of a workspace and use the @ symbol followed with the users name and voila. There is one important thing you must keep in mind. If someone tells you todo something as a notification, it is then not yet a task meaning if you forget to input the notification as a task do not expect notifications that contain instructions to appear on their own in your tasks section. You must do that or message back the person and tell them to add it to your tasks. In my browser, important notifications I would open them in different browser tabs to attend them later on.

004-Screenshot-NotificationsRegarding the notifications ‘getting lost’ issue. Try to use your personal home-feed besides the notifications. Your personal home-feed can be found at the top, the Podio logo. Click on there, and you will see your personal activity stream. So wherever there is activity of the things you follow, it will appear there. From there you can even reply, like you can in notifications page.

Your own personal activity stream section or personal home feed also acts like a dashboard to your right where you can add various sections such as tasks, calendars and more.

Some tips in using the activity stream of workspaces
When you put a status on the activity page it would be good to add a set of answers to the status. In this way you can see if everyone read your status message. And besides, people love to interact.

005-Screenshot-adding answers to posts in activity stream

A few other tips
If your are working with a team try to be the most efficient possible with your use of Podio. Create only workspaces that make sense and only add Apps that you will really need. Try to have the least possible amount of apps. Sometimes one app is sufficient for various data, you will have to figure it out for your own organisation. In the beginning of our Podio use we created way to many apps that got obsolete and made it for our team more difficult to attribute their tasks to the correct section.

We have used the workspaces as company departments. We have structured Podio partly according to the shape the company is structured and how we process internal information. It worked well with our logic of getting things done.

Workspaces also have a user rights system meaning you can grant access only to a few persons. This is ideal for example for a finance workspace.

The chat function comes in handy but try to remain work related objective in using it and avoid gossip and private chatter because you cannot delete what you post. It proved to be a good alternative for the team instead of using skype text chat.

Podio can do way more
My article is just an introduction to tasks. I really recommend you to also check tutorials on youtube and the Podio blog. You can do way more in Podio. I didn’t go through the setting up of apps. This is another vast topic which you need to try out for yourself as there are so many options to this.

You can also turn emails into tasks. Send from your inbox an email directly to your Podio account and have it converted into a task!

You can create databases, manage leads, manage work flows, progress charts and more!
If you are totally new to Podio, the best is to try it out for a while and list your questions. Come back here to this post after a while and it might make completely new sense to you.

Share with me your Podio experience!
How do you handle tasks in Podio?
How do you structure your Podio?
Any tips you can share about using Podio?


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