On Monday at 9am, Ewa joins Marta's nine-person studio. Marta remembers who'll show her the way they work, when she'll get her first assignment, and who she'll talk to on Friday - but the rest of the team only knows fragments of that plan. When you break employee onboarding down into tasks, Ewa will see the next steps, and the team will see the deadlines and the people responsible.
Before you plan the tasks, set up the account and access
Start Ewa's onboarding by setting up her account and choosing the spaces she should see. The administrator adds her in the users window, and sets permissions for each Workspace separately.
Marta clicks the group icon next to the gear icon and opens the "Add" tab. She enters Ewa's email, first and last name, and the role "User". In the "Assign to Workspaces" table, she selects the spaces Ewa needs for her work and specifies whether Ewa can create tasks or chats in them. Selecting any of these permissions adds her to the given Workspace.
Without the "Tasks" permission, Ewa can still read the tasks she's been added to and post in their threads; she simply won't be able to create a new one. Similarly, the "Chats" permission covers creating chats, not taking part in a chat she's been added to. A regular user only sees the spaces assigned to them, while a global administrator has access to all of them. If you'd like to fine-tune this division, see roles and permissions in Task Manager.
Before saving, Marta checks "Seats used: X / Y". The licence sets a maximum number of active people; if all the seats are taken, the add form is blocked and you'll need to extend the licence or free up a seat. Once added, Ewa receives an invitation email and sets her own password. If the message doesn't arrive, Marta uses "Resend" next to her name on the list.
A separate Workspace keeps onboarding apart from current projects
The "Onboarding - Ewa" Workspace will gather the tasks and chat related to her first two weeks. This way, the plan won't get mixed up with client projects for Marta, although the "All" view will still show her spaces together.
A Workspace is a dedicated working space for tasks and chats related to one topic. Marta, as administrator, clicks the "+" next to "Workspaces" in the left-hand column, enters a name and saves. This button is visible to global administrators and people with the "Can add Workspaces" permission. Marta then opens the ⋮ menu on the new space's card, selects "Edit workspace", and in the "Assign users" section adds Ewa and the person who'll be onboarding her.
If Marta creates the new space after sending the invitation, she still needs to assign Ewa to it. Simply creating the Workspace doesn't grant her access. You'll find a full description of the settings on the Workspaces page.
On the space's card, the number shows unread tasks and chats, not the total number of items. You'll see the total in a tooltip when you hover over it. When Marta notices a number next to "Onboarding - Ewa" after a week, she'll know something unread is waiting in that space, without confusing it with the number of planned steps.
Task Manager doesn't have a ready-made onboarding template. For your next onboarding, keep the block names and list contents as your own template, then enter them into new tasks. The Workspace itself can't be archived, though individual tasks and chats can be. The space can remain as a reference point, as long as it still matches your access rules.
Employee onboarding: it's better to split a two-week plan into blocks
For the two weeks of onboarding, plan a separate task for each block that has its own deadline and assigned people. Enter small steps as to-do lists in those tasks' descriptions, instead of creating a separate task for every document to read.
In Marta's studio, the plan looks like this:
| When | Task | Example to-do list items |
|---|---|---|
| Monday, week 1 | First day: equipment, access, team | Check access to the necessary tools; meet the people handling orders and billing; note down questions |
| Tuesday and Wednesday, week 1 | How we work | Read the work guidelines; review the tasks in the assigned Workspace; create a trial task, if Ewa has permission to do so |
| Thursday and Friday, week 1 | Clients and services | Read the materials about the services; discuss a sample project; note down any uncertainties |
| Monday to Thursday, week 2 | First independent project | Agree the scope; prepare your part; discuss feedback with the person onboarding you |
| Friday, week 2 | Catch-up after two weeks | Gather Ewa's questions; discuss the tasks completed; agree the next scope of work |
Marta can assign herself and Ewa to Monday's task, and add someone to check the result to the assignment from the second week. Each task has a subject, description, due date with or without a time, priority and assigned people. If a conversation after two weeks has to happen on a Friday, it gets its own task with a due date; reading a single note becomes a list item.
You tick off a to-do list in the task description directly in the task card. A progress bar shows how far along it is, everyone working on that list sees the same state, and the name of whoever ticked a point off appears next to it. On Friday, Marta can see who ticked off the point about the materials. You'll find more examples of this kind of breakdown in the article on the checklist in a task.
Red indicates a task that's overdue, and blue - one due today. The "Due", "Due today" and "Overdue" tiles show the number of items and also filter the list. Changes to due dates, status and assigned people are saved as system messages in the thread, so after two weeks you can check what's been rescheduled.
