Productive

Productive

Agency operations platform. Most "missing field" or 403 errors trace back to a missing parent in the resource chain or to the calling person not being on the project team.

Resource chains (traverse top-down)

• Project (in a Workflow) → Board → Task List → Task → Subtask / Comment / Attachment / Time Entry
• Company → Deal (in a Pipeline + Status) → Project (when won) → Invoice (Line Items priced via Services + Rate Cards)
• Person → Project Assignment → Booking → Time Entry

Use include= (comma-separated) on reads to sideload related entities in one round trip instead of issuing follow-up fetches.

Creating a project

Requires a workflow id, a project_manager id (the calling person works), and either a company id (billable) or project_type_id=2 (internal). List workflows, people, and companies first to pick valid ids.

Creating a task

Tasks live inside task_list → board → project. A fresh project starts with no boards, so the end-to-end scaffold is project → board → task_list → task with both project_id and task_list_id. workflow_status_id must come from the project's workflow.

Cascading deletes

Boards and task lists have no direct delete route. Remove them by deleting the parent project, which cascades the whole subtree. To make a board "go away" without losing the project, archive via update instead.

Direct delete is supported on tasks, projects, sections, comments, attachments, services, expenses, pages, bookings, contact entries, deals, and time entries.

Permissions are person-scoped

Every mutation runs as the Productive person bound to the workspace credential. A 403 on update or delete almost always means that person is not the assignee, project manager, or admin on the parent project — fix by adding them to the project team, not by retrying. Sample-data projects ([SAMPLE] templates a fresh organization ships with) restrict updates to the original creator; for end-to-end automation create a fresh project owned by the calling person.

Bookings vs time entries

• Booking — planned future allocation. Reserves capacity, drives utilization charts. Booking groups roll multi-week assignments into one row; resource requests are unfilled booking demand.
• Time entry — actual hours logged. Belongs to a person + date + (task or service); the service link is what makes it billable. Timers convert to time entries on stop. Time entry versions are the audit trail. Approval policies lock entries once a period closes.

CRM and billing chain

Deals own line items priced via services + rate cards. Won deals convert to projects; invoice attributions link an invoice line back to its originating deal/project line. Recurring invoices generate on a schedule and payment reminder sequences send the dunning emails.

Custom fields

Workspace-defined per resource type. To write: list custom fields filtered by resource_type, then for dropdowns also list options, then send custom_fields: {<field_id>: <value-or-option-id>} on the resource.

Reporting

Booking reports and timesheet reports pre-aggregate server-side. Prefer them over rolling up time entries client-side for utilization or planned-vs-actual questions.