Active Collab

Description

This article describes the integration between ActiveCollab and Skills Workflow.

ActiveCollab is the day-to-day task tracker some teams live in — a board of tasks, lists, comments and attachments. Skills Workflow is where those tasks have to exist as jobs, so they can be costed, resourced, reported on and billed. This integration mirrors one into the other continuously.

The value is that neither team has to change how they work. The people executing keep their board in ActiveCollab; the agency keeps a complete, current picture of the work in Skills Workflow — including the conversation around it, not just the task title. Every comment and attachment added on the board lands on the job, so the job record is genuinely the full story rather than an empty shell someone has to go elsewhere to understand.

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Data Exchange Technology

The exchange runs over the ActiveCollab web API, using an address and token configured by the agency. No files and no locally installed application are required.

The integration is event-driven. ActiveCollab calls Skills Workflow whenever something happens on a task, and Skills Workflow reacts immediately — there is no scheduled run and no waiting. Because it reads the full task back from ActiveCollab rather than trusting the notification, an event that arrives late or out of order still leaves the job correct.

A whole project's existing tasks can also be imported in bulk on demand, rather than waiting for each one to change individually. This is how a project already underway in ActiveCollab is brought into Skills Workflow.

The exchange is one-way: ActiveCollab is the source of truth for the task, and Skills Workflow follows it.

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Data Exchange (To Skills Workflow)

Tasks → Jobs

What happens in ActiveCollab	Result in Skills Workflow
A task is created	A job is created, with its brief, its initial stage, its tags and the person who raised it
A task is renamed, re-tagged or re-assigned	The matching job is updated, and tags no longer on the task are removed from the job
A task moves to a different task list	The job moves to the matching workflow stage
A comment is added to a task	The comment appears on the job
A file is attached to a task	The attachment is recorded on the job

When a job is created, the integration also pulls across the comments the task already had, so the job does not start out missing its history.

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What the Agency Needs to Provide

• An ActiveCollab account with API access, plus the address and token for Skills Workflow to authenticate with.
• Webhooks configured in ActiveCollab pointing at Skills Workflow, for task, comment and attachment events.
• A Skills Workflow project matching each ActiveCollab project that should be mirrored, carrying its ActiveCollab identifier.
• Agreement on which task list corresponds to which workflow stage, and which department and assignment type new jobs should be created under.

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Good to Know

• Jobs and tasks are matched by the ActiveCollab task identifier, stored on the job. It should not be edited manually.
• An update only lands if the job already exists. If a task was never imported in the first place, later changes to it have nothing to update — this is the usual reason a change does not appear, and it is fixed by running the bulk import for that project.
• Task lists have to map to real stages. A task moved to a list with no matching Skills Workflow stage leaves the job where it is.
• The integration is one-way: moving a job or editing its brief in Skills Workflow does not change the task in ActiveCollab.

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Technical Reference

Components

Name	Type	Version	Stage	Role
ActiveCollab-ProcessWebHook	Automation	2	Active	Single inbound endpoint: dispatches every ActiveCollab webhook event to the matching automation below
ActiveCollab-CreateTask	Automation	3	Active	Creates a job from a new ActiveCollab task
ActiveCollab-UpdateTask	Automation	2	Active	Updates a job's fields/tags from an updated ActiveCollab task
ActiveCollab-TaskListChanged	Automation	2	Active	Moves a job's stage when its task changes task-list
ActiveCollab-CommentCreated	Automation	2	Active	Adds a comment to a job from an ActiveCollab task comment
ActiveCollab-AttachmentCreated	Automation	2	Active	Records a job comment when a file is attached in ActiveCollab
ActiveCollab-ImportProjectTasks	Automation	3	Active	On-demand bulk import of a whole ActiveCollab project's tasks
ActiveCollab-GetJobByExternalId	Query	2	Active	Looks up the job matching an ActiveCollab task id
ActiveCollab-GetProjectByExternalId	Query	1	Active	Looks up the Skills Workflow project matching an ActiveCollab project id
ActiveCollab-GetStageByName	Query	2	Active	Resolves a workflow stage by name, for task-list changes
ActiveCollab-GetTransitionByName	Query	2	Active	Resolves a workflow transition by name, for job creation
ActiveCollab-GetUserByEmail	Query	2	Active	Looks up a Skills Workflow user by e-mail — not called by any automation in this export

