Assign Tasks Guide: Who Does What, Every Setting, and Real Use Cases
This is the next in a series of deep-dives into the nine poll templates Whocan offers. Each post covers one template end to end — what it does, every setting available, what voters see, and the real situations people use it for. The previous post covered Class Booking; this one is about Assign Tasks — the template for handing out who-does-what across a group.
Assign Tasks is the smallest of the nine template clusters: 1,460 of these ran on Whocan in the last 12 months. It’s also one of the most-used once created — 3.9 responses per poll on average, second only to the Online Poll’s 4.8. That combination tells you what it is: not a tool for huge crowds, but the right tool for the small organization job — the wedding helper list, the school event setup, the flat-share cleaning schedule — where a handful of people need to split a list of jobs and actually do them.
What is a poll type?
A poll type on Whocan is a pre-configured combination of answer formats, default settings, and visual theme that fits one specific situation. All nine templates run on the same underlying engine — they just expose different parts of it. You pick the template that matches your problem, type a title, share the link. The engine handles the rest. For the wider overview, see the parent guide to all nine templates. If the three words template, sample poll and theme sound similar, the glossary post sorts them out.
What Assign Tasks does
Assign Tasks asks one question: “here’s what needs doing — which of it will you take?”
You — the host — write the task list: named jobs (“bring the speakers”, “clean the bathroom”), each optionally with a deadline and a limit on how many people it needs. You share a link. Each person ticks the tasks they’ll take. The list shows in real time which jobs are covered, who took them, and what’s still open — and if someone spots a job you forgot, they can add it to the list themselves.
It’s the difference between a group chat where “someone should bring ice” scrolls away unanswered and a list where “bring ice” either has a name next to it or visibly doesn’t. Nobody has to keep the master list in their head; the link is the master list.
See it live
Below is a real, interactive Whocan task list embedded in this page. Tick a task to see how claiming a job feels. Nothing you do here changes anything in your own polls — it’s a public sample anyone can interact with.
Every feature, in order
This section is the whole spec — settings on by default, settings you can turn on with one click, and what voters actually see.
What voters do
A task-list voter sees the list of jobs, each with who has already taken it. For each task they can:
- Tick the task — their name goes next to it. Everyone else sees it’s covered.
- Take more than one task — nothing stops a helpful person claiming several jobs.
- See how many people a task still needs — if you set “needs 3 people” on a job, the list shows how many have signed up and how many are still missing.
- Add a task of their own — the defining feature. If the list is missing “bring a corkscrew”, any participant can add it — no waiting for the host.
- Leave a private comment — visible only to the host, for things like “I can do the shopping but only after 5pm”.
Voters don’t need an account. They get the link, they claim their jobs, they’re done. The host sees the list fill up in real time.
Settings on by default
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Theme: Checkbox | A clean checklist look, pre-set for Assign Tasks. Hosts can switch to any other generic theme or upload their own background image. |
| Allow participants to add options | Assign Tasks is the only template that ships with this switched on. Participants can extend the task list themselves — because the person who notices a missing job is rarely the person who wrote the list. Switch it off if the list should stay exactly as you wrote it. |
| Participants can see how others have responded | Every voter sees who has taken which task and what’s still open — that visibility is the whole point of a shared list. Switch it off if you’d rather collect assignments privately. |
| Max participants (per task) | Each task can carry its own limit (“needs 2 people, no more”). Once enough people have taken it, it’s full. |
Settings you can switch on (advanced)
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Set ‘Response deadline’ | A cut-off after which the list locks. Useful when the shopping has to be decided by Thursday. |
| Set ‘Location’ | A venue field that gets written into the calendar export — useful when the tasks all happen at one place, like an event setup day. |
| Theme picker & custom background | Swap the Checkbox theme for any generic theme, or upload your own image; pick font family, color palette, shadow style, and separate desktop/mobile sizing. |
| Get notified via email about new votes | The host gets an email each time someone claims a task — handy for watching the last open jobs get covered. |
| Allow participants to receive email updates | Helpers can subscribe to changes (“the setup moved to Saturday morning”). |
| Ask for email / phone number | Require contact details from each person, so you can reach whoever took a job. |
| Copy poll | Duplicate a list you already ran — the fast way to reuse last year’s festival setup list. |
| CSV export | Export the full who-does-what list once it’s settled. |
| iCal / ICS export | Tasks with deadlines can be added to Google Calendar, Outlook, or Apple Calendar. |
Editing tasks after you create them
Two host-side tools that save real time once your list grows.
