Connect Taskshire to your team’s tools

What you get

Integrations let Taskshire tell your team about work as it happens, in the tools you already use. For example:

• a message in your team chat when work needs sign-off, so the reviewer sees it straight away;
• a morning summary of what’s overdue, due today and waiting for sign-off;
• deadlines and publish dates in your own calendar;
• new tasks created from a form, an email or a spreadsheet, with no copying and pasting.

Nobody has to keep checking Taskshire to know what’s going on.

Choose the right tool

You can use as many as you like. For example, you could send sign-off requests to a Slack channel, post finished work in Teams and put deadlines in everyone’s calendar.

Who can set it up

• Chat channels and webhooks: project admins (the people who can change a project’s settings). If you’re not an admin, ask one, or send them this page.
• Your calendar feed and your chat account: anyone, for themselves.

You may also need help from whoever looks after Slack, Teams, Discord or Google Chat at your company. Every guide here is public, so you can send them the link. They don’t need a Taskshire account to read it.

Find Integrations

There are two ways in:

1. Open your project, select Tools at the top of the page, then Integrations (under Connect & publish).
2. Or open Project settings. On the General tab, find the Team chat card and select Connect a chat channel. (It says Manage chat channels once a channel is connected.)

The Integrations page has three parts:

• Team chat: a card each for Slack, Microsoft Teams, Discord and Google Chat.
• Connected channels: every channel this project posts to, and whether it’s working.
• More ways to connect: automation tools, webhooks, API keys, calendars, request forms and personal alerts.

Connect a chat channel

The steps are nearly the same for every chat tool.

1. On the tool’s card, select Connect. If you see Add to Slack or Add to Discord, you can use that instead. See the Slack or Discord guide.
2. Step 1 shows you how to get a webhook link from that tool. Follow it, or follow the guide for your tool.
3. Step 2: paste the link into Webhook link. Then give it a Channel name you’ll recognise, such as #marketing. The name is only shown in Taskshire.
4. Step 3: choose what to post. See Choose what to post below.
5. Leave Send a hello message so we can check it works ticked.
6. Select Connect (for example, Connect Slack).
7. Look in the channel. You should see “Taskshire is connected to …” within a minute.

A project can post to up to 20 channels.

Choose what to post

Under Post a message when…, tick what this channel should hear about. The recommended choices are ticked for you when you connect a channel. They’re useful without being noisy.

To change your choices later, find the channel under Connected channels and select Edit.

One change, one message

Taskshire never posts the same change twice to one channel. When a change could count as several things, the channel gets the most useful one.

For example, when a task moves to its last stage:

• a channel that listens to Work is done or published gets a “done” message;
• a channel that only listens to Every stage change gets a “moved” message;
• a channel that listens to both still gets just the “done” message.

The order is: done or published, then changes requested, then needs sign-off, then approved, then every stage change.

Tips for busy teams

• Start with the recommended choices. Add more later if people ask for them.
• Use two channels for different jobs. For example, send Work needs sign-off to your reviewers’ channel and Work is done or published to a team-wide one.
• Keep Every stage change and New comments for small teams, or for a channel set aside for Taskshire.

Boards and private boards

If your project has more than one board, you’ll also see Which boards?

• Leave every board unticked to post about work on all boards, except private ones.
• Tick boards to post only about work on those boards.
• Private boards never post unless you tick them. This stops private work from appearing in a channel that lots of people can read. You’ll only see private boards that you can open yourself.

The morning summary follows the same rule.

The morning summary

The morning summary is one message a day with three lists:

• Overdue
• Due today
• Waiting for sign-off

Each list shows up to five tasks, then says how many more there are. If there’s nothing to report, it says so.

When you tick Morning summary, it arrives at 09:00 on weekdays. To change that:

1. Under Connected channels, find the channel and select Edit.
2. Choose a time under Morning summary at. You can pick any hour from 05:00 to 12:00.
3. Tick Weekends too if you also want it on Saturdays and Sundays.
4. Select Save.

