A sub-task breaks a task into a smaller piece of work. Delegation is the same thing aimed at someone else: it spawns a sub-task, pre-filled from the parent and assigned to another person, and it makes you (the delegator) that sub-task's manager - so you review what comes back. Because a delegated task is a sub-task, the two behave identically once work finishes.
How completion rolls up the tree
When a sub-task reaches a terminal state - Done (rated, or auto-approved after the 48-hour review window) or Cancelled - the engine tries to release its parent:
- A parent only "waits" if it was set to. When a parent's own owner clicks Finish while it still has open dependent sub-tasks, it parks in Waiting on sub-tasks instead of going to review. (If its sub-tasks are marked independent, Finish goes straight to In Review and they never roll up.)
- A parent is released only when every sub-task is terminal. Until then, finishing one just waits for the others.
- If at least one sub-task is Done, the parent auto-completes - with a grade that is the roll-up (average) of its children's grades. That completion is itself terminal, so it repeats one level up: the result propagates up the whole tree.
- If every sub-task was Cancelled, the parent goes to In Review instead, so a person decides - nothing was actually delivered.
Who can create sub-tasks & delegate
The same authorization applies to a plain sub-task and a delegated one. It has two parts: the permission you hold and your relationship to the parent task.
What each permission unlocks
- No permission (self-service): on a task assigned to you, you can start it, finish it, record its output, and claim a pooled one - but you cannot create sub-tasks or delegate.
- TaskCreate: create sub-tasks and delegate - but only on a task you are the assignee or manager of, and only to people in your department or the teams you manage.
- TaskAssignAny (together with TaskCreate): widens the delegate/assign target to anyone in the organisation.
- TaskManage: all of the above on any task (it bypasses the assignee-or-manager rule), plus reviewing, rating and reopening. Implies Create and AssignAny.
- Administrator: unrestricted.
The relationship rule
Sub-tasking and delegating both make you the new sub-task's reviewer, so both follow current responsibility - not who filed the task. Only the parent's assignee or manager may do them. The creator alone has no standing: by default the creator is the manager (so they usually qualify that way), but a creator who handed the manager role to someone else can no longer restructure the task.
Plain sub-task vs delegated sub-task
- A delegated sub-task always has an assignee (someone else); a plain sub-task can default to you.
- A delegated sub-task's manager is you, the delegator - so you review and rate the returned work; a plain sub-task's manager is whoever created it.
- A delegated sub-task is pre-filled from the parent (description, priority, target, link), and its returned output bubbles into the parent's chat, with a one-click "Use as my result."
- The roll-up on completion is identical for both.
Always-on limits: the parent must be open (not Done or Cancelled), and sub-task nesting is capped at 5 levels deep.