Chief tasks: background work and routines

A task is something you hand Chief to work on in the background while you get on with your day, for example “Summarise the overdue invoices and tell me which clients to chase”. A routine is a task Chief runs for you on a schedule, for example “Every weekday at 9: brief me on what is due today”. Both live on the Chief tasks page in the Agents menu. Background work is being switched on workspace by workspace; until it reaches yours, the page says so.

• It works as youA task runs under your own account and your own permissions, exactly as if you had asked Chief yourself. It reads only what you can read, and it cannot reach anything your role cannot.
• Only the change you asked forIn the background Chief looks things up, works things out and drafts. It makes a change only when your task asks for exactly that change in so many words (for example “create a follow-up task for each client who owes us money”); nothing else is changed or sent without your yes. Whatever needs your yes is left in its answer, and its steps show it as waiting for your yes. A task that has read a message from outside your workspace changes nothing at all on its own, and the page says so under its answer.
• Where the answer appearsWhen a task finishes you get a notification (you can switch these off under Background tasks in your notification settings). Opening it takes you to the task on the Chief tasks page, with Chief’s answer and the steps it took. If Chief could not finish, the page says why in one sentence. Ask Chief about this opens the conversation the task ran in, so you can carry on from there.
• Giving Chief a taskOn the Tasks tab, press Give Chief a task, say what to do the way you would in the chat, and give it a short name if you like. A task that is still waiting or running can be cancelled: Chief stops it before its next step. Anything it already did stays done, and you will not get a notification about it. The page keeps itself up to date while a task runs, so there is no need to reload it.
• RoutinesOn the Routines tab, press Add a routine and choose every day, every weekday, once a week or once a month, a time, and a time zone (yours is filled in). Each time it comes round, Chief starts it as a new task and tells you when it is done. Switch a routine off to pause it without losing it, or edit or delete it.
• LimitsUp to 3 of your tasks can be waiting or running at once, each person can give Chief up to 20 tasks a day, a workspace can start up to 50 tasks a day, and each person can keep up to 10 routines. When a limit is reached Chief says so, rather than quietly dropping what you asked.