III. Creating Tasks - Salesforce FastStart

This Salesforce tutorial will show you how to create personal or assigned task within Salesforce. It will introduce you all of the standard elements that you can use to create a new task.

Creating a task is similar to creating an event. There are only a few minor differences between a calendar event and a task. For a task, you specify a due date, and if it is not complete, it will become overdue until you complete the task. An event will come and go without carrying over.

Let's create a new Task.

A task is assigned to you by default but you can assign a task to another user by using the lookup menu by typing the user name then clicking the lookup menu button to open up a search dialog box to verify the user.

You can specify a subject or chose from a predetermined list on the right.
It is a best practice to specify a due date for the task to avoid procrastination, but not required.

Now specify it's level of importance.

The user can update the status of the task at will, or you can even automate the status of a task by creating a workflow.

You can attach the task to a contact, lead, or other record. Use a lookup menu to match a record to the Task. We'll attach this task to the lead Dan Schawbel. This is similar to the "Assigned to" lookup menu except you have to choose the object where the record resides.
Let's briefly review the rest of the form.

Comments allow you to describe the task with more detail.

The notification checkbox sends an email to the assigned user after saving.

Set a recurring series of tasks daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly with start and end dates for the same occurrence

Here you can specify a time to remind the user about the task before it is due.
At the bottom, attach files that help accomplish the task such as questionnaires, images, or other forms of documentation.

Now we can save our task

We can now see our tasks down at the bottom of the homepage. And when the task is completed, just click on the X in the complete column, update the status of the task to complete, add comments if necessary, and then save.