How-to
How to Use Needs Attention to Find Operational Problems
Understand why items appear in Needs Attention, identify overdue/blocked work and responsibility issues, snooze items when appropriate, and resolve the underlying problem.
Needs Attention answers: What requires action or intervention? It is not a second inbox of everything. It surfaces exceptions that managers and assignees should not miss.
Why items appear
- Overdue work: high or critical priority work that is past due (not every overdue item)
- Blocked work: work waiting on another item
- Responsibility health: missing primary owner, missing required backup, or inactive owners (managers; Team plans and above)
- Form review: a submission waiting for manager approval
- Form rejected: a required form was rejected and needs follow-up
- Procedure review: an overdue procedure review that needs completion
- Template update: a template update is available for managers on supported plans
What you see depends on your role and plan. Users typically see items relevant to their own assignments and department. Managers see a broader operational scope, including responsibility health and reviews when those features are enabled.
Find and prioritize problems
- Open Needs Attention and scan the metric filters by kind.
- Read the why line on each item so you know whether the issue is overdue work, a block, ownership, or a form.
- Choose Open to go straight to the work, responsibility, or form submission.
- Expand an item when you need more context before acting.
Snooze when appropriate
On Team plans and above with full Needs Attention, you can snooze an item until a selected date. Snooze is personal: it hides the exception for you until the end of that day. Use it when the issue is acknowledged and timed, not when the underlying problem is still ignored.
Resolve the underlying problem
- Overdue high or critical work: complete it, reassign it, or adjust the plan so it stops being an exception.
- Blocked work: finish or clear the blocking item.
- Responsibility health: assign a primary owner, assign a backup or mark backup not required, and reactivate or replace inactive owners.
- Form review: approve or reject with an optional comment.
- Form rejected: correct the submission path and resubmit so related work can complete.
- Procedure review: complete the assigned review from My Work or the procedure.
Needs Attention should get quieter as ownership and follow-through improve. If the list stays loud, treat that as a signal about missing owners, fragile backups, or routine work that is not completing on time.