How to assign tasks or milestones

Overview

Office Timeline online lets you assign tasks or milestones to team members, so you and your colleagues can stay aligned and track everything more easily. This guide will show you how task assignment works in the timeline maker. You'll learn:

A) Who can assign tasks to whom
B) How to assign tasks or milestones
C) How to unassign a task or milestone
D) How to reassign a task or milestone

Read the full guide or click the links above to jump to the chapter you're interested in.

A) Who can assign tasks and to whom

Assigning tasks works a bit differently depending on your role and permissions on a shared timeline:

As the timeline owner, you have full rights to assign tasks to anyone, whether they're existing collaborators on the timeline or not. In addition, you can also set collaboration permissions for new assignees you invite to your visual.
If you are an Editor with Share rights on a timeline shared with you, you can assign tasks to anyone, but you cannot set permissions for new collaborators you invite on the timeline. New people you assign tasks to will be automatically invited as Viewers without Share rights.
As an Editor without Share rights you can assign tasks only to people who are already collaborators on the timeline - you cannot invite new people. If you wish to assign tasks or milestones to new people, please ask the timeline owner to grant you sharing rights.
If you are a Viewer on a timeline, whether you have sharing rights or not, you cannot assign tasks as you don't have permission to make any changes to the timeline.

NOTE: The maximum number of collaborators you can have on a timeline depends on your license type (free or premium), as well as the owner's (if you're a collaborator on someone else's timeline).

To see a list of all existing collaborators on a timeline, hover over or click the Share icon in the top right corner of the screen. Clicking on Share will open more details about the collaborators, including everyone’s role or permissions on the timeline.

B) How to assign tasks or milestones

From your timeline's Data view, hover over a task or milestone and click on the box visible in the Assign To column.
From the dialog that pops up, select the desired name or email address visible in the list of collaborators, and they’ll be notified via email and in-app about their new assignment.

If you can't find your colleague in the list, it means they aren't collaborators on this timeline yet. To invite them to the timeline, click on the New Invite option visible in the same dialog, enter your colleague's email address, choose their permissions, and click Send. Your colleague will be invited by email to join, and the selected task will be assigned to them automatically.

C) How to unassign a task or milestone

Unassigning a task or milestone is just as easy as assigning it:

From the Assigned to column in the Data View, click on the colleague you would like to unassign, press the Delete key from your keyboard, and then press Enter:
Unassigning yourself: Anyone with Editor rights on the timeline can unassign themselves from a task or milestone, regardless of who assigned them initially. On the other hand, if you're only Viewer on the timeline, you don't have permission to remove yourself or anyone else from a task. You can, however, leave the shared timeline if you wish.

D) How to reassign a task or milestone

Each task or milestone can have a single assignee at a given moment. To reassign an item to someone else, simply assign someone else using the steps in chapter B, and the new assignee will automatically replace the old one.

If you have any questions or need help assigning tasks and milestones, don't hesitate to contact us. We’ll be glad to be of assistance.