Question

Work and communication for whole team

  • 11 October 2021
  • 10 replies
  • 138 views
Mike Liang
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Dear peer/Karbon specialist, 

I believe following are common in a firm practice environment. What is the best way to do that in Karbon? 

  • When we have a firm wide/team wide work (most of times, it is internal work) for all firm staff or team members, for example, I request all team member to complete same task, how should I setup this?
  • Work duplication: How can I duplicate a work of one client to another client?  I only see duplicate option for work template, but didn’t se duplicate work option for work? Anyway to do that?

Thanks. 

10 replies

Coral
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For work duplication - I would suggest that you set up templates in Karbon  and if you have a job that is already working well, you could pull that backwards and set up as a template.

 

Then you can use the template to duplicate that workflow, tasks and emails for all clients.

You’ll find more details on how to set up and use a work template here

The only constant is change!
DianeK
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Hi Mike,

You can copy a work item’s task list to another work item.  In the upper right, click on the three dots and choose Copy Tasks.  This will bring up a box to copy this work item's task list to another work item.  If the work item already exists, start typing its name in the search for work box and choose it.  If it doesn’t currently exist, you can create it here also.  Start typing in the search for work area.  At the bottom of the list you will see Create Work.  Choose this and create the work item’s name, work type, assignee, client etc.   Click Create and then click copy task.  Go to your new work item and all the tasks will be copied over.  You will have one blank additional task at the top of your new work item.  Just click on the task three dots and delete.

Be kind - Be thankful - Be present
max
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Hi Mike!

I’ve played around with assigning stuff out to the team, like CPEs, through Karbon, and it’s clunky. It’s a little manual and there’s no quick buttons to hit to make something required for everyone, which would be cool. Like a task that was only done when several people completed it… but it doesn’t exist in Karbon as it is now.

What I have done, and you might find helpful, is create the tasks in Excel with formulas to pull staff names or other unique information relevant to the work, and then paste that into Karbon. Each line in Excel because it’s own task. This way, I use Excel to quickly formulate custom, but similar task items for each staff, then paste them into Karbon. That saves a lot of time. Once in Karbon, I tap this little blank section highlighted below to quickly assign out the individual work:

This picture isn’t of internal work. It’s just there to show you where to click to assign tasks quickly. :/

Is that helpful at all?

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Mike Liang
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@DianeK @Coral  Thank you for sharing and that is helpful. Especially the create template from a work and then create another work use the template, which is a bit getting around, but it works for copying whole existing work to another.

@max  Thanks for sharing the real experience. Appreciate that. I don’t exact understand how you realise that, but I guess it is to create a couple same task with different task assignee in a work, and you use excel to help that, but I don’t know how excel help that. Many thanks.

E
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I am having this exact same problem with best practice for internal tasks that requires everyone to do. Recent example, everyone had to write a bio for the website.

An email doesn’t work as people try to assign it to themselves and steal it off one another!

Sitting and adding the same task line multiple times and allocating individually seems very manual.

 

@max your excel import is interesting!

Mike Liang
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@Emily Wilson  Exactly. I would like to see to give us control to allocate work or task to multiple staff or single staff. 

max
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Karbon has a work philosophy that tasks and work items have only one owner. They believe, and I agree, that when multiple people are responsible, the tasks usually doesn’t get done because everyone expects someone else to do the work.

I think what we would all like is to have one task that doesn’t complete until multiple people complete it. Conceptually, I think this is the same thing as having a work item with tasks for each person. The work item doesn’t complete until everyone completes their task.

Does that make sense? I’m thinking out loud a little, so please forgive me if I’m rambling, lol.

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E
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@max That makes perfect sense!

 

I agree with their philosophy, in a way. But sometimes correspondence genuinely has two elements, perhaps something for the payroll team and the tax team in the same email - and the tasks can be done simultaneously.

I’m less client facing, more internal operations, so from a selfish POV, we’re about to go live and I’ve got to somehow find a logical way for our admin girl to operate from Karbon, internally without it being too laborious.

Are people making work items for everything internal? What would you do for the website bio example, Max, Mike? Would you make a work item with the same task duplicated 20+ times and assigned to each staff member? It seems a bit overkill…

Even just general news items people need to read and may park on their to do list for later - what would you do? An email is not going to work as each person may try to put it on their to do list/assign to them.

Thanks for your help! We go live across the entire team next week!

Emily

 

 

Victoria Peters
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@max I love the copy and paste feature but had completely missed this application for it - thank you, great tip.  

@Emily Wilson the work around that my team has adopted for emails that have two elements is to forward the email to themselves so they can assign the forward to their own To-do, this limits visibility.  Welcome to Karbon!

@Mike Liang when we have something like firm wide work we will create a work order owned by the person assigning the tasks and create an individual task for each person to indicate that they have completed the assignment.   As Max stated it can be clunky, using the copy and paste is key since it allows you to turn a list into separate tasks when you are at the add a task stage of creating a work order.  This is the box that pops up when you go to paste a list that you have copied and you get tasks.

 

Stay Curious
max
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@max That makes perfect sense!

 

I agree with their philosophy, in a way. But sometimes correspondence genuinely has two elements, perhaps something for the payroll team and the tax team in the same email - and the tasks can be done simultaneously.

One feature request that I have put in a couple times is to make a way to add (or maybe copy would be better in this case) an email as a TASK within a work item.

One other option is to turn the email into a work item and add the tasks. We do not do this, but it might be worth a try.

I’m less client facing, more internal operations, so from a selfish POV, we’re about to go live and I’ve got to somehow find a logical way for our admin girl to operate from Karbon, internally without it being too laborious.

Karbon comes with tradeoffs. We had huge gains in the time it took for clients to get information to us because the hybrid portal is nearly friction-less. Once you really dig into the automators and kanban boards, tracking and managing work also gets easier, but it’s a very different approach to work from what we were doing before, and it takes a big change in thinking that takes time to sink in and become comfortable.

Are people making work items for everything internal? What would you do for the website bio example, Max, Mike? Would you make a work item with the same task duplicated 20+ times and assigned to each staff member? It seems a bit overkill…

 

Yes, this is exactly what we do here.

 

respect humans | continually improve

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