Canonical page: https://tellenze.com/help/work-items

# Create and complete useful work items

Define outcomes, organize children and relations, discuss progress, and capture completion evidence.

## Create a clear work item

Open a Project or Team and choose **New task**. Enter an outcome in **What needs to happen?**, then expand **Work type**, **Context & criteria**, or **Planning & assignment** to add detail before creating it. The owner supplies the permanent identifier prefix and the available workflow.

Choose Story for a user-facing result, Task for a concrete action, Bug for a defect, Discovery for an investigation, Incident for an operational problem, Idea for a proposal, or Business Case for measurable value. These choices describe the work; they do not automatically choose its stage.

Add context, observable acceptance criteria, assignees, complexity, labels, and a due date when relevant. Complexity uses XS, S, M, L, and XL. For example, “Receipts can be downloaded” needs criteria for the receipt content, download behavior, and failure handling. A title alone leaves those decisions open.

## Navigate the work item

Open an item from its card, a list, or a search result. With the tabbed detail experience enabled, **Overview** provides a briefing, **Definition** holds context and outcome evidence, **Conversation** holds discussion, **Related work** connects items, **Agent context** shows execution context and requirements, and **Activity** records changes. Items you reported open in Definition while editable. Items with no saved context or criteria also open in Definition; other populated items open in Overview. A link to a specific tab takes you directly there. Other installations may present these sections together.

The saved definition and basic details load first. Attachments and other sections load independently when needed, so you can read the ticket while another section is still loading. If a section fails, retry it without closing the ticket. Switching tabs preserves unsaved context and conversation drafts.

Click a field or its edit button to update it. Some editing choices load when you open the control. Text editors provide save and cancel controls; context and criteria support Markdown and Cmd/Ctrl+Enter to save. **Show all details** reveals secondary fields such as complexity and labels. Use **Blocked** to describe what must change before work can continue.

## Discuss decisions and attach evidence

Use **Conversation** to record questions, decisions, and useful progress. **Mention teammate** selects a recipient. On project-owned work, **Ask an agent** targets a teammate’s configured agent; `@looper` addresses Looper where available. Agent requests and proposed changes can have their own statuses and approval controls. See [Agent reactions](https://tellenze.com/help/agent-reactions) for setup and supported requests.

Select a passage and choose **Quote in reply**. Layouts that expose **Choose passage** also offer a text-based quotation picker. Comment reactions let you acknowledge a message without adding another update. **Watch** follows the item; notification preferences determine delivery.

In Definition, use **Attach file** for supporting files up to 25 MB. Files are private and scanned. **Download**, **Insert reference**, and **Remove** appear where available. Inserting a reference adds a link to the context editor, or an inline preview for a supported image; save the edited context. You can also paste or drop an image into Context. References to images attached to the work item keep their previews when the workspace domain changes, provided the attachment remains available. **Outcome documents** links decisions, findings, and delivery evidence held in Knowledge.

## Send an email with a powerup

In **Conversation**, use **Powerups** or type `/send-email` for SMTP, or `/send-gmail-email` for Gmail. Choose one of your personal or shared workspace connections. Add a short instruction, such as `/send-email to joao explaining what has been done on this task`.

The Powerups menu and slash suggestions show only available commands: the integration must be enabled, you need a connected sender, and Looper must be available for this work item. If no powerups are available, the Powerups button is hidden. Saved drafts and sent email history remain accessible.

Looper prepares a draft from the work item's context and discussion. Review the proposed recipients carefully: a matching workspace member can supply an address, but an ambiguous or unknown name needs your choice. You can also enter an email address directly.

Edit **To**, **Subject**, and **Email content** inline and add **Cc** or **Bcc** as needed. Choose **Save draft** to keep edits for later. Check the resolved **From** address too: a shared SMTP sender can include your username and the work item ID. Generating or saving a draft does not send it. Choose **Send email** only after reviewing the final message and its recipients. The submitted email action remains in the conversation; BCC addresses are visible only to its sender.

Open **Cc / Bcc** to edit copy recipients. Empty copy fields start collapsed; populated fields open for review. Collapsing this section keeps a recipient summary visible and retains the addresses. The draft header also lets you collapse the entire editor into a subject-and-recipient summary; reopen it to continue editing or send. Collapsing keeps your current edits, while **Save draft** persists them across page reloads.

