Accept or decline a handoff
Incoming tasks appear in a strip at the top of every screen. Accept to add them to your daily note, or decline with a reason — the sender is told and the task stays in the original note.
Applies to Web · Mac · iPhone app
When a colleague hands you a task, it isn’t yours until you accept it. Accept and it becomes your task; decline and the sender gets your reason, and the task stays in the original note (if it went to several people, each decides separately — someone else’s acceptance still stands; if nobody accepts, it falls to the note’s owner). If you leave it unanswered, you’ll be reminded on a fixed schedule.
Where you’ll see it
| Place | What’s there |
|---|---|
| The Incoming handoffs strip at the top of every screen | Handoffs waiting for your answer, with the due date shown as Overdue · date, Due today or Due date. |
| The Notifications bell | A Task handoff request with the memo. You can Accept or Decline right in the notification. |
| To-dos → List | The “{n} tasks awaiting acceptance — accept to add them to your to-dos” card at the top. |
| The line itself in the note | Open the original note and an orange “Please accept · from name” badge slowly blinks at the end of the line. Click it to Accept or Decline right in the handoff history panel; opening the panel also marks it as seen for the sender. The blinking stops once you answer (with Reduce motion on, it shows an outline instead). |
| Messenger | The handoff memo in your conversation with the sender, with Open handed-off task leading to the original line. |
Accept
- In the Incoming handoffs strip, click Open to see the line in the original note and what surrounds it.
- Click Accept. You’ll see “Accepted — added to today’s note”.
Accepting adds the task to your daily note as a checklist line with a link back to the original note. If the sender set a due date, it replaces the date at the end of the line (if the original date sits mid-text, both stay and the earlier one can win — check the date after accepting). You become the task’s owner, and the sender is notified.
Decline
- Click Decline.
- In the “Send back to {name}” card, optionally fill in Reason for declining (optional) (up to 300 characters).
- Click Decline. The sender is notified with your reason. The task stays in the original note (if it went to several people, each decides separately — someone else’s acceptance still stands; if nobody accepts, it falls to the note’s owner). If the sender isn’t the owner, it doesn’t become the sender’s to-do.
Using the Incoming handoffs strip
- On wider screens, Accept, Decline and Open for the first handoff sit right in the strip. Show all expands every handoff waiting for you; ones you haven’t seen yet are marked New.
- On a phone, tap Reply to answer them one by one in a sheet that slides up from the bottom.
- “Collapse for now” folds the strip away; it opens again when a new handoff arrives.
- Handoffs from a locked note hide their content and appear as “Handoff item in a locked note”.
Reminders if you don’t answer
| Situation | Reminder |
|---|---|
| Not seen at all 4 hours after it arrived | One more notification (only between 08:00 and 21:00 KST) |
| No answer for two days | A reminder, checked once each morning |
| The due date is today or tomorrow, or has already passed | A reminder, at most once a day |
| The sender clicks Nudge again | A notification each time (at most once every 6 hours per handoff) |
| No answer for more than 7 days | A Stalled handoffs card blocks the app when you open it. Decide later skips it for this session only. |
Reminders can also be bundled into a single email. Turn these off with the Notification emails switch in profile menu → Account security, or with the unsubscribe link in the email. To get browser push notifications, click Turn on acknowledgment push in the notifications bell (see Get notifications).