A client calls Tomek, Tomek messages Agnieszka, and Agnieszka emails the details to a service technician. The technician writes the date on a piece of paper in the van. Three days later, no one knows whether the client asked for Tuesday or Wednesday. This is how teams lose track of agreements, even though everyone did their part.
Where decisions really get lost
Agreements get lost when moving between channels: after a phone call, before an email is sent and when a case is handed over to another person. The phone or messaging app itself is not the problem - the problem starts when no single place contains the complete history of the case.
Imagine Termoserwis, an eight-person company that services air-conditioning systems and heat pumps. Marek runs the company, Agnieszka and Kasia work in the office, Tomek handles sales, and four service technicians visit clients. This example combines situations seen in several companies; it is not based on a study.
On Monday, a client gives Tomek a new date over the phone. On Tuesday, Agnieszka searches her email for an earlier quote, and on Wednesday, a service technician asks for the address in a messaging app. Over the course of a week, Agnieszka records 31 questions beginning with “where is it?” and three apologies to clients.
The cost of searching and switching
Returning to an interrupted matter took an average of about 25 minutes in Gloria Mark's 2005 study. The McKinsey Global Institute, meanwhile, estimated that handling email and searching for information or people consumed a combined total of around 47 per cent of the working week.
Gloria Mark, Victor González and Justin Harris observed 24 office workers. According to the paper “No Task Left Behind? Examining the Nature of Fragmented Work”, participants worked on one matter for an average of 11 minutes, 57 per cent of matters were interrupted, and they returned to interrupted work after an average of 25 minutes.
In a 2008 study, Gloria Mark's team examined what happens when email work is interrupted. Participants completed tasks even faster, but at the cost of increased stress, frustration, effort and time pressure. Working faster did not mean working more calmly, as described in the paper “The Cost of Interrupted Work: More Speed and Stress”.
In the report “The social economy: Unlocking value and productivity through social technologies”, the McKinsey Global Institute estimated in 2012 that employees spent around 28 per cent of their working week handling email. A further 19 per cent was spent searching for information or for people who could provide it.
In 2023, Microsoft asked 31,000 people in 31 countries about how they worked. As many as 62 per cent said they spent too much time searching for information, according to the “Work Trend Index Annual Report: Will AI Fix Work?”. Findings from different years point to the same problem: searching and switching take time away from actual work.
The one-place rule does not mean using just one channel
Every case should have one thread containing its decisions, files and current status. You do not need to ban phone calls or email - you need to agree what the team does after a conversation ends.
A good thread has a name and assigned people. It keeps the conversation with the case and records changes. You can still find it a month later. If a client calls on Monday, two sentences summarising the conversation should be added there that same day.
In Task Manager, this thread can be a task with a due date and conversation. It has a subject, a description in a full-featured editor, normal or high priority, a due date with or without a time, and assigned people. The team's conversation remains below the case card.
When Marek moves a service visit from Tuesday to Thursday, the software records the due date change together with its previous value. It also records changes to the status, priority and name, as well as people being added or removed. There is no need to write a separate “note, I've moved it” message.
The task colour also conveys information: red means overdue, blue means due today, green means on schedule, and grey means there is no due date or the case is closed. The “Today” and “Overdue” tiles work as both counters and filters.
How to move agreements from different channels into one thread
You can keep every incoming channel, but each agreement should be added to the relevant thread. The table below shows what to record after a phone call, email, meeting or file exchange.
| Where it gets lost | Why it gets lost | Where it should go |
|---|---|---|
| A call from a client | It stays in one person's head | Two sentences in the task thread straight after the call |
| An email to one person | The rest of the team cannot see it | Email thread linked to the task, with the key points copied into the thread |
| Private messaging app | The case gets mixed up with other conversations | A Workspace chat or task thread |
| File “wycena_final_v3.xlsx” | Nobody knows which version is current | Attachment in the task thread, up to 100 MB per file |
| A decision made during a meeting | Everyone remembers it differently | A shared note, with decisions that require action moved to tasks |
| Description saying “that blue item on the right” | Five sentences replace a single pointer | Screenshot with an annotation created using Draw |
| A due date changed on the fly | No record of the previous date | Due date changed in a task and recorded in a system message |
You can add attachments to a task using the paperclip, by dragging and dropping a file or by pasting it from the clipboard. The “Files” paperclip in the thread header opens a collection of all attachments related to the matter, including those from older messages.
Five rules are enough to get started
The team can adopt a single-place rule during one half-hour meeting. The rules do not need to cover every exception - they are intended to give everyone the same way of working from the following day.
Marek agrees five rules with the Termoserwis team:
- Every customer matter gets a task, created by the person who receives the first message.
- After a phone call, you write two sentences in the thread: who called, what you agreed and what the next step is.
- You link the email to the task and copy the information the team needs into the thread.
- You mark the decision as a favourite. The message then gets a gold bar and background, making it easy to find when you return to the matter.
- Before asking “where is it?”, you use Search. No results means the decision was not recorded in the shared location.
After two weeks, Agnieszka counts the questions again. In this composite example, their number falls from 31 to 9, while the number of apologies to customers falls from three to zero. These figures illustrate a way to measure the change, not a promised result.
Task Manager takes you from message to task
Ola receives a message and copies the key details into a task. A week later, Marek finds the matter using Search. Mail, Tasks, Notes, Search and notifications handle each step of this workflow in a single application.
The email remains private, while the key details go into the task
This is a separate example, unrelated to Termoserwis. On Monday, a complaint from Delta Meble arrives in Ola's inbox. If it remains only in Mail, the rest of the team will not learn about it until the customer calls again.
