Give a Teammate work
Every piece of work a Teammate does is a task. A task can start in any of these ways, and each one shows its source in the Teammate's Activity tab.
| Source | How it starts | Shown as |
|---|---|---|
| Assign a task | Assign a task on its profile. Say what you need, like you would to a colleague. | Assigned |
| Assign a record | Assign a record to the Teammate, like you would to a person. It works on that record. | Record assigned |
| @mention | @mention it in a comment on a record. The comment is the request, and the record is the context. | Mentioned |
| Chat | Message it on its Chat tab, or in Google Chat (see Connections). | Chat |
| Check-in | A standing check-in on a schedule (see below). | Scheduled |
| Another Teammate | One Teammate hands work to another whose job it is. | From a Teammate |
| An outside agent | An agent outside AnyDB sends it a task (see Connections). | From another agent |
Only members of the Teammate's own team can give it work. A guest, someone who only has a share of a record, or a public commenter cannot put it to work, even by mentioning it. Assign a task and Chat are open to team admins and to members of the workspaces the Teammate works in (see Who can see and change a Teammate).
Check-ins
On the Schedule & budget tab, set Check in every (hours) and describe what to do On each check-in, for example "Sweep open tickets and follow up on stale ones." Every check-in opens a task with that instruction. Off stops check-ins. The next check-in time is shown on the profile.
An admin can also set or change the check-in in chat ("from now on, post a summary every morning"). The Teammate records the change to its own job and shows it on the profile.
What happens during a task
- The Teammate reads the task, its job, its notes, and the record it is about.
- It works with its tools: reading and searching records, updating them, commenting, and anything else its policy allows.
- If an action needs approval, it stops and asks (see Job and access).
- If it needs information from a person, it asks a question. The task shows Waiting for you, and the task continues when someone replies.
- It finishes with a short summary of what it did.
| State | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Queued | Waiting to start. |
| Working | Running now. |
| Waiting for you | Needs an approval, an answer, or an admin (for example, its budget ran out). |
| Done | Finished, with a summary. |
| Failed | It could not finish. The reason and any failed tool calls are shown on the task. |
| Cancelled | Someone cancelled it. |
Replying and cancelling
Open the task on the Activity tab. Reply to continue answers its question. Cancel task stops it. The person who gave the task can do both, and so can anyone who manages the Teammate.
Hand-offs between Teammates
A Teammate can hand part of a job to another Teammate whose job it is. The asking task waits, and wakes when the answer arrives. Asking the same Teammate again in the same task continues that hand-off rather than opening a new one.
When the other Teammate needs a person (a question, or an approval for an action set to Asks first), the question goes to the person who gave the original task, not to the Teammate that asked. That Teammate is told to wait, and never answers or approves on the person's behalf. See Example: Teammates working together. To keep two Teammates from passing work back and forth forever, hand-off chains are limited in length, and one Teammate can give another only a few tasks an hour.
Long tasks
A Teammate can do a good amount of work in one task. When a task's conversation gets long, older tool results are shortened. When that is not enough, older steps are summarised (goal, what is done, decisions, record ids, what is left). The Teammate can always read a record again for the full detail. On long jobs it also saves where it is in its memory, so a later task can pick up from there.