Trouble setting up new automation

[Leoatsr]

Hey everyone!

I’m managing a project with around 40 part-time team members and could really use some help with setting up a simple but effective task allocation system.

Here’s what I’m hoping to achieve:

• I want to create a task sheet where, once a user marks the “Status” column as “Claimed,” the task either disappears or becomes locked so that other users can no longer edit it (but they can still view it).
• As the manager, I’d like to be able to continuously add tasks to this sheet, keeping my workload minimal.

The goal is to reduce the time spent manually managing who’s claimed what, so the system becomes a bit more self-sufficient. Does anyone know a good tool or method to set this up? I’m open to using spreadsheets, scripts, or any other automation tools that might help make this easier.

Thanks in advance for your suggestions!

[TheTimeSavingCo]

Hmm perhaps a conditional trigger?  I'm assuming you have a "User" type field that you're using to set who's been assigned what?  If so, make it trigger when the "Status" is "Claimed" and the "User" field is empty (i.e. the task hasn't been assigned to anyone yet), and give it an action to update that Task record's "User" field with the person who made the change

In the table, update the "User" field's permissions so that no one can modify it except you and automations.  Now only you and the automation can update it, and the automation will only run when it's empty and so I think this does what you want?

[Leoatsr]

Looks like this solves my problem. Would this approach handle task assignment automatically? It should cut down on the manual work of assigning tasks to a large number of users one by one, right?

[TheTimeSavingCo]

re: Would this approach handle task assignment automatically?

If you mean updating the "User" field with the person who claimed it, yeap, it would

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re: It should cut down on the manual work of assigning tasks to a large number of users one by one, right?


Yeah, as you're getting the users to claim the tasks instead of you assigning them?  Sorry, not sure what you're asking!