Share materials deliberately - a Workspace doesn't open Notes
You can prepare work rules and a description of services in Notes, but simply assigning a note to a Workspace won't show it to Ewa. A note stays private until its owner grants someone access.
Marta creates a note called "Work rules at the studio", clicks "Share", chooses "Add person…" and gives Ewa "View only" access. For the note "Questions from the first week" she chooses "Can edit", so Ewa can add her doubts. If a note has a Workspace assigned, the list of people it can be shared with includes only members of that space. Removing access is managed by the note's owner.
This separation guards against two mistakes. An administrator won't see Ewa's private notes just because they manage the company. And Ewa won't see Marta's materials just because both belong to the "Onboarding - Ewa" Workspace. When a document needs to stay unchanged, choose view access; someone with that access also can't move the shared note to another folder. Details are covered in the article about Notes.
Notes has search across titles and content. If a few weeks later Ewa is looking for the rules on how to describe assignments, she doesn't need to remember the folder name. You can also put to-do lists inside a note, but it's still better to record the due date and the responsible person in a task.
Put meetings in the Calendar, and leave AI as an option
Enter the kick-off meeting and the Friday conversation into the Calendar with participants. The AI Assistant is optional - you can plan meetings and tasks without it. Task Manager also shows tasks, reminders and team absences in the Calendar, so Marta sees all these elements in a single plan.
When Marta adds Ewa to an event, each of them gets her own copy; changing the date moves the event for participants too. The Notification Centre shows a morning briefing with the day's list, and also reminds 15 minutes before an event and an hour before a task's due date. It's a tool to help keep track of dates, not a substitute for talking about what Ewa still doesn't understand.
If the person who onboarded someone is away, check their status before assigning the next task. The AI Assistant can warn you when assigning a task to someone who's absent. Ewa can also ask the AI Assistant about a task thread she has access to, or request a summary, as long as the administrator has enabled AI in tasks for her - without that permission, AI options don't appear in the task. Conversations with the AI Assistant are private, even from the administrator.
The AI Assistant is available in the Standard and Pro plans, but you don't have to enable it to use tasks and Notes. It runs on your own customer key with OpenAI, Google Gemini, Anthropic Claude or xAI Grok; you pay the model provider directly for usage, with no Task Manager markup. Keep in mind that your query, along with the context passed along with it, goes to the chosen model provider.
When the working relationship ends, keep the plan and free up the seat
When an employee leaves, you don't need to delete their account to get the licence seat back. The administrator switches off the "Active" toggle in the user's edit screen: the person can no longer log in, their data and tasks remain, and the seat returns to the available pool.
Setting the status to "Blocked" is a different action. Blocking clears sessions and remembered devices, but doesn't free up a seat; it serves a different purpose than deactivation. For Marta, this is a practical distinction when planning the next hire: the count covers active accounts, not everyone who has ever worked at the company.
The onboarding plan stays in tasks on your company's own server. Task Manager comes with a perpetual licence with 12 months of updates included. Renewing updates later is optional, and you pay for seats once, not monthly per user. Check the number of available seats before inviting a new person, rather than assuming the licence will expand on its own as the team grows.
Tomorrow, write down five things you tell every new person in their first week. Turn them into a to-do list in the first task, and split the remaining steps by due date and responsible person. You can see a plan prepared this way in the Demo.
Frequently asked questions
How many tasks should a two-week employee onboarding have?
For a start, you can set out five tasks, as in Marta's example: one for each major block of work or conversation with its own deadline. Put smaller steps on to-do lists; if one of them needs its own deadline and a responsible person, split it off into a separate task.
Can a new employee see all the company's tasks?
No, a regular user only sees the Workspaces they've been assigned to, and the tasks they have access to. A global administrator sees all Workspaces, tasks and chats.
Who sets the password for a new person?
The new person sets their own password after receiving the invitation email. The administrator doesn't do it for them; if the invitation hasn't arrived, they can click "Resend".
How do you share reading materials with a new person?
The note's owner clicks "Share" and grants "View only" or "Can edit" access. Simply assigning a note to a Workspace doesn't share it with the other members.
What should you do with an account when an employee leaves?
Turn off the "Active" toggle when editing the account to block login access and free up a licence seat. That person's data and tasks will remain in the application.
Sources
The Task Manager Team - we write about teamwork, AI in business and keeping tasks organised, using examples from Task Manager, software installed on your own server. Task Manager has been developed by Blue Creation Group (Piotr Łącz) since 2013 and is used by organisations including Neonet, the Military University of Technology and Polpharma - read customer reviews. We check our articles against the user guide and the latest version of the software.
