Set a task as recurring

If tasks repeat at regular intervals, you can set them as recurring.

Merle Hecht avatar
Written by Merle Hecht
Updated over a week ago

Recurring tasks are super handy for automation and provide high reliability of workflows in your everyday routines.

To mark a task as recurring, click the action button of the task and select the Repeat task option.

In task lists and details, recurring tasks are marked with the clock icon with an arrow.

Recurring tasks are copies of the original task

A task set as recurring is copied from the original task and given a new deadline when the set rule is triggered. This means that each copied instance can be edited, deleted and moved independently of the recurring task.

Via the settings of the recurrence rule you can edit the original task at any time, e.g. if you want to adjust the name of the tasks created in the future.

The following values are copied from the original task:

  • Name

  • Description

  • Sub tasks

  • Files

  • Observer

  • User

  • List affiliation (only for project tasks)

  • Tags

  • Type of work

  • Priority

  • Planned effort

Everything else, such as comments, recorded times, etc. will not be transferred.

Keep in mind: Users who are added to the recurring task later are not going to be assigned to other following recurring tasks. Only those assigned to the main task are assigned again and again. This applies to all other settings within the recurring task (e.g. edit the task budget).

Set the recurrence rule

Setting the recurrence rule is actually quite simple. You set the following settings one after the other:

Interval

The interval represents the rule when the task should always be copied. As basic interval steps, choose between days, weeks, months, and years.

Days

You can select for which days of the week creation of the task should be created. For example, if you select Repeat every day and mark Monday to Friday, the task will be created every day from Monday to Friday, but not on the weekend.

Weeks

For the weeks, you can choose if a task should be repeated every week, every other week, every third week, etc. In the second step, you can determine on which day of the week the repetition will happen.

Months

For the months, you can choose whether a task should be repeated every month or only every second, third, ... month. In the second step, you have two different options:

Option 1: A fixed day a month

Select a fixed calendar day (1-31) on which the replay will take effect.

Option 2: The relative week plus day of the week

Select the week of the month (1-5, first, last) in which the recurrence should take effect and the day in the week.

Years

For the years, you can choose if a task should be repeated every year or only every second, third, ... year. Then you choose exactly on which date in the year the repetition should take effect.

Starting time

In the Starting from field, you can select when the rule should take effect. The interval will start from this time. By default, the rule is set to today. This means that the interval starts when the rule is created.

Example: You create a recurring task that should appear every four weeks. With the setting today, the task will be created again (taking into account the details of the set interval) in four weeks.

However, you can also choose the date freely or select the task deadline as the start time. In this case, the counting of the four weeks would start with the deadline of the current task. For this, the deadline must be set in the task.

For orientation, you will find the exact date on which the next task will be created.

Time

The time of the Starting from field represents the time when the task is created. By default, this is set to 8 a.m. (the user's local time). If you set it to 6 a.m., for example, the task will be created 2 hours earlier.

Deadline

The deadline of the task is specified relative to the creation, e.g. seven days after creation.

If your task is created every four weeks, you can give it a relative deadline of seven days, for example. Then the task appears every four weeks but is not due immediately, and the assigned user has seven days to complete it.

Delete the recurrence rule

To prevent a task from continuing as a recurring task, click the clock icon with the arrow in the task details and remove the rule there. This applies for both the recurring and the main tasks.

And, of course, as soon as the project receives the status "done", the recurrence is terminated.

Recurring tasks in the Timeline

Recurring tasks are shown as previews in the timeline, in the duration you specified in the Due after field in the recurrence rule. These entries are only previews and the tasks can be edited and moved only when they are actually created. If you click on such a preview, the recurrence rule will be displayed and you can jump from the window directly to the original task.

Only the next 8 months are displayed as a rolling preview.

In the workload calculation, the recurring tasks are also taken into account, as long as the original task, which has all the information to create the follow-up tasks, has a planned effort and assigned users.

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