Delegate tasks during a vacation or absence

Temporary task delegation hands your open tasks to a colleague for the length of a vacation or absence, so client work keeps moving while you’re away — and returns the unfinished tasks to you when you’re back.

• Company Admins and Company Owners can set up or end delegation on any member’s absence.
• Members with the Confirm vacations permission can do it for members in their team.
• A member can set up delegation on their own absence request and end it early.
• The Workforce Management app must be activated in Settings & Apps. Delegation is available for all-day vacations and absences (Vacation, Away, Sick leave, Parental leave, Flextime vacation, Other) — not for remote-work days or hourly entries.

You turn on task delegation in the same window where you request or approve a vacation or absence — there’s a checkbox for it, and ticking it is what hands your tasks to a colleague while you’re away. If you leave it unticked, your time off is saved as normal and your tasks stay with you.

Path: Profile → Vacations → Request
Also: Members → Vacations → open a request (to set it up on a member’s behalf)

1. Open a new absence request, or open an existing one that is still pending or approved-before-its-start-date.
2. Choose the absence type and dates as usual.
3. Tick Temporary delegate my tasks to reveal the delegation options.
4. Set Delegate tasks from and Delegate tasks until — the range of task dates to hand over. It defaults to your absence dates; adjust it if you want to include or exclude tasks outside the absence window.
5. In Delegates, pick one or more members or custom teams. You can’t pick yourself, and the system Everyone and Administrators teams aren’t selectable.
6. Optionally use Tasks of the following clients to limit delegation to specific clients. Leaving it empty delegates tasks across all clients.
7. Optionally tick Add access to client as Client Member (temporary) so the delegate can also open the client pages behind those tasks (notes, contacts, files).
8. Save the request (or approve it, if you’re the approver).

The What happens box summarizes the scope before you confirm. If a delegate you picked is also absent during the period, Uku flags them under Unavailable during this period — choose someone else.

Delegation only activates once the absence is approved and its start date has arrived. You’ll get a notification as soon as the request is approved. Once the start date arrives, Uku reassigns your open tasks (status New or In progress) that fall inside the chosen date range and client filter to your delegate(s). The delegate is notified and can open and work those tasks immediately.

A few scope rules:

• Only tasks where you are the direct assignee are delegated — being a member of a team that’s on a task doesn’t pull every team task into the handover.
• Tasks you parked as Later are left out.
• If the absence is approved after its start date has already passed, delegation activates right away rather than waiting.

The end behavior depends on how the delegation ends.

Natural end (the absence reaches its end date): unstarted tasks (still New) return to you, while tasks the delegate already moved to In progress stay with them so they can finish the work in hand.

Ending early (you click End delegation, or the absence is declined or deleted): every task the delegation assigned is removed from the delegate, regardless of status — it’s a full revert.

To end a delegation before the absence is over, open the request and click End delegation (red) next to the delegate under Active delegations. The vacationer, a Company Admin or Company Owner, or a member with the Confirm vacations permission can do this.

If you turned on Add access to client as Client Member (temporary), that client access is also removed when the delegation ends — the delegate loses access to those client pages as if the delegation had never happened.

You can name several delegates on one absence. Each delegate receives all the matching tasks, and each delegation is tracked independently — you can end one without affecting the others.

Picking a custom team as a delegate keeps the team’s identity on the task (rather than expanding it into individual names), and the team’s current members get access to the work. New members who join the team mid-absence are picked up automatically.

Delegation only activates once the absence is approved and its start date has arrived. Check that the request is in Approved status, not In review, and that the start date has been reached. Also confirm the Delegate tasks from / until range actually covers the tasks you expected to hand over.

Only tasks where you’re the direct assignee, in status New or In progress, and inside the chosen date range and client filter are delegated. Tasks parked as Later, tasks assigned to you only through team membership, and tasks outside the date range stay with you. Widen the date range or clear the client filter if you need more tasks included.

Opening a delegated task doesn’t grant access to the wider client page (notes, contacts, files, invoices). To give that access, edit the absence and tick Add access to client as Client Member (temporary) — the delegate then gets temporary Client Member access to the clients behind the delegated tasks, removed automatically when the delegation ends.

That person already has an approved or pending absence overlapping your dates, so they can’t reliably cover for you. Pick a different delegate or a team instead.

Open your absence request and click End delegation next to the delegate under Active delegations. Ending a delegation manually removes every assignment it created and returns those tasks to you immediately, including ones already in progress.