Tasks and comments
- Free
- Solo
- Team
Once you connect an AI app to Kiaro, you can ask it to find, create and update tasks, comment on them and read your inbox. It works with the same tasks you see in Kiaro, as you, in your workspace.
What you can ask
| You say | What happens |
|---|---|
| ”What’s overdue?” | Lists tasks that are past their due date and not done |
| ”What’s due this week?” | Lists open tasks due Monday to Sunday of this week, in your timezone |
| ”List the in-progress tasks on the Northwind redesign” | Lists tasks filtered by status and project |
| ”Break the Acme onboarding project into tasks for discovery, design, build and launch, two days apart starting Monday” | Creates the tasks in one go, with the due dates |
| ”Mark the homepage copy task done and make the QA task urgent” | Updates each task |
| ”Move the QA task to the Launch project” | Moves the task and tells you what the move changed |
| ”Delete the duplicate Homepage task” | Asks for your approval first |
| ”Comment on the logo task that the client approved version 3, and mention Sara Smith” | Posts the comment under your name (Team plan) |
| “What did the team say on the homepage copy task?” | Reads the whole comment thread, oldest first (Team plan) |
| “What’s in my inbox?” | Lists your unread mentions and new comments on tasks you follow (Team plan) |
What it can do with tasks
- Find tasks. Filter by one status at a time (to do, in progress, blocked, ongoing or done), priority, project, client, assignee (you, unassigned, or a teammate) and due date (today, this week or overdue), or search by name. Results come newest first, a page at a time, with the total number of matches. Your AI app can’t sort by priority or ask for all open tasks in one go: to see several statuses it asks once per status.
- Create tasks. Up to 50 at once. Each task needs a project and a name. It can also have a status (to do by default), a priority (medium by default), an estimate, a due date, an assignee and notes. If one task in the batch has a problem, none are created and your AI app is told which one to fix.
- Update a task. Change its name, status, priority, estimate, due date, assignee or notes, or move it to another project. Only the fields your AI app sends change, and it can clear a due date, estimate, notes or assignee.
- Delete a task. This needs your approval. See below.
Everything your AI app changes is recorded in your activity log as coming from the app.
Who a task is assigned to
New tasks follow the same rule as tasks you add yourself. On Free and Solo, a new task is assigned to you. On Team it starts unassigned. Your AI app can override this by naming an assignee, or by asking for the task to be unassigned.
Your AI app identifies teammates by their Kiaro user ID, and it has no way to look a teammate up by name. In practice it can assign a task to someone it has already seen on a task it listed. If it can’t tell who you mean, assign the task in Kiaro. A new assignee has to be a current, active member of your workspace. A task that is already assigned to someone who has since been deactivated can still be edited, as long as the assignee is left alone.
Moving a task to another project
When your AI app moves a task, the task keeps its time entries. Kiaro checks the same things it checks when you move a task in the app, and tells your AI app about any that apply so it can pass them on to you:
- The new project belongs to a different client.
- The new project has a different billing type.
- The new project uses a different currency.
- The task has time that is already on an invoice.
Moving a project to another client, and deleting milestones or deliverables, stay in Kiaro. See Projects, milestones and deliverables.
Actions that need your approval
Deleting a task never happens straight away. Your AI app gives you a link; open it in Kiaro, check what will be deleted, then approve or reject it. The approval page shows the task, its project, and how many uninvoiced time entries and comments go with it. See Approvals.
Kiaro refuses to delete a task, and tells your AI app why, if any of its time is already on an invoice. Move the task to another project instead, or reopen the invoice first.
Everything else on this page happens directly, and you can change it back in Kiaro at any time.
Comments and your inbox (Team plan)
- Team
Comments and the inbox are Team plan features. On Free and Solo your AI app doesn’t see these three tools at all.
- Read a task’s comments. Reads the whole thread, oldest first, a page at a time, with mentions shown as names. A comment over 500 characters is cut and marked as shortened, and your AI app can ask for the full text. See Reports and task threads.
- Comment on a task. The comment is posted under your name, up to 8,000 characters. Teammates you mention see it in their inbox, and people who follow the task are notified too.
- Read your inbox. Lists your unread items, newest first: comments that mention you and new comments on tasks you follow. Your AI app can ask for just one of the two, and can read the whole comment instead of a short preview. Reading doesn’t mark anything as read, and your AI app can’t mark items as read. Do that in Kiaro.
Mentioning teammates
Ask your AI app to mention someone by their full name as it appears in Kiaro, for example “mention Sara Smith”. The mention works anywhere in the sentence, and capitals don’t matter. If a teammate’s name is part of another’s, the longer name wins.
- If the name after an @ doesn’t match exactly one teammate, the comment isn’t posted. Your AI app is told who it can mention and can try again.
- An @ inside a word, such as the one in an email address, is not a mention.
- Deactivated teammates and people who have been invited but haven’t joined yet can’t be mentioned.
Good to know
- Same rules as in Kiaro. Your AI app can only reach projects, clients and teammates in your workspace. Anything else is reported as not found.
- Some things stay in Kiaro. Changing the order of tasks on the board, and marking inbox items as read, are done in Kiaro itself.
- Your AI app can read a whole comment thread on the Team plan. It can also read the comments in your inbox, and add new ones.