Task Center – Exchange Platform

Summary

The Exchange Platform is used by multiple internal teams to manage high volume operational workflows such as orders, payments, and customer requests. Despite this complexity, there was no native way for users to track their tasks, owners, or deadlines. This led to missed follow-ups, unclear ownership, and constant context switching.

I designed Task Center as a net new feature that centralizes task creation, assignment, and tracking into one place. It gives every user a clear view of what they need to work on today and creates a scalable foundation for future automation and reporting.

• The Exchange Platform supports internal operations teams who handle orders, payments, and customer facing workflows.
• Work often spans multiple teams, which makes ownership and follow-through critical.
• Before this project, the product did not have any native task management capability.
• As workflows evolved, task complexity increased, but the product did not evolve with it – leading to manual workarounds and lost accountability.

Key Problems

• There was no single list of "what I owe" for individual users.
• Tasks were scattered across email, chat, and personal notes.
• Managers had limited visibility into who owned what and what was blocked.
• Important follow-ups were easy to miss, which increased operational risk and context switching.
• Existing tools like Jira or spreadsheets were too heavy or disconnected from the core product.
• No clear system of ownership existed, which created bottlenecks and slowed down cross-team workflows.

Design Considerations

• The right-side detail panel helps users review tasks without losing their position in the list.
• Status chips are color-coded for fast scanning across hundreds of tasks.
• Tabs reflect natural workflow priorities: To-Do → Assigned to Me → In-Progress → Completed.
• Pagination ensures high performance at scale.
• Elements follow Exchange's existing design system patterns for consistency.

Interaction Rules

Status & Movement Rules

• A task marked Completed is automatically removed from the active task list.
• Changing a task from Completed → To-Do moves it back into the To-Do tab automatically.
• Changing a task from To-Do → In-Progress updates its position and highlights urgency.
• Tasks always appear in the tab that matches their status to reduce confusion.

Editing Permissions

• Completed tasks cannot be reassigned to preserve ownership history.
• Completed tasks also lock certain fields (assignee, priority, due date) to prevent accidental updates.
• Users can still add comments to completed tasks for recordkeeping.
• Only specific user roles (Ops leads/managers) can reopen tasks that were closed by mistake.

Assignee & Ownership Logic

• When assigning or reassigning a task, the system updates the activity log automatically.
• If a task is reassigned, the new assignee sees it immediately in their To-Do list.
• Users can only assign tasks to active team members within the organization.

Detail Panel Behavior

• The right-side task detail panel stays anchored when switching between list items.
• Updates (status, assignee, comments) do not navigate away from the list view.
• The panel dynamically collapses or expands based on the content.

Comments & Collaboration

• Comments support rich text and system-generated activity messages.
• Users can tag people directly inside the task.
• Comments stay with the task permanently, even when closed.

Sorting, Filtering & Search

• Sort by status, due date, creator, assignee, or urgency.
• Filters apply instantly and work across all task states.
• Search indexes: task name, assignee, community, and ID.

Performance & Scale

• Pagination prevents UI overload when volume exceeds 50 tasks.
• Data loads instantly when switching tabs to support high-volume workflows.

Error Prevention

• Prevents assigning a completed task.
• Warns users before changing status from Completed → To-Do.
• Prevents duplicate task names within the same community.