Plan Your Experiments

The Planner is the project's to-do list, seen three ways. The Board is for deciding what's next, the Table for triaging a backlog, and the Calendar for fitting work into the days you actually have. It's the same tasks throughout, so a card you drag on the board moves on the calendar too.

Board

The board's columns are yours to define. A new project starts with Todo, In Progress, and Done, and you can rename them, recolor them, insert new ones, and drag them into a different order. Click a column heading to reach Rename, a color swatch, Add column before, Add column after, and Delete column.

Deleting a column that still holds tasks asks what to do with them: move them to another column you pick, or delete them along with it. The one thing you can't do is delete the last column, since a board needs somewhere for a task to live.

A card shows its priority, difficulty, tags, date range, deadline, and up to three assignees. A deadline turns amber as it approaches and red once it's passed. A task waiting on another shows a Blocked badge naming what's holding it up. If the description contains a checklist, the card shows how much of it is ticked.

Drag a card between columns to change its status, or within a column to reorder it. Everything you do is live for everyone in the project.

On a phone the board shows one column at a time, and swiping sideways moves between them. It opens on the column you were last looking at, and stays there when you change the sort.

A long column starts with its first 50 cards, and the heading counts what's loaded against the whole column — 50 of 400 means the rest are waiting, not missing. Scroll to the bottom and press Show more to bring in the next 50. This is what keeps a project with months of finished work in Done opening fast.

Table

The table is the same tasks as sortable rows: title, status, priority, assignees, tags, difficulty, deadline, start date, created date, and who created it. Click a heading to sort by it.

Group by is the table's own control, folding rows into collapsible groups by status, priority, assignee, tag, difficulty, deadline, or creator. Grouping by assignee is the fastest way to see whether one person is carrying an unreasonable share of the week.

Calendar

The calendar has Month, Week, and Day views. On a phone, Week is dropped and it opens on Day.

Where a task lands depends on what dates it has. A task with a start time appears as a block on the hour grid, sized by its Estimate. A task with dates but no time rides the all-day band at the top. A task with no dates at all doesn't appear here at all, and stays visible on the board and table instead.

Create a task by clicking or dragging on the hour grid, which sets its start, end, and estimate in one gesture, or by clicking a day in Month view for a task with a date but no time. Drag an existing block to reschedule it. The deadline stays where it is, because a deadline is a commitment and the schedule is a plan. Hold Alt/Option while dragging over an existing block to sweep out a new task instead of moving that one.

Dates you write inside a note or protocol appear here too, as outlined chips. They aren't tasks and can't be dragged, but clicking one opens the page at that spot with a Planner link to get back.

The calendar respects the working hours and 24-hour clock settings in your preferences.

Creating and Managing Tasks

Four ways to make one, depending on where you are:

• New task in the toolbar, or the N key, which lands in the first column, or on a phone the column you have swiped to
• The + on a column heading, which drops a new card at the top
• + Add task at the bottom of a column, which stays open so you can type several in a row
• A click or drag on the calendar

Only a title is needed. Everything else is optional and can be filled in whenever.

Opening a task gives you a full-width editor. The left side is a complete notebook editor, so a task description can hold images, tables, checklists, and embedded samples, analysis, or pages, not just text. Images don't count against the description's size, but a very long one does reach a ceiling; if you get there, Conspecta says so and asks you to move the longer material onto a notebook page, which is built to hold far more. The right side holds the properties:

Status isn't in that list because it's the pill beside the title, and Created by sits in the footer. Export and Delete task are in the three dot menu at the top of the panel, next to the close button.

Deleting a task sends it to Trash, where it's restorable for 30 days.

The round arrow on the panel's left edge folds it down to a narrow strip, giving the description the full width of the window. Any icon on the strip opens it again, and the strip keeps a count of the comments waiting behind it. Conspecta remembers the choice for the next task you open. On a phone the panel always stays open, below the description rather than beside it.

Reminders

A reminder is only offered once the start date carries a time. It fires for the person the task is assigned to, or for you if you created it and left it unassigned, so a shared board doesn't ping the whole project.

The first time you set one, Conspecta asks permission to show notifications. Until you grant it, reminders only reach you while the tab is open.

Comments and History

Every task carries a comment thread, with @ mentions of anyone on the project, and a full record of who changed what. Both sit in the right sidebar under the properties.

Finding Things

Search (Cmd/Ctrl + F) matches task titles and their description text across every task in the project, including cards further down a column than the board has loaded — a match is pulled onto the board and shown in the column it belongs to. It sits outside the filters on purpose, so clearing filters doesn't clear your search.

Filter narrows by status, priority, assignee, creator, tag, difficulty, deadline, and whether a task has dependencies. Five one-click presets cover the common questions: Assigned to me, Created by me, Due soon, Overdue, and High priority.

Tags filter differently from everything else. Selecting two tags shows tasks carrying both, not either. That makes tags the tool for narrowing ("cell culture" and "needs repeat"), where the other filters widen.

Sort is the board's own control, with thirteen orders including manual, priority, difficulty, deadline, creation date, last update, and title. Manual order is what dragging cards preserves.

Keyboard

The board is fully navigable from the keyboard, which is faster than it sounds for triage:

On the calendar, T jumps to today, D / W / M switch views, and the arrow keys step through periods.

These are single presses with no modifier, and they pause whenever you're typing or a dialog box is open.

Working Together

The Planner is live. Two people can edit the same task description at once and see each other's cursors, and a card on the board gets a soft halo while someone has it open. Cmd/Ctrl + Z undoes your own edits without touching theirs.

When someone else opens a task you have open, their picture appears at the top of it, labelled Alex is here on a full width window, so you know your edits are landing in front of a second pair of eyes. Hover or tap the picture for their card, which says Here now and carries a View profile button. Tap it again to put the card away.

If you and a collaborator change the same field at the same moment, a banner tells you what was merged automatically and lets you choose which version wins for the fields that clashed.

Project members with view-only access see the whole board and can read every task, but the create buttons, the comment box, and description editing aren't offered.

Exporting a Task

Export, in the three dot menu at the top of a task's right hand panel, produces a PDF, Word document, or Markdown file of the description, with the task's properties listed at the top. Comments and activity are left out, since an export is meant to be the procedure and its result rather than the conversation around it.