Source: [Active Collab] [Integrations] Process WebHook v2 (Automation) {Active}.json, [Active Collab] [Integrations] Create Task v3 (Automation) {Active}.json, [Active Collab] [Integrations] Update Task v2 (Automation) {Active}.json, [Active Collab] [Integrations] Task List Changed v2 (Automation) {Active}.json, [Active Collab] [Integrations] Comment Created v2 (Automation) {Active}.json, [Active Collab] [Integrations] Attachment Created v2 (Automation) {Active}.json, [Active Collab] [Integrations] Import Project Tasks v3 (Automation) {Active}.json, and the named queries above.

How It Works

1. ActiveCollab calls a single Skills Workflow webhook endpoint for every event; ActiveCollab-ProcessWebHook reads Body.type and enqueues the matching automation as background work (confirmed by matching automation ids): TaskCreated → ActiveCollab-CreateTask (5ce6bf8d-...), TaskUpdated → ActiveCollab-UpdateTask (0e7691b1-...), TaskListChanged/TaskListChangedFromReorder → ActiveCollab-TaskListChanged (ddd8e1a9-...), CommentCreated → ActiveCollab-CommentCreated (e344d852-...), AttachmentCreated → ActiveCollab-AttachmentCreated (109f79d5-...). Any other type exits without action.
2. Create: ActiveCollab-CreateTask fetches the full task from ActiveCollab (GET {host}/api/v1/projects/{id}/tasks/{id}), resolves the Skills Workflow project (ActiveCollab-GetProjectByExternalId), the creating user by e-mail, department and assignment type, then creates the job (POST /api/jobs), sets custom fields, posts the brief (POST /api/documentBriefs), applies the initial transition (ActiveCollab-GetTransitionByName, POST /api/posts), pulls existing comments from ActiveCollab, and tags the job.
3. Update: ActiveCollab-UpdateTask re-fetches the task, finds the job by external id, updates the brief, patches the job (PATCH /api/jobs/{id}), and reconciles tags (adding new ones, deleting ones no longer present).
4. Stage change: ActiveCollab-TaskListChanged fetches the new task-list's name from ActiveCollab, resolves it to a Skills Workflow stage (ActiveCollab-GetStageByName), finds the job (ActiveCollab-GetJobByExternalId), and sets its workflow state directly (PUT /api/jobs/{id}/workflowstate).
5. Comments/attachments: ActiveCollab-CommentCreated and ActiveCollab-AttachmentCreated post the comment/attachment onto the matching job (POST /api/v3/posts).
6. Bulk import: ActiveCollab-ImportProjectTasks, run on demand for a project, fetches all of that project's tasks from ActiveCollab and checks each against ActiveCollabId custom field values already in Skills Workflow, to import only what isn't already there.

External System Contact Points

• ActiveCollab API ({host} from a Config configuration key): GET /api/v1/projects/{id}/tasks/{id}, GET /api/v1/projects/{id}/tasks, GET /api/v1/projects/{id}/task-lists/{id}, GET /api/v1/users/{id}, GET /api/v1/comments/task/{id}, POST /api/v1/projects/{id}/tasks/{id}/subtasks.
• Inbound: ActiveCollab calls ActiveCollab-ProcessWebHook's endpoint for every task/comment/attachment event.
• Skills Workflow's own API/analytics: the named queries above; POST /api/jobs, PATCH /api/jobs/{id}, PUT /api/jobs/{id}/workflowstate, POST /api/documentBriefs, POST /api/posts, POST /api/v3/document/{id}/tags, PUT /api/v3/documentUserFieldValues.

Configuration

• A Config configuration key — holds the ActiveCollab host/token. Values are not part of the export.
• Custom field ActiveCollabId on Deliverable — links a job back to its ActiveCollab task id, used for lookups and to detect already-imported tasks.
• Parameters.departmentName and Parameters.assignmentType — used to resolve which department/assignment type new jobs get; their values are not part of the export.

Open Questions

• ActiveCollab-GetUserByEmail isn't called by any exported automation — the other flows call GET /api/users/email?email= directly instead, so whether this query is used elsewhere isn't determinable.
• How ActiveCollab is configured to send its webhooks to ActiveCollab-ProcessWebHook (which events, which projects) is not part of this export.