Priority Matrix Glossary

• Account: An account is responsible for subscriptions to Priority Matrix. Accounts have an administrator, a set of member users and one or more subscriptions.
• Account administrator (or admin): This is the user that adds and removes team members from a team account. Usually, this person is also responsible for the subscription payments. Sometimes, an account administrator might NOT be an account member, if they are only in charge of administrating the subscription, but they don’t require an actual license. For example, some teams name an office manager to do this type of bookkeeping, but there’s no need for them to pay for an extra license.
• Account member: The set of users that belong in the same account are called the account members. If the account has a subscription, it applies to members of that account. An account can have one or more members. A user can ONLY be member of one account, though.
• Avatar: An avatar is an small, unique image that represents each user. In the team-enabled versions of Priority Matrix, each item displays the avatar of its owner. By default, we assign each user a random geometric figure that is easy to distinguish from others, but it is possible and easy to change your own avatar via our website.
• Calendar:  Users who associate start/due dates to their items can also integrate Priority Matrix with their favorite calendar system. Calendars can include items from only one project, or all the projects owned by a user.
• Collaborators: In Priority Matrix, each user has a list of collaborators, which are other users with which they share projects and items. Users can assign tasks to their collaborators, share projects with them and so on. It is possible to add new collaborators by assigning their email to a project or item. Note that users can collaborate with other users, sharing projects and so on, even if they don’t share the same account.
• Conversation: See “feed”.
• Creator: The user that first created an item is its creator. This cannot be altered.
• Dates: There are various types of dates associated with an item. The most important ones are:
  • Due date: The date (and maybe time) by which an item needs to be completed. If this date is past, the item is considered overdue.
  • Start date: Optionally, items may have a start date in addition to a due date. This is more useful to represent long term tasks, meetings and so on.
  • Completion date: When an item is marked as 100% complete, we write down the date for your records. This can be modified if necessary to keep accurate data.
  • Until date: When a “recurrent” item is marked as complete, a copy of it will be created at regular intervals, until a specific date is over. This is useful, for example, to represent a meeting that occurs every Monday until next year.
• Feed: For subscribers to Priority Matrix, each item and project have an associated record of events that we call the feed. A feed is a log that tracks who made what change to the item/project. It also includes a conversation, or series of comments that users sent to each other when discussing the item or project. Users that follow a specific item will get email notifications when someone adds a comment to the item. See “follower”.
• Files: Subscribers to Priority Matrix are allowed to link files to their items. These files are uploaded to our server and will be accessible by anyone who can reach the associated item.
• Follower: Users can “follow” an item so that they receive an email every time someone else sends a comment to the discussion associated with that item. By default, the creator and the owner of an item are its followers, but other users can join or be invited.
• Item: Each one of the individual elements that comprise a project. Examples of items can be “buy groceries”, “plan vacation”, “call stakeholders” or “decide final budget”. Some people call them “tasks”, but we feel that “item” is more fitting.
• Inbox: The item inbox is a powerful way to add items to your Priority Matrix via email. Each user has a private, secret email address that only they should know. Each time an message is sent to that address, an associated item is created on the user’s Priority Matrix.
• List: See “project”.
• Listener: See “follower”.
• Matrix: See “project”.
• Notes: Items may have an associated description of what they are about. This could mean instructions on how to perform a task, context necessary to know the original reason, etc. Notes can be edited by anyone, but there is no record of who made what specific change.
• Owner: The user that is responsible for an item is its owner. This can be changed at any time, assigning the item to a different user. The owner’s avatar is usually displayed next to the item, for easy reference.
• Payment account: See “account”.
• Project: A project is a group of items classified in four quadrants.
• Quadrant: Each project is composed of four quadrants. Each quadrant is identified by its name and color, and contains a list of items. By default, quadrants reflect the standard “immediate vs critical” decision method, but you can configure them in a different way if you please.
• Recurrence: Items can be recurrent, indicating that when they are marked as complete, a new copy of them will be created with a new due/start date in the future. The specific frequency is determined by the “frequency” field, and can be daily, weekly, monthly, etc.
• Reports: Sometimes it’s important to have a high-level overview of all the work that’s happening in your account, what’s falling behind, who’s doing what, and so on. For that purpose, we built our report system  which is available in our desktop and web apps, but it offers additional functionality in the desktop versions (Mac and Windows).
• Sync user: See “user”.
• Tags: To facilitate working with several projects, we support tags. A tag is an identifying word that you associate with a project so you can classify them. For example, you can use the tags “work” and “personal” to keep things tidy. You can have many tags for each project.
• Task: In Priority Matrix, we prefer to say “item” rather than task.
• Trial:  You can try every feature of Priority Matrix before subscribing by filling out this form.
• Subscription: While you can use some of our apps for free, Priority Matrix is available on a subscription basis. A subscription allows access to our desktop apps, the collaboration features and file attachments. Learn more in our pricing page.
• User:  A user represents a person (like you), with a unique email and username. Users own a number of projects and items, and they can share projects and delegate items to each other.
• User group: Sometimes it’s easier to organize users in the same account into smaller groups. For example, some organizations split their account members into groups named “Engineering”, “Marketing”, etc. The user group feature is available to subscriptions at the premium level and above.

We hope this is useful, but if you notice anything missing, please email our support address and we will be happy to answer any questions.