Choose **Discard draft** and confirm when you no longer need an unsent email. The draft is removed and stays removed after a reload. You can also discard a failed draft or one the provider definitely rejected; its existing delivery record remains in the conversation. Emails being sent, already sent, or awaiting delivery confirmation cannot be discarded.

Choose Gmail or SMTP in **Settings → Integrations** to open its personal configuration page, after an administrator enables that provider. Administrators configure shared workspace accounts in **Admin → Integrations → Gmail / SMTP**. SMTP supports multiple named senders; choose the intended personal or shared connection in **Send from** before preparing your email. Gmail authorizes sending; this release does not read your inbox or create Signals from incoming mail.

If delivery is uncertain, check the sending account before trying again. A timeout can happen after the provider accepted the message, so an uncertain submission must not be automatically resent.

## Connect and complete work

In **Related work**, inspect the parent and subtasks, link milestones, or choose **Add relation**. Relationships include **relates to**, **blocks**, **duplicates**, and **contributes to Business Case**. Search by identifier or title; workspace results require at least two characters. A relationship does not grant access to its target.

Move the item using its stage control or board. Choose the stage configured for its actual state. When moving into completion, add a completion summary describing the output and verification. Discovery requires an active outcome document. Business Cases require their forecast, benefit period, and success criterion. Bugs and incidents expose severity.

Project Backlog and All work support selecting up to 50 items for batch actions: move stage, add/remove/clear assignees, set/clear Focus, or archive. Review any failed items before retrying; a batch can have mixed results.

## Export work as CSV

Open a Project's Work, Backlog or All work view, or a Team's Work view, and choose **Export CSV** beside the view controls. A dialog lets you narrow the download by search text, workflow stages, Focuses (Projects only), work types, assignees, labels, blocked state and an inclusive due-date range. Review the matching item count, then choose **Download CSV**. Closing the dialog does not download anything.

Export filters apply only to this download and start with all unarchived work directly owned by the Project or Team. Current board filters remain unchanged and are not copied into the dialog. Choose **Clear filters** to export all unarchived work, including completed items and subtasks. A Team export does not include work owned by its projects. Multiple selections within one filter match any selected value; different filters apply together. A due-date filter excludes undated work. Search matches literal text in titles, identifiers and descriptions.

The count reflects the latest preview; work changed by teammates before downloading can change the result. A download is available only after a successful preview with at least one match. Parents and subtasks must also match the filters: they are not added automatically. When importing a filtered file elsewhere, include missing parents in an earlier import using the same namespace, or leave the parent column unmapped.

Select one or more **Focuses** to include work with current or historical membership in any selected Focus, matching the Project's All work view. Closed and archived Focuses remain available and are labeled. Work that belonged to several selected Focuses appears only once. The export contains current work-item values, not the Focus's closure snapshot; archived work and work moved to another Project or Team remain excluded. Focus selection combines with the other filters and does not export or recreate Focus membership.

The CSV includes stable source and parent identifiers, readable work-item identifiers, titles, Markdown context and acceptance criteria, workflow stages, work types, assignments, labels and dates. CSV quoting preserves commas, quotation marks and multiline text. Potential spreadsheet formulas are escaped as text. Keep the format marker when importing a Tellenze export so its text escaping can be reversed correctly.

Comments, attachments, linked documents, relations other than parents, Focus groups, milestones, activity and agent usage are excluded. This is a work-list export, not a complete workspace backup. To create work from a file, an administrator can use the reviewed [CSV import flow](https://tellenze.com/help/workspace-admin#import-work-from-csv).

Exports larger than the import limit must be split into files of at most 500 rows and 2 MB. Preserve the headers and source IDs, use the same source namespace for all parts, and import parent rows before their children when splitting a hierarchy across files.

## Resolve changes and archival

If someone edits the same field first, review **Latest**, then choose **Use latest** or deliberately **Reapply my value**. Archived items and work in archived owners are read-only. Archive removes work from active boards while retaining history; use project **All work → Include archived** or workspace search to find it.

Project transfers can change identifiers and clear the parent and project labels. Review the destination stage and assignee cleanup preview before saving a transfer.