Repeat a dated task as a series. Assign Tasks supports two kinds of entries: plain named tasks and tasks with a date. On any dated task, pick Repeat from its menu — the dialog asks for a pattern (daily, weekdays only, weekly, every two weeks, or monthly) and an end date, and generates the rest of the series for you (up to 52 occurrences in one go). This is the rota tool: “clean the kitchen” every Saturday for a semester becomes one entry plus a pattern.
Bulk-edit multiple tasks at once. Select several tasks with the row check boxes (or Select all) and open the multi-edit dialog. For each attribute — date, label, participant limit — there’s an opt-in check box: tick what you want to change, leave the rest untouched, save once. Shifting a whole setup day by a week becomes a single save.
Managing the list
Once people start claiming jobs, the results table is where the host actually works. Three host-only tools sit in it.
Edit any response in place. Click the pencil icon on a row and it becomes editable — name, which tasks, comments, email and phone if those fields are on. Useful when someone messages “I can’t do the bar shift after all” and you reassign instead of asking them to redo it.
Tag responses with a flag. Every row has a free-text Tag column visible only to you (hidden from voters). Mark confirmed-by-phone, has-a-car, bringing-own-tools — whatever you track alongside the assignment. Sort by the Tag column to group like with like.
Add a response on someone’s behalf. Below the table there’s an Add vote button — it inserts a row in edit mode so you can assign someone yourself. It’s the workflow for “grandma said on the phone she’ll bake the cake”.
Answer format under the hood
Assign Tasks exposes two entry formats: a plain named task and a task with a date attached — you can mix both in one list, which is how “bring the speakers” and “return the speakers by Monday” live side by side. Each entry takes sign-ups, optionally capped. If you need answer types beyond that — sliders, multiple-choice questions, labelled answer pairs — switch the poll to Advanced and the full toolkit unlocks without losing the assignments you already collected.
Themes
Visual theming on Assign Tasks uses Whocan’s generic-theme system.
The default: Checkbox. A clean checklist look that reads as “work list”, not “party invitation”. Pre-set for Assign Tasks — keep it if the page should look like the to-do list it is.
Bring your own: custom background. Upload your own image and the header carries it instead of a preset — the school-festival logo, a photo of the flat, the wedding colors. You can also pick font family, color palette, shadow style, and separate desktop/mobile sizing.
The picker exposes the full generic-theme set — neutral, sports, food, seasonal, and more — so a barbecue task list can look like a barbecue. A few looks are reserved for other templates (the Calendar theme belongs to the Scheduling Poll, Buffet to Potluck) and don’t appear here. If you want one of those, or any setting Whocan has that this template doesn’t expose, switch the poll into Advanced mode and the full library unlocks without losing what you’ve collected.
Real-world use cases
These are clusters distilled from the 1,460 real task lists that ran on Whocan in the last 12 months — anonymized by intent. The thread running through them: none of these groups needs a project-management tool. They need one link that answers “who does what?“.
1. Wedding helper lists
Behind most weddings is a second, less photographed event: the one where chairs get set up, flowers get fetched, and someone drives the cake. Couples and their families run a task list alongside the invitations so helpers can claim jobs instead of being assigned them.
Typical tweak: put a deadline on time-critical tasks (“flowers picked up by 10am”), set max participants on jobs that need exactly two people, and keep participants can add options on — wedding helpers are exactly the people who notice what’s missing.
2. School event setup
Sports day, school festival, bake sale, end-of-year party — a teacher or parent council writes the job list once and lets parents distribute themselves across it.
Typical tweak: get notified via email so the organizer knows when the critical jobs are covered, and a response deadline a few days before the event so there’s time to fill the gaps by hand.
3. Flat-share cleaning schedules
The classic small-organization job. A shared flat turns “the kitchen is always dirty” into a rota: dated tasks, repeated weekly, each claimed by one person.
