Work the Action Center

The Action Center is a list your organization writes by hand. This tutorial spends most of its time on what does not happen, because the page looks like an inbox and is not one.

1. Know what puts an action on the list

One thing does: the form at the top of the page. Nothing else on this site creates an action. The priority watchlist on the dashboard has a link through to the Action Center, and that link carries nothing with it - the signal is not copied, quoted or attached. What arrives here is what you typed.

2. Write the action so it survives the week

You will read this line out of context, days later, with none of the reasoning you have now. Put the decision in the title and the reasoning in the context field.

What each field on the action form accepts

Field	Accepts	What it does after saving
Action	Between 3 and 120 characters, required	The line in the list, struck through once completed
Context	Up to 1000 characters, optional	A paragraph under the title, omitted entirely when empty
Priority	Low, medium or high, defaults to medium	A label beside the title, and nothing else
Due date	A calendar date, optional	Displayed as a date, or as no due date

A title below the minimum, a missing priority or an unreadable date are all refused with one message covering the three. When a save is rejected, check all three fields rather than only the one you changed last.

3. Treat priority as a note, not a queue

The list is ordered by when each action was created, newest first, and by nothing else. A high priority action written last month sits below a low one written this morning, and completed actions stay where they were rather than dropping to the bottom.

Sort order

Newest first

by creation time only, never by priority, due date or status

Rows shown

All of them

open and completed together, with no limit and no filter

States available

Open or completed

there is no third state and no way to delete a row

So the priority label is for the person reading, not for the page. If the list grows past what one screen can hold, that is the signal to close actions rather than to sort them.

4. Set a due date, and know what it does not do

The date you choose is stored at midday rather than midnight, so it reads back as the day you picked regardless of the time zone doing the reading. That is the whole of its behaviour.

5. Complete, or reopen

One button per row toggles between the two states. Completing keeps the row and strikes the title through; the same button then offers to reopen it. Every toggle is matched on both the action and your organization, so an identifier belonging to another organization changes nothing here.

Because there is no delete, the list is a record of what you decided as well as what is outstanding. Close actions you abandoned rather than leaving them open, and the open items stay meaningful.

6. Read the open count where it is actually used

The reports page counts the actions still open for your organization and shows that count beside purchase spend, market signals and average review rating. That count is the only place an action appears outside this page. Actions you created are also included when you export your own data, described in your data and privacy.

Next: read your weekly report.