Work with your troop
Give your troop work that it can finish
Give work in a message or as a task, and write a brief that a teammate can finish with no guesses.
You give work to your troop in a message or as a task. This page tells which way to use, and how to write a brief that a teammate can finish with no guesses.
Choose a message or a task
| You want to | Use | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| Ask a question, get a quick result, or let the troop decide who does the work | A message to the Chief of Staff | It answers, or makes a task and hands it to the teammate whose job it is. |
| Give a job to one teammate that you know | A message to that teammate | It answers in its chat. The first real piece of work becomes a task. |
| Ask the whole troop, with people in the same thread | The troop chat | The teammates that you @mention answer in the thread. |
| Plan work, set a date, or follow it on the board | New task | The task waits in To do for its teammate, or in the backlog for a person. |
| Ship a change to your own app | A ticket on the Engineering tab of Tasks | The Engineer takes it through Analyze, Plan, Build, Test and Release. |
Each job of a teammate lives on a task, whichever way it starts. Comments on the task steer the work. See Track work on Tasks and projects.
Send a message
- On Home, type in the message box. Or open the chat of a teammate in the sidebar.
- Say the goal, the result that you want, and where to find what it needs.
- Select Send.
The teammate answers in its chat. While it works, its face moves, and a line says what it does now. See Chat with a teammate and call it.
Make a task
- Open Tasks and select New task. Or press the action in ⌘K.
- Type the title in What needs doing?.
- Add the brief: the goal, what done looks like, and anything to use.
- Pick Assign to: a teammate, a person, or The lead decides.
- Set the Priority, the due date, the project and the parent task if you need them.
- Select Create task, or press Cmd with Enter.
A task for a teammate starts in To do, and the teammate starts at once. A task for a person or for nobody waits in the backlog.
Write a brief that comes back right
A teammate does what the brief says, with what the brief names. A good brief has these parts:
| Part | Example |
|---|---|
| The goal | "Get 10 cafes in Lisbon to try our pastries." |
| What done looks like | "A list of 10 cafes with their owner's email, and a first email for each one, as drafts." |
| What to use | "Use our price list in Docs, and the tone of the Voice file." |
| What not to do | "Do not write to cafes that we already serve. They are on the list Customers." |
| When | "By Friday." |
- Name the docs, lists and pages to use. Link a doc with # in the box.
- Say the format: a doc, a list, a draft, a table, a short answer.
- Say the size: "3 options", "one page", "10 leads".
- Put one job in one brief. Give a big job to the Chief of Staff: it splits the job into sub-tasks.
Give the teammate what to read
The button Add a doc, task or interview to read adds things for the teammate to read with the message:
- docs, interviews and research reports
- tasks
- canvases and CRM lists
- files: text, PDF and Word. Troopy keeps them in the brain, where everyone in the workspace finds them.
A teammate gets only what its tools can read. A teammate with no tool for the CRM does not get a list.
What happens next
- When the teammate needs a person, it asks on the task, and the question waits in Needs you.
- When a call needs a yes, such as an email or a post, the approval waits in Needs you.
- When the work is done, the task goes to In review. You read the result, then mark it done or send it back.
- What a finished task taught the teammate can come back as a lesson to approve. See Add and manage skills.