Using Freeboard

What a new user needs to know before the diary can be trusted. Read it once before training, then keep it open for the first week. Everything below can be tried on the demonstration firm, which is wiped every night.

The two dates on a task

A task can carry two dates, and they mean different things.

• The internal deadline is the firm’s own target: when you want the work done, with room to spare.
• The actual due date is the hard one: the date set by the court, the rules or the other side. Leave it empty when there is none.

A task past either date is shown as overdue until it is marked done.

Limitation and critical dates

When a task has an actual due date, Freeboard will not save it until you say whether that date is a limitation or critical date, or an ordinary one. There is no default, on purpose: an unclassified hard date is the one that gets missed.

Once a date is marked critical, only a lawyer, partner or admin can move it, and every change is kept in the task’s history with who made it and when. Lawyers and above can see every critical date across the firm on the limitation date register, which prints.

Counting a deadline

On a task, open More options and then Compute the date from a triggering event. It takes the triggering date and a number of calendar or business days, and fills in the actual due date. It skips weekends and the days your administrator has marked as court closures. If the count lands on a closed day it says so and moves the date, and you confirm it before saving.

It counts days. It does not know what any deadline is, so the number of days is still yours to get right from the rules.

Where your work shows up

The home page is today: what is late or due now, the next fourteen days, the files you are on, and what changed on them. My Work is the rest of it, in tabs.

• This Week has your Today and This Week columns. Drag what you are doing today into Priority, in the order you will do it.
• My Action Items is your open work, by status.
• Delegated / Waiting On is work you gave to someone else, so it stays in sight after it leaves your desk.
• Calendar shows both dates on every task, marked Internal or Due.
• Done and Trash hold finished and deleted tasks. A deleted task can be restored from Trash.

Your account page can also send the week to your inbox each morning, limitation dates first.

Handing work on

Assign a task to someone and it moves to their board and onto your Delegated / Waiting On tab. When a draft needs checking, send it for review to a named person from inside the task. It then sits on the reviewer’s board as theirs to act on, and on yours as waiting, until they send it back or finish it. A row tinted in the accent colour is waiting on you.

Files

Every task can sit on a file (a matter). A file’s page holds its team, its tasks, and its events: the mediation, the examination, the hearing. Tasks can be tied to the event they are for, so the file reads as what is coming and what has to happen before it.

Opening a file screens its client and every adverse party against the names already on the firm’s files. It matches names, not relationships, so it will not connect a company to the person behind it. A file marked confidential is invisible to everyone outside its team, including the fact that it exists.

The memo to file

Under the tasks is the memo to file: dated entries recording where the file stands, calls, agreements. Entries cannot be deleted by anyone. You can revise your own, and the entry then shows that it was edited.

Where your firm has email filing turned on, each file shows its own address. Mail sent or copied there waits on the file until someone deals with it: File to memo turns it into an entry you edit first, Make a task turns it into a task on that file, and Discard removes it. Nothing an outside sender writes reaches the memo without a person at the firm filing it.

For lawyers and partners

Team Radar shows the whole firm’s workload by person, with who is behind. Drag a task onto another person to reassign it. Fires to Put Out lists everything across the firm that is overdue or due by tomorrow, and Deadline Load flags days carrying more than one limitation date.

For the firm’s administrator

Until the firm is set up, the home page shows the administrator a short list of what is left: bring the team in, open a file, put a task on it, record a limitation date. Each step ticks itself when it is actually done.

People are added from Admin, as Staff, Lawyer, Partner or Admin. The role decides what they can see and change, and the database enforces it on every read, not only the menu. Admin is also where sections the firm does not use are switched off, and where court closures are entered for the deadline calculator.

Something this page did not answer

Write to hello@getfreeboard.com. For where the data sits and what happens if something goes wrong, see Security.