Checklists
Checklists are reusable, trackable procedures — onboarding, offboarding, device setup, security reviews, and other repeatable runbooks. A checklist starts from a template (or blank), tracks per-item completion as your team works through it, and can be attached to a ticket, asset, contact, or client.
Overview
Checklists let you:
- Start a checklist from an admin-managed template or as a blank checklist.
- Track progress with a live completion bar (completed / total items).
- Attach a checklist to a ticket, asset, contact, or client, or run it standalone.
- Assign individual items to teammates and give them due dates.
- Add ad-hoc items, technician notes, and one level of sub-items.
- See every item assigned to you in one place via My Tasks.
- Optionally close the attached ticket automatically when the checklist is finished.
A checklist is built from three layers:
| Layer | What it is |
|---|---|
| Template | A reusable definition with ordered items, managed by admins under Checklist Templates. |
| Checklist (instance) | A live copy started from a template (or blank). It is a snapshot — editing the template never changes an in-flight checklist. |
| Item | A single step inside a checklist, with its own completion state, assignee, due date, and notes. |
Navigate to Checklists
Go to PSA → Checklists (/checklists) to see all active checklists in your organization, whether standalone or attached to another record.
Each row shows the checklist name, its category, an attachment badge (Ticket, Asset, Contact, or Client) when it is attached to a record, a Completed badge when finished, and a progress bar with the completed/total item count. Use the search box to filter by checklist name.
Categories
Every template and checklist has a category:
| Category | Label |
|---|---|
ONBOARDING | Onboarding |
OFFBOARDING | Offboarding |
SETUP | Setup |
DECOMMISSION | Decommission |
SECURITY_REVIEW | Security Review |
GENERAL | General |
Statuses
A checklist is always in one of three states:
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| In progress | The default state while items are still being completed. |
| Completed | All items are done. |
| Archived | Set aside; no longer active. |
Starting a checklist
- On the Checklists page, click + Start checklist.
- In Template, choose a template (shown as Name (Category)) or select Blank checklist.
- Enter a Name. A name is required when you start a blank checklist; for a template, the name pre-fills but can be changed.
- Click Create.
Starting from a template copies its items into the new checklist. Because the instance is a snapshot, later edits to the template do not affect checklists already in progress.
Starting a checklist requires the checklists: create permission.
Working through a checklist
Open a checklist from the list to manage its items. For each item you can:
- Check it off to mark it complete (completing an item shows it struck through).
- Assign it to a teammate using the assignee dropdown, or leave it Unassigned.
- Set a due date with the date field. Overdue items are highlighted.
- Add a note with the Add note / Notes button for technician comments.
- Delete the item.
At the bottom, type a label in the Add an item… field and click Add (or press Enter) to append an ad-hoc item.
Item details:
| Element | Description |
|---|---|
| Required badge | Marks an item that must be completed. |
| Suggested: <role> badge | Appears when a template set a default-assignee role that could not be resolved to a single user — a hint for who should take it. |
| Linked ticket badge | The item is linked to a ticket; it auto-completes when that ticket closes. |
| Sub-items | A parent row with sub-items acts as a group header. Its checkbox is read-only and auto-completes once all of its sub-items are done. |
To stop tracking a checklist, click Archive on the detail page (requires the checklists: archive permission).
My Tasks
PSA → My Tasks (/checklists/my-tasks) collects every checklist item assigned to you across all checklists, so you can work your queue without opening each checklist individually.
Use the Due filter to narrow the list:
| Filter | Shows |
|---|---|
| All | Every item assigned to you. |
| Due today | Items due by the end of today. |
| Due this week | Items due within the next seven days. |
| Overdue | Items with a due date in the past. |
Each row shows the item label, a Required badge when applicable, a link to its parent checklist, and the due date (highlighted when overdue). Check the box to mark the item complete.
Checklist Templates (Admin)
Templates are managed by admins under Admin → Checklist Templates (/admin/checklist-templates). Reading templates requires checklist_templates: read; creating, editing, and deleting them require the corresponding checklist_templates permissions, which are available to the Owner and Admin roles.
From the template manager an admin can:
- Create and edit templates with a name, description, and category.
- Add ordered items, each with a Required flag and an optional default-assignee role (Owner, Admin, or Member) that resolves to a user when a checklist is started.
- Add one level of sub-items under any item.
- Reorder items with the up/down controls.
- Set a template's Scope to Org-global or to a specific client.
- Toggle Close the attached ticket when this checklist is completed.
- Toggle Visible to the client by default (copied to each new instance's client-visibility setting).
- Clone a template, Deactivate it, or Delete it. Use Show inactive to include deactivated templates in the list.
Editing a template never changes checklists that are already in progress, because each instance is a snapshot taken when it was started.
See Checklist Templates for the full template manager reference.
Tips
- Build a template for each repeatable process (client onboarding, server decommission, security review) so technicians start from a consistent, complete runbook.
- Mark the truly mandatory steps as Required so they stand out. When you close a ticket that still has incomplete required checklist items, Ascent warns you and asks you to confirm before continuing — it's a prompt, not a hard block.
- Attach an onboarding or setup checklist to the relevant ticket so progress lives alongside the work, and enable Close the attached ticket when this checklist is completed to wrap things up automatically.
- Check My Tasks at the start of your day and filter by Overdue to catch anything that slipped.