Admin Lesson 7: Setting Up Scheduled Todos

Admin Lesson 7: Setting Up Scheduled Todos

With triage running, every new ticket arrives classified. The next layer is the calendar layer — turning classified tickets into committed time on someone's day. That's what scheduled todos do. This lesson covers the admin-side configuration that controls how scheduled todos behave once they exist: acceptance, helpdesk side effects, and auto-start / auto-close behavior.

Why scheduled todos come next

Problem: Triage classifies a ticket, but it doesn't put the work on anyone's calendar. The customer was promised a remote session at 2pm Thursday. There's no calendar entry, no commitment, no reminder. Whoever takes the ticket has to manually create a calendar event, link it to the ticket, and remember to update both when something changes.

Horizon's answer: Scheduled todos. A scheduled todo is committed time on an agent's calendar, linked to a ticket. Once you've configured how scheduled todos should behave, they get created in three ways:

  1. Customer self-booking via booking links (covered in the next lesson).
  2. Workflow steps that create scheduled todos automatically as part of a lifecycle (e.g. "when ticket is triaged as Onboarding, schedule a 30-min kickoff for next Tuesday at 10am").
  3. Manual creation by an agent or dispatcher inside the ticket widget.

This lesson is about the configuration that governs all three sources.

Where todo configuration lives

Open the admin panel and navigate to Components → ToDos. You'll find:

PageWhat it does
Acceptancecontrols whether new todos require explicit acceptance from the agent before they're committed
Post-Commit Actionsaccount-level helpdesk side effects that fire when todo operations succeed

These two pages cover the account-wide defaults. The actual creation of scheduled todos happens elsewhere — booking links, workflow steps, agent action — but how they behave once created is controlled here.

Acceptance — "should the agent confirm before the todo is locked in?"

Problem: A workflow auto-creates a scheduled todo on an agent's calendar. The agent didn't pick the time. They may not even know the todo exists until they look at their calendar tomorrow morning. Now they're committed to a 2pm slot they didn't agree to. That's how trust in the system breaks down.

Horizon's answer: Acceptance modes. You decide, per scenario, whether a new todo lands as accepted (committed immediately) or pending acceptance (the agent has to confirm).

The Acceptance page exposes five settings, one for each scenario:

SettingWhen it applies
Floating, self-createdfloating todo created by the agent themselves
Floating, other-createdfloating todo created by someone else (workflow, dispatcher, customer)
Scheduled, self-createdscheduled todo created by the agent themselves
Scheduled, other-createdscheduled todo created by someone else
Booking linkscheduled todo created by a customer self-booking

Each setting has an acceptance mode. A common starting point:

  • Self-created → auto-accept (you created it, you're committed by definition).
  • Other-created → require acceptance (someone else committed your time, you should confirm).
  • Booking link → auto-accept (the whole point is removing the agent from the loop).

You can tighten or loosen this later based on team behavior. If agents routinely ignore pending-acceptance todos, auto-accept is the wrong call. If agents complain about getting committed without warning, require acceptance.

Post-Commit Actions — "what should happen on the helpdesk side when a todo does something?"

Problem: A scheduled todo gets created, started, completed, or cancelled. Each of those events probably needs to be reflected in the helpdesk — a status change, a time entry, a note, a closed sub-ticket. Without configuration, none of that happens automatically and agents end up double-entering everything.

Horizon's answer: Post-commit actions on the ToDo cluster's Post-Commit Actions page. These are account-level presets that fire when ToDo operations succeed.

For each ToDo service type (create, update, complete, etc.), you pick a preset that defines the helpdesk side effects. Presets themselves are configured under Components → Helpdesk Actions (covered in the lifecycle lesson) — this page is just where you wire them up to ToDo operations.

A typical setup for an MSP:

  • On scheduled todo create → no helpdesk action (the booking already wrote a calendar entry; nothing more needed).
  • On scheduled todo complete → write a time entry to the linked ticket with the duration of the todo, transition the ticket status to In Progress if it was New.
  • On scheduled todo cancel → leave a note on the ticket explaining the cancellation.

These are defaults. Workflows can override on a per-case basis.

Auto-start and auto-close

Problem: An agent finishes the work covered by a scheduled todo but forgets to mark the todo complete. Or the underlying ticket gets closed, but the todo lingers on the calendar as if work is still pending.

Horizon's answer: Two mechanisms run in the background:

  • Auto-start — when a ticket matching a configured filter changes state (e.g. status moves to In Progress), the linked scheduled todo can be auto-started.
  • Auto-close — when a linked ticket closes, or when a configured ticket filter matches, in-progress or pending todos for that ticket are auto-closed.

These are configured at the account level via the underlying ticket filters (covered in a later lesson). The behavior keeps the calendar honest without requiring agents to manually close every todo.

Where scheduled todos come from in practice

To set expectations: most accounts don't manually create scheduled todos at scale. The scheduled todo creation paths are:

  1. Booking links (next lesson) — customers self-schedule into agent calendars.
  2. Workflow steps — lifecycle steps create scheduled todos as part of triage outcomes ("this is an onboarding ticket → schedule kickoff") or assignment outcomes ("assigned to Bob → schedule first touch within 4 hours").
  3. Manual creation — agents create scheduled todos inline from the ticket widget when needed.

Floating todos (the other kind) are covered later when we set up next-available assignment.

When scheduled todos are set up correctly

  • Acceptance modes match team norms — agents aren't surprised by committed time, but auto-accept where it makes sense.
  • Helpdesk-side events (status, time entry, notes) reflect todo activity automatically.
  • Auto-start and auto-close keep the calendar consistent with ticket reality.
  • Booking links create scheduled todos that land cleanly without manual intervention.

Tip: The mistake most accounts make on day one is configuring everything to require acceptance and configuring no post-commit actions. Result: agents get a flood of pending todos, no helpdesk records change, and the scheduled-todo layer feels like extra busywork. Start with auto-accept for self-created and booking-link todos, require acceptance only for the dispatcher-creates-on-someone-else's-calendar case, and configure at least the complete post-commit action so closing a todo writes a time entry. That's the minimum to get the calendar layer paying its way.

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