Task Priorities

Route: /org/taskconfig?tab=priorities · Manage permission: Manage Task Priority

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1. What a priority is

A priority is how urgent a task is. It is a flat list of labelled, coloured levels that a project defines for itself — Critical, High, Medium, Low are conventions, not built-ins.

A priority carries no behaviour. Nothing escalates, nothing is due sooner, no notification fires because a task is Critical. It is a label with a colour and a sort position.

	Priority	Status	Type	Category
Answers	How urgent?	Where in the flow?	What kind of work?	Which group?
Changes over a task's life	Rarely	Constantly	Never	Rarely
Drives Kanban columns	No	Yes	No	No
Has a workflow	No	Yes	No	No
Affects billing	No	No	No	Yes

A priority does not do anything on its own

There is no SLA, no escalation and no automatic due date attached to a priority. If Critical should mean something operationally, that meaning has to be built by the people using the board — Orbit will not enforce it here.

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2. How priorities spread across the application

Surface	What it uses
Create Task drawer	The list, in order
Task detail	The list; the colour draws the priority chip
Task list — Group by → Priority	The list and its order become the group headings
Task Analytics	Counts per priority
Workflow → Create Developer Task action	Choosing the priority for the generated task

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3. Managing priorities — step by step

Figure 1 — The priority list with drag handles, colour dots and hover actions.

Step 1 · Read the list

Each row is one priority, shown as a card: a drag handle, a colour dot, and the name. The Edit and Delete buttons are hidden until you hover the row, and only appear at all if you hold Manage Task Priority.

An empty list reads:

No priorities defined. Click "Add Priority" to create one.

Step 2 · Add one

Add Priority opens a right-hand drawer titled Add Priority, pre-filled with the first colour and an Order set to the current count plus one.

Figure 2 — The Add Priority drawer, pips: 1 ID, 2 Name, 3 Colour swatches, 4 Order, 5 Level.

ID is locked after creation — the padlock on the right of the field says so — because tasks reference it.

Order is worth setting only if you are not going to drag: dropping a row rewrites every order value from 1.

Step 3 · Reorder by dragging

Priorities are reordered by dragging the grip handle, not by editing the Order field.

A drag saves immediately

Dropping a row renumbers every order from 1 and saves at once — there is no Save button for a reorder, and no undo. Editing a row, by contrast, requires Save Changes.

Step 4 · Delete

The delete button opens a confirmation:

Delete Priority — Are you sure you want to delete this priority level? This action cannot be undone.

Confirming removes the row and renumbers the remaining order values from 1.

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4. Field reference — the priority drawer

Field	Control	Required	Locked on edit	Notes
ID	Text	✅	Yes — shown with a padlock	Placeholder e.g. critical. Helper text: "Unique identifier for this priority." Must be unique across the project
Name	Text	✅	No	Placeholder e.g. Critical. This is what users read
Color	Swatch picker	—	No	Seven fixed swatches. There is no custom colour input
Order	Number	—	No	Sort position. Overridden by dragging
Level	Number	—	No	Stored on the priority. Nothing in the UI reads it

Where the colours come from

The palette is fixed in code — seven colours, no picker

Swatch	Hex
Red	#DC2626
Blue	#3B82F6
Green	#22C55E
Orange	#F97316
Cyan	#06B6D4
Purple	#A855F7
Yellow	#EAB308

There is no hex field and no colour wheel. A brand colour that is not one of these seven cannot be used for a priority.

What Level is for

Level is stored but unused

The drawer offers a numeric Level beside Order, and it is saved with the priority. No screen in the product reads it — sorting everywhere uses order.

Treat it as a field reserved for future numeric comparison. Setting it does nothing today, and setting it inconsistently with Order will not break anything either.

Validation

Validation is client-side and reports through a toast.

Rule	When	Message
ID and Name present	Either is empty on save	ID and Name are required
ID unique	Adding an ID that already exists	Priority ID must be unique

There is no length limit, no character restriction on the ID, and no check that the ID is not in use by existing tasks.

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5. The admin contract

Prerequisite	Where
Page Access of Task Configuration	Otherwise the page is Access Denied
Manage Task Priority	Otherwise the section is read-only
A selected project	Priorities are per project

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6. Downstream

Action	Effect
Add	Appears immediately in every priority control in the project
Rename	The new name shows everywhere; tasks keep their link because the ID did not change
Reorder	Changes group order in list view and option order in dropdowns
Delete	The option disappears. Tasks that referenced it keep the stored ID, which no longer resolves to a name

Deleting a priority does not clean up the tasks using it

There is no usage check before delete, and no reassignment step. Tasks that referenced the deleted ID are left pointing at something that no longer exists.

Rename instead of deleting whenever the priority has been in use.

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7. Don't confuse this with…

Thing	Where	Why it is different
Task priority (this page)	/org/taskconfig?tab=priorities	Per project, labels only
Ticket priority	Resolve settings	Resolve's own list, drives SLA clocks
Priority filter	/org/tasks filter bar	Reads this list; does not define it
Level	This drawer	A stored number, not a second priority scheme

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8. Troubleshooting

Symptom	Cause
No Add Priority button	Missing Manage Task Priority
Edit/Delete never appear	They are hover-only, and permission-gated
A drag did not stick	A drag saves on drop; if the toast reported an error the list re-renders from the server
A task shows a blank priority	Its priority was deleted
Order field ignored	Dragging rewrites every order value from 1
Colour not available	The palette is seven fixed swatches

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Related

• Statuses · Types · Categories
• Filtering and grouping — where priority becomes a grouping
• Task Configuration overview