Some of the actions you capture in your GTD system may involve other people. These include tasks that should be handled by someone else, or those that involve meetings or conversations requiring another person’s presence — whether in person or online.

All the people or entities you interact with are defined as Collaborators in FacileThings: friends, family, colleagues, subordinates, clients, suppliers, partners, etc.

To add a collaborator to an action, simply type their name preceded by the @ symbol. For example:

Ask @ana to translate the latest blog post into Spanish.

When you tag a person this way, FacileThings automatically creates a new contact in your Collaborators list, found under the Organize menu:

The Collaborators view is divided into two sections. The first one contains those collaborators who have at least one active action at the moment and, therefore, it will be the one you want to observe most of the time.

Use the search bar at the bottom to find collaborators not visible in the list.

You can also create contacts with the “Add Collaborator” button. To edit the details of the collaborator currently selected, use the “Edit Collaborator” button that appears at the top right. In both cases the following editor will appear:

The only mandatory field is the Screen name. It should be a short, easy-to-remember name that you can add to any action by placing the @ symbol in front of it. Like tags, it is written in lowercase letters and the use of the underscore is allowed to separate words.

For collaborators to whom you usually delegate tasks, an important piece of information is the email address. If the email belongs to another FacileThings user, you will be able to connect with him or her, and delegate and receive tasks directly. Even if it’s not a FacileThings user, you can delegate tasks via email — the system will send the task details to external collaborators automatically.

You can customize the avatar of your collaborators with the picture you prefer. When a collaborator doesn’t have a picture, a colored circle showing their initials will be displayed. If you want to see two initials, edit the name and surname of your collaborator.

Agenda

On the right side, you’ll see all actions related to the selected collaborator, grouped into two lists:

• Agenda. This list includes the actions you’ll want handy whenever you meet with a collaborator. It contains all the delegated actions (those that you have in your Waiting For list), all the actions that imply any conversation (those that you have in your Next Actions list) and all the events that include your collaborator (those that you have in your Calendar).
• Done. It contains all the actions related to your collaborator that have been completed in the last 30 days.

The Agenda also contains other actions related to a collaborator that, although they are not active at the moment, you may want to have on hand when you meet with him or her. These “inactive” actions can be:

• Next actions to which you have assigned a predecessor action.
• Next actions that you have in a sequential project and are not the first action.
• Next actions that you have in a kanban project, in the “To Do” column.
• Actions you have in the Tickler File.

Inactive actions are those currently blocked — either by a preceding task or because their start date hasn’t arrived yet. The agenda now includes all these actions, which are identified with a striped background:

Click the printer icon to export your Agenda as a downloadable and printable PDF in order to have access to this list whenever you are offline, or send it to your collaborator to let them know the issues you need to address. The PDF document will keep the appearance of the application interface for greater familiarity and clarity in its review.

Delegating actions

It’s likely that some tasks in your daily workflow shouldn’t — or don’t need to — be done by you personally. In that case, the correct thing is to delegate them to other people or entities and move them to the Waiting For list, so that you can follow up on them in each Weekly Review or when necessary.

Because you remain accountable for these tasks, and they may affect future tasks or projects, you should be aware of their evolution.

There are several ways to delegate an action to a collaborator:

• When you’re Clarifying, you can write the @name of the collaborator in the text and send the task to the Waiting For list. Or you can select the name in the list of collaborators that you have on the right side.
• You can edit an action that’s already in your Next Actions list or in your Calendar, add an @name (or select it from the list) and then click on the Waiting For option.

You will be able to make a general follow-up of the delegated actions in the Waiting For list:

External Collaborators

You can send delegated tasks by email to the collaborators with whom you have a direct relationship and trust you. To do this, enter the email address of your collaborator in their contact information and check the box “Send delegated actions by email”:

Don’t enable this option if your collaborator isn’t expecting these types of emails. Talk to him or her before doing it, explain how it works and how it can facilitate your communication, and activate the option only if they agree.

When you delegate a task in this way, be sure to clearly explain the task and include as much information as possible. You can use the notes section of the task to add more information, and include a checklist if that makes it easier to understand and follow.

When you move an action with an external collaborator assigned to the Waiting For list, the system will send an email to them with the assigned task and a link to the guests page, where they can update the status of the task.

Your collaborator will receive an email like this:

By clicking on the button “View/Update my task”, your collaborator goes to the FacileThings Guest Page, where they can see all the information related to the task: description, notes, checklist, etc.

In addition to viewing the information, your collaborator can interact with you in several ways:

• Marking the checklist items that are already done.
• Indicating the percentage of the task that has been carried out.
• Indicating that the task has been completed.
• Having conversations with you about the task.

You will receive a notification when your collaborator writes a comment or completes the task.

In your Waiting For list, where you can keep track of all delegated actions, you will see updated progress data in those that have been delegated to an external collaborator. Even after the collaborator completes the task, it will remain on your Waiting For list until you mark it as done.

Connecting with other FacileThings users

If the email address of a contact belongs to another FacileThings user, you will have the possibility to send (or receive) a request to be connected within the application.

Once your collaborator accepts the invitation, you can delegate tasks back and forth. When you delegate a task to another FacileThings user, it will appear in their Inbox with a message indicating that it’s a task delegated by you:

As with external collaborators, you’ll receive a notification whenever your collaborator adds a comment or completes the task.

You will be able to keep track of these tasks in your Waiting For list. In this case, the system will show which list in your collaborators’ GTD system currently contains the delegated task.