Automated Task Manager


Merging related products to provide dynamic automation

Overview

A year or so before I started this project, I had been asked to design a product called ‘Task Center’. Task Center would automatically organize and assign tasks generated from an automation called Workflows. A year later, I returned to this project to merge Task Center with an existing product called ‘Approval Center’. We were asked to merge these two experiences for two reasons. First, It would consolidate all task oriented activity to one place, reducing the number of places users had to check in on. Second, users wanted to be able to automate process in Approval Center the way they could with Task Center. Merging the two products would allow them to use the same functionally for both task types.

Year:

2025

Original Timeline:

approx. 2 month

Project Merge Timeline:

2 weeks

My Role

I designed the new product experience, pulling from the previous product I had designed and the existing product ‘approvals’. I designed for both desktop and mobile experience. I met with developer leads and the VP of engineering throughout our 2 week sprint to focus our efforts and make sure we could make our deadline. I also created prototype mockups to represent the interaction and usability of the new product to be presented directly to our CEO for approval.

Merging two prodcuts

The request to merge these two products came directly from our CEO, and I was asked to deliver an initial round of mocks within a few days. To begin, I first familiarized myself with the Approvals product, and noted the differences and similarities between products.

Differences:

  • Assigner vs assignee avatars shown on task items
  • Difference in meta data (submitted by vs form name)
  • Delegation and snooze features in Approvals
  • swipe right to approve feature in Approvals (a favorite of our CEO’s)

Similarities:

  • Both had attached comments
  • Both appeared in a from like format
  • Both used a kind of tagging system Both had similar title format requirements


Mobile expereince

Mobile was how we expected our CEO and other executives to use the most, so this was the experience that needed to match the Approvals the closest. Knowing this, we started with mobile and then adapted our desktop version to match.

Changes included:

  • Added ‘queue’ which acted as task folders
  • Maintained ‘quick links’ available in Approvals
  • Used icons represented in other ares of the product to indicate form types
  • Simplified the meta data shown on card level
  • Included the template name (if applicable) in the task name
  • Adopted the assignee avatar used in Approvals instead of the assigner used in Task Center

Desktop expereince

Once mobile was done, I moved to desktop designs. I had already designed the general layout previously for Task Center. Even then, we had anticipated that we would someday merge the two products, so dashboards where already quite similar.

Changes included:

  • Changed the top tiles: ‘your tasks’ to ‘waiting on you’ swapped ‘stats’ for ‘open tasks’
  • Added task categories from Approvals
  • Removed activity and replaced with ‘watch list’
  • Added ‘queue list’ from Tasks

Our goal was too keep the experience as close as possible to the existing approvals experience while still keeping the additional functionality that Task Center provided.

Approval Forms

Approval would appear very similar to a traditional task form, with the addition of an ‘approval chain’, ‘observers’, and additional features including ‘send back’, ‘snooze’, and ‘delegate’.

Task Form

Task forms remained mostly unchanged from the previous design. We did however simplify some of the options to better align with the Approval tasks. Rather than listing history and comments separately, we borrowed the ‘show even’t toggle from Approvals to show them in one chronological timeline.



Automating an Approval form

Once our 2 week sprint was done, we needed to build a way for Approvals to be created in our Automation tool Workflows.

One of the biggest advantages Task Center had over Approvals was it could be integrated into a Workflow automation. We needed to make this same functionality available to approval tasks. We used the existing Task Center form builder and revised it to accommodate approvals.


  • Similar option to ‘create new’ or ‘choose existing’.

  • Steps by step process to first build the form, then add approvers/observers, then preview.

  • The form builder portion worked the same as the current builder’

  • When adding approvers, you could define by custom value or variable value. This allowed the approval form to by dynamic and re-usable.

  • The preview step would allow users to see all these steps compiled into the final form.

Conclusion

We knew the request to merge these products would come eventually. It had been delayed for about a year before the 2 weeks deadline arrived on our desks. Even prepared though, this was a whirlwind of a project.

I was relieved when it was passed from my hand to the hands of the devs. When I asked if the CEO approved of the prototype, I was told his response was that there was nothing to approve because it was so similar to the current Approvals experience. We had accomplished goal and significantly improved the functionality and capability of Task Center.