Typical tweak: use repeat to generate the semester’s rota from one week’s entries, set max participants to 1 per slot so each chore has exactly one owner, and let the list settle arguments instead of the group chat.
4. Scout camps and club trips
A camp needs tents packed, food planned, a first-aid kit checked, drivers arranged. Leaders share the list with older scouts and parents, and the jobs distribute themselves across the group.
Typical tweak: ask for a phone number so the organizer can reach whoever took the trailer, and iCal export so dated tasks land in family calendars.
5. Parent contributions for class events
Kindergarten breakfast, class party, teacher’s farewell gift — the small lists where five to ten parents each take one thing. Often run beside a Potluck when food is involved.
Typical tweak: almost none — this is the case the defaults are built for. Share the link in the parent group and the list fills itself.
6. Party and event prep among friends
Birthday parties, anniversaries, a garden party: music, drinks, grill duty, cleanup shift. The host stops being the person who has to ask everyone individually.
Typical tweak: keep participants can see how others have responded on — friendly visibility (“Marco took grill duty again”) is half the fun and all of the motivation.
The sister-poll pattern: run it beside an Invitation
The most common companion to Assign Tasks isn’t another task list — it’s an Invitation. The pattern: one link collects who’s coming (yes/no/maybe, plus-ones, kids), a second link distributes the work among those who said yes. Two questions, two links, each doing the one thing it’s good at.
The pattern is older than Whocan itself. When I organized my 40th birthday at the Piccolo Giardino in Zurich about sixteen years ago, Whocan didn’t exist — I built my own website to collect the RSVPs, and it worked. But the who-does-what half of the party still lived in an email thread. Whocan’s Invitation + Assign Tasks pair is the version of that setup I wish I’d had: send both links in the same message, and the party organizes itself from two directions at once.
If the work to distribute is specifically food, skip the generic task list and use the Potluck template instead — it’s the same claim-a-slot logic, purpose-built for dishes.
How it compares
A handful of tools come up alongside Assign Tasks. Here’s the honest version.
Trello and Asana are project-management tools: boards, assignees, workflows, integrations — and accounts for everyone involved. For a team shipping software, that’s the right machinery. For five people prepping a birthday party, it’s overkill in the most practical sense: you’d spend longer getting everyone signed up than the task list took to write. Assign Tasks has no accounts, no board to maintain, no app to install — a link that works in any group chat.
Google Sheets is the honest incumbent: a shared spreadsheet with names typed next to jobs works. Its weaknesses are exactly what a purpose-built list fixes — nothing stops two people typing over each other, nothing enforces “this job needs only one person”, nobody gets notified when something changes, and on a phone a spreadsheet is a poor place to tick a box. Assign Tasks keeps the simplicity and adds the guardrails.
SignUpGenius covers similar ground from the event side. The differences are the organizer account it asks for and the paid tier its extras sit behind. Whocan keeps the claim-a-task core free, with no account for anyone.
Inside Whocan, a few neighbours:
- Potluck — who-brings-what for food specifically, with dishes instead of generic tasks.
- Class Booking — people claiming capped slots rather than jobs; right for sessions, wrong for chores.
- The full pillar page for this job lives at the Task Assignment tool page — it goes deeper on the tool angle.
- For anything that doesn’t fit — a date to find, RSVPs to collect, an opinion to poll — the parent guide to all nine templates maps each situation to the right template.
What it costs (nothing)
Every setting above is on the free tier. There is no paid plan, no per-poll fee, no limit on tasks or helpers. Whocan runs on light advertising on landing pages (not inside the poll itself) and on word of mouth. Over 57,000 polls ran on the engine in the last 12 months without anyone paying for them. Assign Tasks is the clearest case of the free tier making sense: nobody should need a subscription to split up a cleaning schedule.
Try it yourself
The fastest way to learn what Assign Tasks can do is to make one:
No signup, no email required, no card. Write your tasks, share the link, watch the names appear. If you want to come back to your list later from a different device, you can save the access link the app gives you — that’s all.
Next in the series: Group Order — Whocan’s template for collecting what everyone wants from one shared order (deploy 2026-07-10) — the final post in the series. Follow the poll-types hub to catch it.