We’re excited to introduce Spotlight, a new feature designed to help you stay on top of your important tasks, especially when managing multiple ongoing projects.
Why we built Spotlight
Managing tasks across multiple projects can be overwhelming, especially when you’re handling several ongoing priorities.
Typically, you’d manage your priorities by going to each list and manually checking what needs attention. But as your lists grow, this becomes inefficient and time-consuming. Constantly jumping between lists can make it hard to stay organized, with important tasks getting buried beneath less critical ones.
Even if you have hundreds or thousands of tasks, only a handful truly require your attention at any given time, whether over days or weeks.
That’s where Spotlight comes in. It offers a centralized hub where you can pin your most important tasks from any list, ensuring nothing slips through the cracks.
With Spotlight, you can easily track, prioritize, and organize key tasks, helping you stay focused and productive without the hassle of navigating multiple lists.
Additionally, you can create an Inbox section to quickly capture your tasks as they come to mind.
Notes:
- Spotlight is a Premium feature.
- Not available for guests.
- Important: With the launch of Spotlight, we’re retiring the Weekly Backlog feature by the end of this month because only a small percentage of users take advantage of it. You can easily switch to Spotlight as a replacement for your weekly backlog needs. This change helps keep the app clean and easy to use, reducing any confusion.
Customize your Spotlight page
The Spotlight menu is right below the Schedule on the left sidebar.
By default, Spotlight comes with five sections:
- Inbox: A space for a quick brain dump where you can capture tasks and ideas before categorizing them later. This helps reduce mental clutter and stay organized. We highly recommend keeping this section.
- Upcoming: A section for critical tasks you need to focus on in the near future.
- Urgent: Tasks that require immediate attention.
- In progress: Tasks you’re currently working on.
- Completed: Tasks you’ve finished.
You can fully customize your Spotlight page by reordering, adding, removing, or renaming sections to suit your workflow. Here are some ideas:
- This month: Important tasks for the month.
- Next week: Tasks to work on next week.
- This week: Focus for the current week.
- To reply: Emails, messages, or calls that need a response.
- Waiting on: Tasks pending action from others.
- Goals: Track quarterly, monthly, or weekly goals.
Popular Workflows for Inspiration
- Status: Next, In Progress, Waiting on Others, Done.
- Time-based: This Month, Next Week, This Week, Today, Completed.
- Weekly Planning: Upcoming, Next Week, This Week, Completed.
- Daily Planning: Today, Tomorrow, Upcoming, Completed.
- Category: Personal, Work, Health, Completed.
- Assigned To: Me, Team Member 1, Team Member 2, Completed.
- Type of Work: Product, Marketing, Customer Support, Completed.
- Personal and Professional: Personal Tasks, Work Tasks, Completed.
Add tasks to Spotlight
You can add new tasks directly on the Spotlight page using the “Add Task” button or add existing tasks from the task details page.
Another option is to click the ellipsis icon on a task card and select the Spotlight dropdown menu.
Once added, you will see a Spotlight indicator on the card.
Tip: Click on the Indicator to quickly open the Spotlight dropdown menu, where you can change sections or remove the task from Spotlight.
Remove tasks from Spotlight
To remove a task from Spotlight, simply click the “Remove” icon on the task card. Keep in mind that this won’t delete the task; it will only remove it from your Spotlight view.
You can also remove tasks from Spotlight by clearing the selected section in the task details view.
Team Spotlight (Soon)
Your Spotlight is visible to other team members in your workspace. They can see all sections and tasks they have permission to access, but they cannot view private tasks (those not assigned to any list) or tasks in lists that aren’t shared with them.
If you don’t see the updates, try doing a hard refresh on your browser to ensure the app is updated to the latest version.
Recent updates
- New in Upbase: Section colors October 9, 2024
- New in Upbase: Saved Views October 3, 2024
- New in Upbase: Sort tasks August 26, 2024
- Zapier integration, task full page layout, and more August 14, 2024
- New in Upbase: Reorder fields, hide default fields, and more August 1, 2024