Delegating a plan step to a contributor

What "Assign to…" does

Every decision that moves past the feed into an action plan gets broken into steps: an email to send, a call script to work from, a survey to run, a lookup for IQ to do, a focus block to schedule. By default each step belongs to whoever the plan set as its owner, usually you or IQ. The Assign to… control lets you hand a specific step to someone else on your team instead, a bookkeeper, an ops coordinator, a project manager, anyone you have added as a data contributor. The step stays inside the plan. Its ownership just changes from you to them, in writing, with an email and an in-app notification confirming it.

This is not a general to-do list. It only delegates a step that already exists inside a structured action plan tied to a decision. Verinode surfaces the plan and its steps; you decide who does the work.

Where to find it

Open Action Plans from the sidebar, at iq.verinode.ai/actions. The page title reads "Action Plans," with a subtitle describing it as every decision you have kicked off: owners, due dates, and progress, the work in flight. Click any row to open it in the slide-over workspace.

Inside that workspace, scroll to the Action plan section. Each step renders as its own numbered card: a status pill (Queued, In progress, Waiting, Blocked, Done, Obviated, Skipped), a kind label (Email, Call script, Survey, Tracker, Comparison, IQ lookup, IQ research, Vault, Calendar, External, Decision link, Note), the step's title, and a description under "What to do."

For any step that is still open, that is, not yet Done, Obviated, or Skipped, a row of controls sits under the description: Mark done, Assign to…, Skip, and, for IQ-run lookups, Re-run. Once a step is completed, obviated, or skipped, the assign control disappears along with the rest of that action row. There is nothing to delegate on a step that is already finished.

Who you can delegate to

Clicking Assign to… opens a small dropdown directly under the button. The first time you open it on a given page load, it reads Loading… while it fetches your team.

What appears next depends on your team:

• If you have added one or more people to your team with the data contributor role (Settings, team), each one appears in the list by name, their display name if set, otherwise their first and last name, otherwise their email, otherwise a plain "Contributor" if none of those are on file.
• If you have not added any data contributors yet, the dropdown reads exactly: "No data contributors yet. Invite one in Settings." There is nothing to click. Add someone to your team as a data contributor first, then come back and reopen the plan.

Only data contributors show up here. Other admins or users on your account are not offered as assignees from this control, this is specifically for handing work to the people who help you run day-to-day data and tasks, not for reassigning ownership among operators.

How to delegate a step

1. 1Open Action Plans from the sidebar and click into the decision whose plan has the step you want to hand off.
2. 2Scroll to the Action plan section and find the step card. Confirm it is still open (it has the action row underneath it: Mark done / Assign to… / Skip).
3. 3Click Assign to….
4. 4Pick the contributor's name from the dropdown. If the list reads "No data contributors yet," go add one in Settings first.
5. 5The dropdown closes immediately and the page refreshes. The step is now delegated.

What happens after you assign

Clicking a name does four things, all in the same action:

1. The step's owner changes. The plan step's owner flips to that contributor. In the meta line under the status pill, where a step used to read "You · Day 3" or "IQ · Day 3," it now reads "Team · Day 3." ("You" means the step belongs to you the operator, "IQ" means the agent owns it, "Team" means it has been delegated to a contributor.)
2. A delegation record is created. Verinode writes a task record of type "signal step," carrying the step's own title and description, tagged to that specific step so completing it on either side stays in sync.
3. The contributor is emailed, if they have an email on file, with the task title, the step's description as the task body, and your contact email so they can reach you with questions. They see the same task waiting for them in their own contributor workspace.
4. You get an in-app notification confirming who it went to: "Step assigned to [name]."

If the contributor has no email on file, the delegation still happens, they just are not emailed about it, and they will only see it if they check their contributor workspace directly.

Reassigning or changing your mind

You can click Assign to… again on the same step at any time, even if it is already delegated to someone. Picking a different name supersedes the earlier delegation: the prior assignment record is closed out and a fresh one is created for the new person, who gets their own email and notification. The step's owner line simply reflects whoever holds it now.

There is no "unassign" option on this control. To pull a step back to yourself, use Mark done or Skip to close it out, or hand it back through IQ chat if the plan needs restructuring.

Completing the delegated step

A contributor marks their own delegated step done from their own workspace, not from this Action Plans page. When they do, it flows straight back into this plan: the step's status here updates to Done the same as if you had clicked Mark done yourself, and the delegation record closes automatically. You do not have to do anything on your end to close the loop, the sync is one-way from their completion back into your plan.

You, as the operator, can also still mark the step done yourself from this workspace at any point after delegating it, whichever of you finishes it first is what counts.

Who can use this control

Delegating a step is an operator action. If you are signed in as a data contributor rather than an admin or user, the underlying assignment action refuses the request ("Only an operator can assign tasks."), because contributors are the people work gets handed to here, not the ones handing it out. Admins and users on your account can both delegate.

See also

• The decision workspace for how a decision becomes a plan in the first place.
• Acting on decisions for Mark done, Skip, and the other step controls that sit next to Assign to….
• The feed for how a plan's next due step reappears there as a reminder card.