The Mail module in Task Manager lets you read and send messages from mailboxes using the IMAP and SMTP standards, the common mechanisms for receiving and sending email. Everything happens in the same window as Tasks. Like Files and Automations, Mail is included in the Pro edition. You can link an email thread to a Workspace, Task or Chat, but this is a navigation shortcut for the mailbox owner, not a way of sharing its content with the team. The mailbox remains private and even the administrator cannot see it.
Ola therefore copies the key details of the complaint into a task. With one click, she can also save all the thread's attachments to the Files module, which - like Mail and Automations - is part of the Pro edition.
An annotated screenshot replaces a description of the location
On Wednesday, Paweł photographs the controller and starts typing: “the error is on the left, below the second button”. Instead of adding more sentences, he opens the photo from the message, marks the location and inserts the image as a reply.
Draw also lets you create a freehand drawing from scratch or use an uploaded background. The image remains in the same thread as the question and answer.
A note captures the meeting, while a task drives action
Kasia records Friday's briefing in Notes and shares it with the team for viewing or editing. The note is saved automatically one second after she stops typing.
Every note is private until its owner shares it. Assigning it to a Workspace only acts as a label and does not grant access, and the administrator cannot see it either. Kasia moves decisions that require action into Tasks.
Search replaces asking in Chat
Marek enters “Swarzędz” in the search field instead of asking the entire team for the customer's address. Search covers the names of Tasks and Chats, as well as the content of Notes and Files.
Above the list, he can also filter matters by status, priority, due date, favourite and type. This will not recover information that nobody recorded, but it will quickly reveal that something is missing.
Notifications bring together everything that requires action
The Notification Centre takes the form of an Island at the edge of the screen. It shows counters for Mail, Tasks, conversations, mentions, Calendar, shared items and the AI Assistant, and each category can be disabled separately.
A morning briefing with a clickable list for the day appears once a day. The application also reminds you 15 minutes before an event and one hour before a task's due date. For email reminders to be sent while the application is closed, CRON must be running on the server to execute a scheduled task at regular intervals. Without it, messages are sent when someone uses the application.
One place does not have to mean another subscription
Task Manager is installed on the company's server, and standard shared hosting is sufficient. The server must have PHP 8.1+ and a MySQL or MariaDB database.
You buy a licence once for the required number of users and can use it indefinitely, with no per-user subscription. The price includes 12 months of Updates. After that period, you can renew access to new versions or continue using your existing version without further fees.
The Starter plan covers up to 8 people and costs 690 PLN in the Standard variant. The Classic plan supports up to 20 people, the Max plan up to 35 people, and larger teams use the Enterprise plan with individual pricing. The Pro variant adds Mail, Files, Automations, AES-256 content encryption and the AI knowledge base; the Starter plan in the Pro variant costs 1,990 PLN.
What not to do in the first week
Do not start by moving the company's entire archive. Apply the rule to open matters first and check whether the team records new decisions where they will look for them later.
Create one Workspace for a team or area of work, such as Service, Sales or Office. Do not create a separate Workspace for every customer if the customer can simply be a Task.
After two weeks, count the “where is it?” questions and compare the result with the first week. If you want to reduce the number of apps you use more broadly, see the one tool instead of five principle. You'll find a day-by-day implementation plan in the guide to your first week with Task Manager.
What will you do tomorrow?
Tomorrow, choose one open matter, create a task for it and write two sentences in the thread after the first phone call. If you want to see this setup with sample data, open the Demo.
Frequently asked questions
Does the one-place rule mean no emails or phone calls?
No, phone calls and email can still be your entry points. After a conversation, you record the key points in the relevant thread, and you can link an email thread to a task.
Does linking an email to a task show its contents to the whole team?
No, your inbox remains private, and even an administrator cannot see anyone else's mail. The link is a navigation shortcut; the team receives information copied into the task or attachments saved in Files.
How long does it take to implement the one-place rule in a small team?
You can agree the rules in a half-hour meeting, then apply them consistently for two weeks. After that, count the questions that begin with “where is it?” and refine any rules that are still unclear.
What should you do about agreements made before the new system was introduced?
Leave closed cases in their existing archives. For each open case, create a thread with a concise “current status” update and the date instead of moving the entire history.
Does Task Manager need AI to stop your team losing track of agreements?
No, Tasks, Chats, Notes, Draw, Search and the Notification Centre all work without AI. You can optionally connect the AI Assistant using your own key from OpenAI, Google Gemini, Anthropic Claude or xAI Grok and pay the provider directly.
Sources
- Gloria Mark, Victor M. González, Justin Harris, “No Task Left Behind? Examining the Nature of Fragmented Work”, CHI 2005 (accessed: 2026-09-22)
- Gloria Mark, Daniela Gudith, Ulrich Klocke, “The Cost of Interrupted Work: More Speed and Stress”, CHI 2008 (accessed: 2026-09-22)
- McKinsey Global Institute, “The social economy: Unlocking value and productivity through social technologies”, July 2012 (accessed: 2026-09-22)
- Microsoft, “Work Trend Index Annual Report: Will AI Fix Work?”, 9 May 2023 (accessed: 2026-09-22)
- Task Manager, “Tasks” (accessed: 2026-09-22)
- Task Manager, “Mail” (accessed: 2026-09-22)
- Task Manager, “Notes” (accessed: 2026-09-22)
- Task Manager, “Notification Centre” (accessed: 2026-09-22)
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.
