Team Task

Mar 8, 2018

Begin, a task management and productivity app, has announced its launch on Slack. The company said the app has been developed for teams who spend a majority of their time in chat apps such as Slack. Built by Brian LeRoux and Ryan Block, who previously co-founded Engadget, Begin allows users to assign tasks with the @ mention for the Begin bot, the name of the team member the task has to be assigned to, followed by the title and date for the task. Begin is also launching a web version as well as a Mac app to provide a dedicated medium for each team member to see their respective assignments. The company said it is currently working on Android and iOS apps. Ryan Block, co-founder, Begin, said , "They [chat apps] all kind of share a very common thread, which is that it made communicating in real time really easy, but it made actually knowing who’s doing what and having accountability around action on the team extremely difficult." LeRoux added that though the company wants to stay away from adding features so as to ensure a low learning curve, it may add templatized tasks or reminders in the future. Currently, Begin allows users to schedule their tasks in natural language and send a task to a colleague by simply adding @teammate to the task in Slack. It also enables users to decide which tasks they wish to focus on. For this, users just need to click ‘Timeframe’ and then ‘Today’ to focus on a task in Slack. And in Begin, they need to hover over the star icon, which will then display the 'Focus on this' button. Once users select a task to focus on, it is then shown to other team members in the team ‘Focus List’. The app allows users to select as many tasks to focus on as they want. Tags