Agent Lesson 3: Understanding Todos — The Unit of Work

Agent Lesson 3: Understanding Todos — The Unit of Work

Tickets describe customer problems; todos describe the actual work you do to resolve them. This lesson covers what a todo is, how it differs from a ticket, and the lifecycle every todo runs through.

Understanding Todos

Problem: A ticket isn't one piece of work. It's "call the customer," then "wait for callback," then "schedule the onsite," then "do the onsite," then "write the report." Treating a ticket as one unit of work fails the moment anything pauses, because there's no record of what comes next or when.

Horizon's answer: Todos. Each todo is one specific unit of work attached to a ticket. A ticket can have many todos, and each todo has its own time, place, and status. Nothing falls through the cracks because the work is broken down to where it actually lives.

A todo vs. a ticket

TicketTodo
What it representsThe customer's problemOne specific action you take to move the problem forward
LifecycleOpen → ClosedPending → In Progress → Completed (or Cancelled / Deferred)
TimeHas SLA / deadlinesHas duration and (optionally) a scheduled time
Linked toA company / contactOne or more tickets, plus the company and contact

One ticket → many todos. One todo → usually one ticket (occasionally more, if you're batching related work).

The two flavors of todo

  • Scheduled — fixed start time. Required for anything customer-facing: calls, onsites, meetings. The customer expects you at a specific moment.
  • Floating — no fixed time. Internal work that fits into the gaps in your day. Horizon computes when it can fit on the calendar based on your availability and rank.

How a todo gets created

  • Automatically — workflows, triage, dispatch, and other Horizon automations create todos based on rules your admin has set up.
  • Manually — you create one yourself when you decide a ticket needs a specific action. From the ticket widget, click Create Todo.

Todo statuses

StatusMeaning
PendingNot started yet, waiting in your queue
In ProgressYou've started it (the timer is running)
CompletedDone
CancelledWon't do — closed without completing
DeferredPushed to a later time; will reappear when its trigger fires (covered in a later lesson on Floating Todos)

Acceptance — when a todo is incoming

If a todo gets assigned to you (e.g. by dispatch), it arrives in an incoming state. You Accept to take it on or Decline to send it back. Look for the incoming badge on the Floating or Scheduled Todos widgets — it shows the count and lets you see only incoming items.

Acting on a todo

From the dashboard, the action buttons on each todo card change based on its status:

  • Pending → Start (begin work, status becomes In Progress) or Cancel
  • In Progress → Complete (finish work) or Undo (back to Pending)
  • Incoming (any status) → Accept or Decline
  • Floating, pending or in progress → Defer (push to later)

Tip: A common mistake on day one is starting work without marking the todo Started. The duration tracking, your "what am I working on right now" status, and reporting all key off the In Progress state. Always click Start when you start.

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