Actions

3.1What an action is

An action is a piece of work that one person ticks off. Every action has:

• An owner: the person who has the work. Always exactly one person.
• A deadline: when it must be done.
• A creator: whoever created it. The creator can always keep following the action, even when the work sits somewhere else.
• A status: Open In progress Done or Archive. Only the owner or someone above them sets the status; nothing is ever ticked off automatically.

3.2Creating an action

Actions come into being in three places:

• On their own, via the button on the Actions page: title, owner, deadline, and optionally a description.
• From a meeting: manually, or by accepting an AI suggestion (chapter 5). The action stays linked to the meeting, so it is always clear where it came from.
• In a project: as part of the project (chapter 4).

You choose the owner from yourself and everyone in the layers below you. Whoever is assigned an action receives a notification with title and deadline; when the assignment skips a layer, the direct manager of the receiver hears about it too (chapter 2).

3.3Passing on and reassigning

Work moves in two ways, and it always stays the same action with the same history:

• Passing on. The owner passes the action to someone in a layer below them, via the Assign to field on the action page. That way work gets placed more concretely along the way.
• Reassigning. Whoever stands above the owner can move the action: to themselves or to someone else, for example in case of illness or departure.

Passing on makes no copy: there is always one action, with one owner and one status. When the last owner ticks it off, it is done for everyone.

3.4Who sets the deadline

The deadline belongs to handing out: whoever gives the work says when it must be done. After that, only the responsible person above the owner (or an administrator) can change the date. The owner cannot move their own deadline, and that is deliberate: otherwise every deadline becomes optional.

3.5Asking for postponement

When a deadline cannot be met, the owner asks for postponement, right on the action:

• The owner writes an update, ticks Propose new deadline and picks a date with an explanation.
• The responsible person sees the proposal on the action and approves or declines it with one click.
• On approval the deadline moves, and the whole conversation stays in the updates as the record.

3.6Updates, description and notes

• Updates are the progress messages on the action, for everyone who sees the action. They can be typed or spoken; spoken updates are transcribed automatically.
• The description records what exactly is meant: the what and why.
• Notes are personal scratch work of whoever opens the action; they are visible on that page only.

3.7Reminders around the deadline

DeciDesk watches the date by itself: the owner gets a reminder when the deadline comes close and a signal when it passes. The responsible person sees overdue work in their own overviews and in the week status (chapter 7).

3.8The timeline

Every action page has a timeline that records what happened from the very first moment, in plain sentences. It cannot be edited and cannot be erased: even when a part is removed later, the timeline keeps what it was and who had it.

Other sentences you may come across: Daan turned this action into a project, New action for Nora Visser: Review the draft budget, Sven removed the action for Milan: Request the old quotation, and Lars reopened this action when finished work had to come back after all.

3.9Recurring actions

Work that returns every week or month you set up once. When creating it, tick Recurring and choose the rhythm: daily, weekly on fixed days, or monthly on a date or a fixed weekday, optionally with an end date.

• As soon as the current one is ticked off, the next one is ready automatically with the right deadline.
• The series can be paused, changed or stopped from any action in the series; what already exists simply stays.

3.10Reading and filtering

The Actions page shows everything you are allowed to see, grouped by status. The filters sit at the top:

• Mine / Others / All: only your own work, only your people’s, or both.
• Person: filter on one of your people. The page switches to Others by itself.
• Status and search: by status group, or free search on title, meeting or owner.

Actions that are part of a project do not appear loose in the list: you see the top of each tree, and the work underneath it lives on the project page itself. When you search or filter, everything is searched flat so nothing becomes unfindable.

3.11Deleting

Deleting is reserved for the responsible person above the owner or an administrator, always with a confirmation first. If the action was part of a project, the timeline of that project records who deleted which action and whose it was. For work that is simply finished, deleting is not needed: it moves to the archive by itself (chapter 8).