Mastering Flow: 6 Tips to Become a Power User

We recently asked members of our team what Flow features empower them to do their best work. We heard from everyone, ranging from our Engineering Lead to our Customer Experience Specialists. These are their favourite tips and a break down of how you can use them to take yourself and your team to the next level in Flow!

Post a Comment and Complete the Task, All in One

Cmd+Shift+Return

Use cmd+shift+return to post a comment and complete the current task in one swift motion. This function is great when you’re adding that final comment to a task, making sure everyone knows a twitter campaign is live, or that your infographic is finished.

Add Subtasks to your Task in Quick Task Create

Shift + Return

We all know making eye contact is a great power move in meetings. If you don’t want to take your steely eyes off whoever is talking, this trick will help you take and organize those meeting notes with ease.

In your project, hit shift+return to open the quick task bar. You can create multiple tasks in a row if you hit enter after adding your task details.

Need to break something down further? Hit shift+return to trigger subtask creation when you’re in the quick task create bar. To back out of the create subtasks field and back to task create, hit escape once.

Assign, Change the Due Dates, or Unassign Multiple Tasks at Once

Shift + Click

We’ve all been there — a project is going great, all three hundred tasks are assigned, then someone comes down with polio. What are we supposed to do with all those tasks? There’s no way you should spend time individually reassigning them. Instead use range select to bulk assign (or unassign) tasks in a project.

Open the project and sort by owner. Make sure one task is assigned to who you want to move these tasks to, or make sure one is unassigned if you plan to unassign instead. Hit shift, then the first and last task you’d like to move. This will select the range of tasks between the first and last you’ve selected. Then just drag and drop those selected tasks under the appropriate owner. Tasks? Reassigned. Time? Saved.

This also comes in handy if you need to move a bunch of task due dates at once. The same process applies here: assign one task to be due on the new due date, sort by due date, then bulk select and drag and drop!

FYI: You can use cmd+click to select single tasks at a time, instead of range selecting. You can also use this little trick to exclude specific items. Use range select to grab a chunk of tasks, then cmd+click the ones you don’t need selected.

Default and Done Sections

Default sections really come in handy when you’re creating a project, especially if you have no idea what you’re doing. And let’s be honest, a lot of us are just winging this whole ‘productive member of the workforce’ thing, so any help we can get is appreciated.

You’ll see the option to add default sections when you’re creating a new project. Opting in to default sections will create To Do, In Progress, Needs Review, and Done sections at the same time your project is created. If you need to, you can change the section names to be a more specific to your team, too.

Done sections are also a nifty tool. If you have a Done section set, then completed tasks will automatically move into that section when they’re checked off. You can also drag and drop an open task into the Done section and it will be marked complete, as if by magic! To make sure you can use this feature, check that manual task clearing is turned on for that Team.

We especially love using this in the column view. Try it yourself by opening a project and switching views in the top right. This gives a slick visual of a task’s progression through the sections. Once in the Done section it’ll sit there until tasks are manually cleared.

Duplicating Projects

Not everyone knows that you can duplicate projects in Flow. This function is really useful when you have projects that all start from the same basic place; it’s a favourite of our whole Customer Experience Team. You can use it like a template for projects you find yourself creating over and over.

Create a project and give it a name like, “Accounting Quarterly Template”. Stock that project with all the tasks, subtasks, and details that you’ll need in future projects.

Don’t assign those tasks to someone, though, otherwise when it’s duplicated they’ll all end up assigned to that same person. Or do it, be wild, we’re not your boss.

Once your “template” is created, click the ‘…’ in the top right of your project to open the project options dropdown. Select ‘duplicate’, rename your project, then duplicate! Now you have a second, identical project with a new name.

FYI: Duplicating a project will duplicate the project note, sections, and open tasks (with any due dates, assignees, subscribers, tags and the note). It’ll also duplicate completed tasks if you select ‘reopen completed tasks during the duplication process. It won’t duplicate the project timeline or task activities though!

Favouriting Your Projects

Ever wondered what that little star beside your project name is for? It’s how you Favourite a project in Flow. This is a time saver for team members that live in only a few projects, and want to be able to access them quickly. For our Engineering team this usually means favouriting new feature projects.

To quickly jump into a project you’ve favourited, just hover over Projects in the main navigation bar to trigger a dropdown showing your recently viewed and favourited projects. They’ll also show up at the top of your project sidebar!