The time uses the project’s timezone, which is shown under Connected channels. To change the timezone, go to Project settings → General → Project timezone. The summary usually arrives a few minutes after the hour.

Threads

In Google Chat, and in Slack when you connect with Add to Slack, Taskshire keeps each task’s updates together in one thread. The first message about a task starts the thread, and later updates reply to it. This keeps the channel tidy.

To turn this off, select Edit on the channel, untick Keep each task’s updates in one thread and select Save.

Microsoft Teams, Discord and Slack webhook links don’t support threads, so each update is a new message.

Check it’s working

Under Connected channels, each channel shows how it’s doing:

• On: posting as normal. You’ll also see when the last message went.
• Paused: someone paused it. Nothing posts until you select Turn on.
• Stopped: Taskshire stopped posting because something went wrong. The reason is shown next to it.
• Last message failed (or Last 3 messages failed, and so on): Taskshire is having trouble, but it’s still trying.

Each channel has these buttons:

• Send test posts a test message straight away.
• Recent messages lists the last 20 messages and whether each one was Delivered, is Sending or Trying again, or Failed. Failed messages say why.
• Edit changes the name, what to post, the boards, the morning summary and threads.
• Pause stops posting for now. Turn on starts it again.
• Disconnect removes the channel from Taskshire. Messages already posted stay in your chat.

You can’t change a channel’s webhook link with Edit. To use a new link, connect it as a new channel, check it works, then disconnect the old one.

When Taskshire stops posting

If a message doesn’t go through, Taskshire tries again after 30 seconds, then 2 minutes, 8 minutes and 32 minutes. Most problems, like a chat tool being down for a moment, sort themselves out this way. If your chat tool asks Taskshire to slow down, it waits as long as it’s asked to.

Taskshire stops posting to a channel, and shows Stopped, when:

• the chat tool says the link doesn’t work any more (for example, the channel or the webhook was deleted); or
• 10 messages in a row fail.

When that happens, every project admin gets a notice in Taskshire saying which channel stopped and why. Depending on their notification settings, they may get an email too. Messages waiting to go to that channel are cancelled, so the channel doesn’t fill up with old news when it comes back.

To fix it:

1. Read the reason next to Stopped, and look at Recent messages.
2. Fix the problem in your chat tool. If the webhook was deleted, you’ll need a new link: connect it as a new channel and disconnect the old one.
3. Select Turn on, then Send test.

Automations can post too

Automations can post your own messages to these channels. In Tools → Automations, add the action Post in a chat channel, choose the channel and write the message. If you don’t choose a channel, it uses the first one you connected.

You can use placeholders in the message, such as {title}, {reference}, {stage}, {assignee}, {project}, {due} and {link}. For example: “{title} is now urgent. {link}”

Troubleshooting

Nothing arrived

• Check the channel says On. If it says Paused, select Turn on.
• Select Send test, then Recent messages. If the test says Failed, the reason is shown next to it.
• Check what’s ticked under Post a message when… (select Edit). For example, if only Work is done or published is ticked, nothing posts when someone creates a task.
• If your project has several boards, check Which boards? Work on a private board only posts if that board is ticked.
• Overdue alerts and morning summaries are checked once an hour, a few minutes past the hour.
• A channel connected after a task went overdue won’t hear about that task.

It says “Stopped”

The reason is shown next to Stopped. The common ones are:

• “…says this channel or link no longer works”: the channel, the webhook or the app was removed in your chat tool. Get a new link, connect it, and disconnect the old channel.
• “It failed 10 times in a row”: look at Recent messages for the error. Fix the problem, then select Turn on.

I want to change the channel

A webhook link always posts to the same channel. To post somewhere else:

1. Get a new link for the new channel. Your tool’s guide shows how.
2. Connect it as a new channel.
3. Check the hello message arrives, then select Disconnect on the old one.

To rename a channel in Taskshire, select Edit.

There are too many messages

Select Edit and untick Every stage change and New comments. Or split updates between two channels, as described in Tips for busy teams.