Checklists

Tenant-defined process checklists that start manually, on an event, or on a date — onboarding and offboarding are the built-in flavors

A checklist is a repeatable process turned into a list of tasks — so "order a laptop", "run the probation review" or "hand over ongoing work" doesn't depend on anyone remembering. Onboarding and offboarding are the two you get out of the box, but a checklist can be any process: a probation review, an annual compliance training, an equipment return.

Every checklist is about one person — the subject. Templates hold the reusable shape; each item has a title, optional notes, an assignee (the person themselves, their manager, an admin/HR, or a specific named person) and a due date offset from an anchor day. Templates are admin-only to create and edit, up to 50 items each. Editing a template never changes checklists already running from it.

Assign to a specific person

Beyond subject, manager and admin, an item can be pinned to one specific person — useful when a task always belongs to the same owner regardless of whose checklist it is. On an offboarding template, "Collect laptop and badge" can go straight to whoever actually keeps the hardware, rather than a generic admin.

Pick Specific person as the item's assignee and choose the employee. The pin is checked when you save the template — it has to be an active member of your workspace, so a template can't quietly point at someone who has left. If that person is later deactivated, the pin stays on the template with a No longer active badge, and any new checklist started from it hands that item to the first active admin instead, so nothing lands on a dead assignee. Re-point the item at an active person to clear the badge.

Built-in flavors

Two templates are special — Onboarding and Offboarding. They ride the same engine as everything else but their trigger is locked and can't be edited, and there's at most one of each per workspace:

Onboarding starts itself the moment a new hire is created (or accepts an invite): they get a checklist copied from the active onboarding template, items assigned and due dates set automatically. If no active onboarding template exists yet, nothing happens — hiring is never blocked waiting on one.
Offboarding starts itself the moment someone is offboarded. Best practice is still to start it earlier — from the person's profile, while they can still sign in — so items assigned to them ("hand over ongoing work") are actionable by them. If it only starts at the offboarding itself, their items are immediately handed to their manager or an admin instead (see below). And if a checklist is already running, the automatic start simply does nothing — starting early never creates a duplicate.

When someone leaves, their own unfinished onboarding checklist is cancelled — it's moot. Any items they were the assignee for on other people's checklists get handed to their manager or the first active admin, so nothing is left waiting on someone who can no longer act.

The Checklists page

People → Checklists is the home for checklists. It opens on the Running tab — every live checklist you're allowed to see (admins see the whole workspace, managers their people, everyone their own), with its subject, progress, status, anchor date and where it came from. A status filter narrows it to open, completed, or cancelled. Managers and admins get a Start checklist button here, and can cancel an open one they own. Admins also get a Templates tab — the reusable shapes checklists are started from.

Triggers — how a template starts

Custom templates set a trigger under People → Checklists → Templates → New template → Starts. There are four options:

Manually only (the default) — someone starts it from a profile or for a team; it never fires on its own. Good for an equipment return.
When an event happens — pick an internal event. When you choose When a leave request is approved you can add optional conditions: a specific leave type and a minimum duration in days. Example: fire a Parental leave handover only when an approved leave is 30 days or longer.
Days after start date — the checklist starts N days after the person's employment start date. Example: a Probation review at start + 80 days.
Yearly on start-date anniversary — fires every year on the person's start-date anniversary. Example: an Annual security training.

A trigger only ever adds a checklist. A misconfigured or over-eager template can never block a hire, an offboarding, or a leave approval — if a trigger can't fire cleanly, the host action still goes through and the checklist is simply skipped. The same person never gets two open checklists from one template, and a date/recurring trigger won't re-fire one they've already completed.

Suggested templates

The Templates tab offers one-click suggested templates — Probation review, Parental leave handover, Annual security training, Equipment return, and the two built-in flavors if you've deleted them. Each drops in a sensible trigger and a few starter items; edit them to taste afterwards. A suggestion disappears once you've added it.

Starting a checklist

From the Checklists page — the Running tab's Start checklist button, where you pick either a person or a whole team as the target (managers and admins).
For one person — from their profile Checklists tab, Start checklist (admins, or a manager of that person). Pick a template and an anchor date.
For a whole team — from the team page, Start checklist (admins, or the team's own manager). This fans out to one checklist per active member, each with its own progress — there's no shared team checklist, because every checklist is about a person. Members who already have an open one from that template are reported as skipped, not duplicated.

Everyone sees their own open items on the dashboard's My Tasks card, with a checkbox to mark each done. The full checklist — every item and who owns it — lives on the person's profile Checklists tab. Any of the assignee, the subject, or an admin can mark an item done; a checklist completes itself once its last open item is done.

Open the detail view and a muted line under the header tells you where the checklist came from: Started manually, Started automatically — leave request approved (or whichever event), or Started by schedule for a date/recurring trigger.

If an item's due date passes while it's still open, its assignee gets a reminder 1, 3 and 7 days past due, then weekly — capped at seven reminders per item, so an abandoned checklist eventually goes quiet instead of nagging forever. All of a person's overdue work lands in one bundled reminder per day (overdue checklist items and unsigned document acknowledgments together), never one email per item. Items with no due date are never nudged.

Checklists is an optional module — see Turn modules on or off for what hiding it does and doesn't affect. While it's hidden, triggers don't fire and existing checklists sit untouched until it's turned back on.

Worked example

Aleksandra joins Northlake on 1 March. The moment Marta creates her employee record, SquadBear copies the active "Engineering onboarding" template into a checklist for her: "Prepare laptop and accounts" assigned to an admin and due before her start day, "Meet your manager" assigned to Tomasz due on day one, and so on. Eighty days later a Probation review checklist starts on its own — Marta didn't have to remember it. And when Aleksandra's six-week parental leave is approved next year, a Parental leave handover checklist appears because the approved leave crossed the 30-day threshold.