Horse jumping over the text At The Yard
Blog
07 January 2025

Work Notes Update: Greater Flexibility in Staff Task Assignment

Update

Managing a busy livery yard involves countless impromptu tasks and important observations that need to be communicated between staff members. Whether it's noting that a horse seems slightly under the weather or coordinating special arrangements for a visiting instructor, ensuring the right information reaches the right people is crucial for maintaining high standards of equine care and customer satisfaction.

We're excited to announce improvements to our Work Notes system, enhancing your ability to target these communications more effectively.

What's New?

Our Work Notes system has long allowed you to share important information with either all staff or a single team member through both the Forecast view and Staff Dashboard. Now, we've enhanced this functionality to give you more granular control over who receives each note and how completion is tracked.

More Flexible Staff Selection

The most significant improvement is the ability to select any combination of staff members when creating a Work Note. This means you can now:

  • Choose multiple specific staff members for a task
  • Continue broadcasting to all staff when needed
  • Assign to a single person as before

This enhanced flexibility bridges an important gap in yard communication. For instance, imagine you've noticed some mild swelling in a horse's leg that needs monitoring throughout the day. Previously, you would have needed to either create separate notes for each staff member or broadcast to everyone. Now, you can create a single note assigned precisely to those who need to keep an eye on it.

New Completion Tracking

To complement this more flexible assignment system, we've also introduced new completion tracking options. You can now specify whether a Work Note should be considered complete:

  • When any assigned person marks it as done
  • Only when all assigned people have marked it as complete

This allows you to match the completion criteria to the nature of the task. For instance, if a vet has requested that three specific observations be made of a horse throughout the day, you can ensure each assigned staff member confirms their observation before the note is considered complete.

Practical Applications

These improvements make Work Notes even more valuable for managing those important but irregular tasks that don't fit into standard routines. Consider these scenarios:

A client has requested photos of their horse's recovered injury site to share with their vet. You can create a Work Note assigned to both the morning yard supervisor and the afternoon groom, ensuring the horse is photographed in good light and the images are sent to the client. The note will remain active until both staff members have confirmed their parts are complete.

When a maintenance issue needs attention, like a loose fence rail spotted during morning checks, you can assign the task to your maintenance team and the yard manager. The note can be set to complete after any assigned person has fixed the issue, while keeping all relevant staff informed of the resolution.

Looking Forward

These updates reflect our commitment to making yard management software that truly serves the practical needs of equestrian professionals. By offering more precise control over task assignment and completion tracking, we're helping you maintain the high standards of care your clients expect while keeping communication efficient and focused.

We're keen to hear how these new features are working in your yard. How are you using work notes to improve your daily operations?