Tasks & board

The board is where your active work lives. It shows the tasks in your current cycle, organized into three columns so you always know what’s next.

Column	Meaning
Pending	Not started yet
In Progress	Actively being worked on
Finished	Done

You’ll find the board under Tasks → Active in the sidebar. The header shows the active cycle’s name, quick stats (task count, finished count, target date), and a progress bar.

note

OrientME calls planning periods cycles. Tasks not assigned to any cycle live in the queue. See Cycles for how the two fit together.

No active cycle yet?

If you haven't started a cycle, the board shows a Start your first cycle card instead of columns. Click it to name your cycle and pick its dates — then your tasks have a home to move across Pending → In progress → Finished.

Create a task

Click Add task at the bottom of any column, type a summary, and press Enter. Only a summary is required — everything else is optional and can be added later.

tip

With a cycle active, press N anywhere (when you’re not typing) to start a new task in Pending.

Move and reorder tasks

Drag a card between columns or up and down within a column to reorder it. After a move you’ll see a Tasks moved message with an Undo button. You can also change a task’s status from inside its detail view.

Hovering a card reveals two quick actions in its corner:

• The check marks the task finished in one click — no dragging — with a Task completed message and an Undo that puts it back where it was.
• The Move to queue icon takes the task off the board without deleting it — it returns to the queue for later.

Task details

Click any card to open its detail view. Everything here saves automatically as you edit — there’s no save button, just a small “Saving… / Saved” indicator.

• Summary — the task’s title
• Project — group the task under a project (or “No project”)
• Status — for a task on the board, switch between Pending, In Progress, and Finished. A Move to Queue button next to it lifts the task off the board for later. A queued task shows Queue here instead, with an Assign to cycle button to drop it into the active or a planned cycle.
• Plan for — pick a day (or a range) on the cycle’s calendar; the time defaults to 9:00 AM and you can change or clear it
• Description — formatted details; links become clickable
• Note — a short comment
• Subtasks — an ordered checklist (see below)
• Attachments — files connected to the task
• Related — link this task to notes, trips, journal entries, and more (see Related items)

To delete a task, scroll to the bottom and click Delete task (it asks you to confirm, since this also removes its subtasks and attachments). A Task deleted message lets you Undo.

Subtasks

Open a task and click Add subtask to add checklist items. Each subtask has a checkbox and a drag handle for reordering; completed items drop to the bottom. Cards on the board show a running count like 2/5, which turns green when everything is checked.

Attachments

Attach documents, images, and more by dragging files onto the task, pasting a copied screenshot, or clicking Add file (you can pick several at once). Each file shows its name and size with options to download or remove.

Projects

A project groups related tasks across cycles. Manage projects under Tasks → Manage → Projects: give each a name and color, then assign tasks to it. On the board, a colored strip and badge show a task’s project, and a project filter appears in the header when the cycle has tasks in more than one project.

Board and split views

A Board / Split toggle sits in the header. Split view stacks the active board, your planned cycles, and the queue on one screen, so you can drag a task straight from the queue onto the board — handy when planning a cycle. Switch back with the same toggle.

Scheduled — everything with a date

Tasks → Scheduled in the sidebar is your agenda of dated tasks — everything with a date, whether or not it belongs to a cycle. Tasks are grouped by day: an Overdue band at the top, then Today, Tomorrow, and each date ahead.

The point of this view is that nothing here needs a cycle or a project. Give a task a date and it shows up — no sprint planning, no board. It's the light home for quick, dated things: a follow-up, a reminder, a “deal with this by Friday.”

• Add — the Add button (or the + on any day) creates a task on that day and opens it so you can type. No other decisions required.
• Complete — tap the circle on the left to mark a task done.
• Open — tap a task to open its full details.
• Cycle tag — tasks that are part of a cycle show a small cycle label, so you can see your committed work alongside your loose dated work. Turn on Hide cycle tasks to see only the items that aren’t in any cycle.
• Overdue → Today — overdue tasks show how many days late they are and a one-tap Today button to pull them to today.

Your Today page is the “today” slice of this same agenda — Scheduled just shows the whole run of upcoming days as well. On mobile, Scheduled is a tab across the top of the Tasks screen.

Forward an email to make a task

Something landed in your inbox that you need to deal with? Forward it to [email protected] and it becomes a task on your list, dated today — no retyping, no app to open.

• The email’s subject becomes the task, with any Fwd: / Re: clutter stripped off. If there’s nothing usable there, the first line of the message is used instead — a forwarded email never lands as a blank task.
• The message text is kept as the task’s description, with the address it came from on the first line, so the context is still there when you open it. A very long email is trimmed, and the task shows where it was cut.
• The task arrives with no cycle and no project, just like one you’d add on Scheduled — so it appears in the Today band there and on your Today page. Open it and treat it like any other task: give it a project, assign it to a cycle, add subtasks, or just check it off.

You’ll get a short confirmation email back once the task is created.

Say when, while you’re forwarding

Before you hit send, type a line above the forwarded message and OrientME will read it — the same shorthand the Quick Capture bar understands:

call the roofer back tomorrow 10am

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Ridgeline Roofing …

That files it for tomorrow at 10:00, titled “call the roofer back”. A few things worth knowing:

• Dates and times both work — tomorrow, friday, next week, in 3 days, Aug 14, 10am, at 14:30, noon. Give it a time and you get a reminder at that time instead of the usual morning-of nudge.
• Write a few words and they become the task’s title; the email’s subject moves aside. Write only a date and time and the subject stays the title.
• Just hit forward and nothing changes — it lands on today’s list exactly as before.
• Only your own words count. Anything below the forwarded-message line is the original sender’s, and OrientME never reads scheduling out of it — so an email that says “reply by tomorrow” can’t move your task.

The confirmation email shows what it read, so you can tell at a glance that it landed the way you meant.

Forwards from the email address on your account work automatically. Forwarding from a work address, or having someone else forward on your behalf? Add and verify that address under Account → Email import first — see Email import.

note

The email’s text is what’s captured — attachments aren’t carried across. And for your security, only mail from your own address or a verified address is accepted, and each message must pass standard email authenticity checks. Anything else is quietly set aside.

The queue

Tasks with no cycle sit in the queue (under Tasks → Manage → Queue), grouped by project. Use it as a capture bucket for everything you might do later; during planning, pull only the work you realistically want into the current cycle. See Cycles to learn how queued work becomes scheduled work.

Select several tasks at once

Planning goes faster in bulk: hover a queued task and tick the checkbox that appears on its left (hold Shift and click another to select the whole range between them). A floating bar appears with the count and three actions:

• Assign to cycle — pick an active or planned cycle; every selected task moves there. The confirmation toast has an Undo if you change your mind.
• Set project — move the selection into a project (or No Project), also with Undo. The selection stays active, so you can group tasks and then assign them in one more click.
• Delete — removes the selected tasks after a confirmation.

Press Esc, or the × on the bar, to clear the selection.