Home → Arctic Reservations → Tasks → Creating a New Task
12.2. Creating a New Task
To create a new task, from the “Dashboard” in the “Inquires & Tasks” widget select “Tasks”. This will take you to the "Browse Tasks" page. On the "Browse Tasks" page, click the green "+Create Task" button as shown here:
This will take you to the "Create a New Task" page shown here:
The first field on this page is the Business Group drop down menu. This will allow you to choose the Business Group the task should be associated with. This will make sure that users who have access to a specific business group will be able to see the task and will also give you another means of filtering the tasks to find what you are looking for on the "Browse Tasks" page.
The next field is the Description box. This is where you will enter a description of the task that you wish your employees to accomplish. This could be a report that you want them to run, a follow up with a merchant, checking in with any permitting and licensing agencies for renewals or new permits, even a call to your accountant or payroll companies. There are a myriad of possibilities that you can use this feature for.
Once you have entered the description of the task you wish your employees to complete, you will need to assign a due date to the task. This is a mandatory field so you must assign it a completion date.
After entering a Due Date, the next field is the "Trip" field. If the task you want completed is associated with a specific Trip you can choose the Trip here by clicking "Select Trip". This will bring up the "Calendar" page as shown here:
The Calendar page will allow you to browse to the specific Trip that you wish to assign this task to. Once you have selected the Trip you want associated with this task, Arctic will automatically enter it into the Select Trip field on the "Create a New Task" page. (For more information, on the "Calendar" page, please refer to Creating a New Reservation available in the Support Documents.)
Please note: This will only associate this task with this specific Trip. If this is a task that needs to be repeated for each and every Trip of this Trip Type, you will want to create the task through the "Edit Trip" page for the Trip Type to make sure this task is created for every single Trip for this Trip Type on your Calendar. We will discuss how to do that in the next section of this guide.
If the task you are creating is a general task that is not associated with a specific Trip, you can leave the "Select Trip" field blank.
Once you have selected the trip associated with the task, you will be able to assign it to a specific user or to "No One". Arctic automatically chooses the user name of the person creating the task for the Assign To field. If the task is assigned to "No One", the task will appear in every employees' "Inquiries & Tasks" column on the "Dashboard". If you wish to assign it to a specific employee other than yourself, you can select them from the "Drop Down Menu" next to the "Assign To" field. All of the users in the system will appear in the "Assign To" drop down menu.
Once you have completed all of the fields for your task, click "Submit" at the bottom of the page to save your task. Arctic will put the new task in the "Inquiries & Tasks" column on the "Dashboard" as shown here:
Remember that the "Inquiries & Tasks" column will only show those tasks and inquiries that have been specifically assigned to the current user and any tasks or inquiries that have been assigned to "No One". This will help the user know which tasks and inquiries that they are personally responsible for. Again, Arctic will display the inquiries and tasks that have been assigned to "No One" in each user's "Inquiries & Tasks" column. This ensures that these unassigned inquiries and tasks do not get overlooked.
If you wish to see a complete list of all of the pending tasks in the system, you can go to the "Browse Tasks" page, where all of the incomplete tasks will be listed regardless of who the task is assigned to. This is a very helpful to for being able to manage all of the currently active tasks. We will discuss the "Browse Tasks" page in further detail later in the guide.
Notice, in the image above, that the "Task" box looks similar to the "Inquiry" box. The main difference between the two boxes is that in a "Task" box, the word "Task" appears first in bold black text; whereas in an "Inquiry" box, the customer name appears first in bold blue text (which links to the customer details page).
If a task is associated with a specific Trip the trip name and date will appear in blue text under the task description as shown here:
When a task has passed it's due date and has not been marked as completed the due date will turn red as shown here:
To view the details, edit or mark the task as completed, you can click the "Gear" icon next to the Due Date as shown here:
Editing a task can be useful for adding notes pertinent to the task so that everyone can see the current progress of the task. This is especially handy for tasks that have been assigned to "No One" as it will keep everyone informed of the tasks progress. For instance, if your employee has called about the food order for the trip but was unable to connect with the vendor, they can add this information to the task description. They can also change the due date of the task if necessary as shown here:
Remember to mark a task as completed, click the "Gear" icon and choose "Mark As Completed" as shown here:
When a task is marked as completed, Arctic will remove the task from the "Inquiries & Tasks" column on the "Dashboard". All completed tasks can be found by going to the "Browse Tasks" page and filtering for "Completed Tasks".
In the next section, we will discuss how to create tasks that need to be completed for a specific Trip Type each and every time you run that Trip Type.