Tasks and Folders

Tasks and Folders are basic building blocks that help better organize a project.

The purpose of a folder structure is to organize and manage tasks in a way that makes them easily accessible, and manageable.

Tasks are designed to contain all the necessary info, notes, inputs, versions, links to other tasks, time information, status, and everything else that is needed.

Creating a new Object (simple)

The easiest way to create a Folder or Task object is by clicking the “+” button on the bottom right. This will create a folder or task with default attributes.

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When the folder where we are creating a new object is empty, we need to choose what type of folder object or task we would like to create.

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When a folder already contains some folder objects or tasks, new objects will be created based on the type of the first object created in that folder. For example, if a Sequence folder contains a Shot folder, it will create another Shot folder. If a Shot folder contains a task, it will create a new task.

By pressing the “ALT+T” shortcut on the keyboard new task is created.

Creating a new Object (advance)

Click the “+ Create” button to open a dialog where you can set advanced settings for the created object and create multiple objects at once.

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When you check Multiple checkbox you can create multiple objects at once

Object names need to be unique. No two objects with the same name can exist in the same folder. It’s always good to use short names and abbreviations. For example, animation tasks could be abbreviated as “ani.” Short names are beneficial if we need to add additional information. For instance, if we have multiple tasks of the same type, such as animation for hero characters and background characters, using full names like "animation_HeroCharacters" and "animation_BGCharacters" can be too long. Abbreviating to "ani_Hero" and "ani_BG" makes the names shorter and easier to display.

Type - For "typeable" objects such as tasks, we need to select a type. We can use task types for filtering and grouping the tasks by specific task types. The Task Type attribute is also linked with a Skill attribute in Soko. This means that, when let’s say, we need to create a concept we choose the Concept task type, everyone on our team with skill in making concepts will be displayed on top when assigning this task to an Assignee. The automated scheduler also uses the task type for assigning the right person to the right tasks.

We can set other attributes such as Status, Priority, Start Date, and End Date.

Status: The status should reflect the current

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of the task. Usually, at the beginning of the project, it is "Awaiting Input" or "Awaiting Input Ext." when necessary inputs are not yet available.

Priority: This is not a mandatory field, but we can choose a priority level from Low to Urgent. Tasks with higher priority are scheduled before the tasks with lower priority in the automated scheduler.

Start and End Date: These are not mandatory fields, but they can help better organize and filter tasks based on date attributes. When using an automated scheduler, these dates are calculated automatically.

5. By clicking the Create button, a new object is created.

Creating multiple object

We can create multiple objects at once by checking the "Multiple" checkbox.

Pattern

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When the Pattern option is chosen, we can create multiple objects based on a naming pattern. This is useful for creating multiple shots at once.

We need to write the object name and define padding. Padding is defined by the hash “#” symbol. For example, "###" means padding of 3 (000).

The number of objects is a whole number defining how many objects will be created.

The start number defines the first object's number.

The increment defines the value that will be added to the next object.

For example, if you would like to create 20 shots with names SQ_SHT_0010, SQ_SHT_0020, up to SQ_SHT_0200, you need to write the pattern as SQ_SHT_####. The number of objects needs to be set to 20, the start number should be 10, and the increment should be 10 as well. Now, when you click create, 20 shots will be created with the correct naming.

Multiline

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When Multiline is selected [1] you can write any number of object names into the multiline element [2]. For example, you can copy the names of all the assets from a spreadsheet and paste them into the multiline element. Once you click the "Create" button, all the assets will be created at once.

Assign user to a task

Double-click on the Assignees cell and select a user from the drop-down list.

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In case you would like to assign the same user to multiple tasks, select multiple tasks first and then hold “Ctrl” and Double-click on the Assignees cell and select the user from the drop-down list.

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