Create and use manual tasks

Manual Tasks are an efficient way to set up reminders for yourself and to organize your workflow process in one place. Say you want to message a contact through LinkedIn after sending them an initial message on Interseller, you can now add this manual task step directly into your sequence!

Create a Manual Task

To add a Manual Task, please follow these steps:

1. Open up the sequence and click Add Step.
2. Once the step has been added, click the gear icon.
3. From the Step Type drop-down menu, select Manual Task.
4. You will also see the Days to Wait option. (This will be X amount of days since the last email step was sent.) If the Manual Task is the first step in the sequence, you can set the Days to Wait option to be "0".
5. Click Save to add the Manual Task.
6. You will notice that the email step now turns into a task with a yellow background to indicate you are editing a task instead of an email step.
7. After adding in your task in the editor, click Save to ensure the task is saved. A task needs to be added in order to be saved since blank tasks cannot be saved.

Remove manual tasks

There is an option to delete a Manual Task, but we don’t recommend doing this when the sequence is actively sending emails as it can cause issues with your email step order. If you need to delete a task, it's best to delete it before launching sequence and sending any emails out.

Follow these steps to remove a manual task:

1. Open up the sequence and find the task you want to remove.
2. Next to the task, click the down arrow button.
3. Click Remove.
4. Click Save for the previous email step to save the changes.

View manual tasks

To view your tasks, you'll need to ensure that the sequence is launched since tasks only appear when the sequence is active. Tasks will only appear in the Tasks tab and in the Tasks dashboard on the day the task needs to be completed so they won't appear before they're due.

On the day the task is due, the contact will be marked with a Pending Task status. You can also hover over the step number to see when the scheduled task is due. The task must be completed in order for the next email step in the sequence to send out. 

You can also open up each contact's activity panel to view when tasks are scheduled and when they've been completed.

View Manual Tasks in the "Tasks" tab within a sequence

In the Tasks tab of a sequence, you can see the number of pending tasks that need to be completed and the list of contacts who need the manual tasks to be completed for within the sequence.

If the contact was added from LinkedIn through the Chrome extension, you will see a Copy & Open in LinkedIn button appear for them within the manual task. Clicking this button will copy the content of the manual task and open the contact's LinkedIn profile for you to send them a message. 

If the contact was not added from LinkedIn, you will see a Copy to Clipboard button appear instead. Adding the LinkedIn profile URL to their profile will populate the contact's LinkedIn profile in the manual task, however it will not display the Copy & Open in LinkedIn button since the contact was not directly added from LinkedIn through the Chrome extension. 

View Manual Tasks in the Tasks dashboard

In the Manual tab of the Tasks dashboard, you can see the number of pending tasks that need to be completed and the list of contacts who need the manual tasks to be completed for across all sequences.

If the contact was added from LinkedIn through the Chrome extension, you will see a  Copy & Open in LinkedIn button appear for them within the manual task. Clicking this button will copy the content of the manual task and open the contact's LinkedIn profile for you to send them a message. 

If the contact was not added from LinkedIn, you will see a  Copy to Clipboard button appear instead. Adding the LinkedIn profile URL to their profile will populate the contact's LinkedIn profile in the manual task, however it will not display the "Copy & Open in LinkedIn" button since the contact was not directly added from LinkedIn through the Chrome extension. 

If the Daily Activity setting is enabled, we'll also include the tasks that need to be completed in your daily activity email. In the email, a link to the Tasks Dashboard will appear so you can visit the Tasks Dashboard to complete the tasks.

Complete manual tasks

Manual tasks can be completed in the "Tasks" tab within a sequence or within the Tasks dashboard. 

Complete Manual Tasks in the "Tasks" tab within a sequence

In the "Tasks" tab, a list of contacts with incomplete manual tasks will appear. You can select a specific contact from the list to complete the task for. 

To complete a task for a specific contact, select the contact from the list and  click "Complete Task".

If you'd like to complete a task for a specific contact and mark them as "Replied", you can click the drop-down menu and  select "Complete Task & Mark Replied" for the task. This will mark the task as completed and the contact's status will be updated to "Replied" in the sequence. 

Complete Manual Tasks in the Tasks Dashboard

In the Tasks Dashboard, select the Manual tab to view the list of contacts with incomplete manual tasks across all sequences. You can select a specific contact from the list to complete the task for. 

To complete a task for a specific contact, select the contact from the list and  click Complete Task.

If you would like to complete a task for a specific contact and mark them as "Replied", you can click the drop-down menu and select "Complete Task & Mark Replied". This will mark the task as completed and the contact's status will be updated to "Replied" in the sequence. 

Contact records can also be viewed and edited when clicking on the contact's name within the Tasks dashboard. This allows you to make any necessary changes to the contact's record directly from the Tasks dashboard instead of having to open up the sequence to make those changes. 

When the task is completed, it will update the task step with the number of contacts who the task was completed for in the "Finished" column within the sequence.

Complete manual tasks and email steps within the same day

If you have a sequence that requires multiple Manual Tasks to be completed within the same day, you can do this by adjusting the Days to Wait option to "0" in each of the Manual Tasks' settings. You can also set up your sequence to complete a Manual Task and send an email within the same day. 

When a task or email step is set to send within the same day, you will see an indicator message that states "Add Task on the same day of the previous step" or "Automatically sends on the same day of the previous step". 

You will see something like this in your email step schedule:

How to pause and skip tasks

Pausing tasks

Pausing tasks will clear a pending manual task from the list so that it reappears on the date of your choosing or so that the contact is paused indefinitely. You can pause a task directly from the Tasks tab of the sequence or in the Tasks Dashboard.

To pause a task from a sequence, follow the steps below:

1. Click the Tasks tab in your sequence and select the contact you want to pause.
2. Click the down arrow and select "Pause Task/Contact".
3. In the pop-up window, you can select a specific date by clicking "Select a date" or choose to pause the contact indefinitely.

You can also take these same actions from the Tasks Dashboard:

Skipping tasks

You can skip a Manual Task by selecting Skip Task in the drop-down menu. This will skip the task for the contact you have selected and move them into the next step of the sequence. 

Interseller will take the sequence step schedule into consideration and delay sending for the next step.

Skipping and pausing tasks in bulk

You can skip or pause manual tasks in bulk from the Tasks Dashboard by following these steps:

1. Head into the Tasks Dashboard and select the Manual Tasks tab.
2. Select the box next to each contact that you would like to skip or pause tasks for or select the box at top to select all of the contacts.
3. Click the down arrow and select to either Pause Contacts or Skip Tasks.

Switch between email steps and manual tasks

You can change an email step to a Manual Task by following the steps below:

1. Open up the step you'd like to edit and click the gear icon.
2. Select "Manual Task" from the Step Type drop-down menu.
3. Click "Save".
4. After switching to a task, be sure to click "Save" in the editor to save the content of the Manual Task.

Important notes:

• You can only switch an email step to a Manual Task, not the other way around
• If an email step has already been sent, you cannot switch it to a Manual Task as this can cause issues with email sending

You can determine the difference between each type of step by looking at the icon that appears next to each step in the sequence.

Email steps are indicated by a clock icon and Manual Tasks have a clipboard icon. Manual Tasks also appear with a yellow background while email steps have a white background.