Findings sat in the backlog with no status change for two weeks, these are the ones losing money silently.
At a glance
Open Vortex IQ-tagged Height tasks with no field change in 14+ days. Height is built around Tasks (atomic work units) inside Lists (project containers); the abandoned bucket here is the silent leak in the Lists you have tagged for outbound finding routing. Height is engineering-team-friendly with a strong CLI, AI-assisted triage (Copilot), and a real-time data model; teams who use Height typically use it as their single tool for engineering, design, and ops work. The card is the leading indicator that the audit programme is producing findings the team is filing but not actioning.
| What it counts | Open Height tasks where customFields.vortexiq_finding_id is set AND completed = false AND lastUpdatedAt older than 14 days. |
| What counts as movement | Any of: status field change, assignee change, sub-task added, comment posted, due-date change, custom-field edit, or completion. Height tracks lastUpdatedAt on any of these. |
| Project / board scope | All Height Lists tagged vortex_iq_outbound in connector setup. The card aggregates across every connected Height workspace (most teams have one). |
| Status filter | completed = false only. Tasks marked complete drop out the moment Height’s webhook fires. |
| Issue type filter | All Vortex IQ-tagged tasks included regardless of Height task type. |
| Resolution counts | N/A; abandonment is about the open population only. |
| API endpoint | GET /tasks?listIds=<ids>&completed=false&modifiedAt[lt]=<now-14d> paginated via next_cursor. Height’s API is real-time; the 14-day staleness clock evaluates on every webhook event and on a 5-minute scheduled refresh as a safety net. |
| Time window | RT |
| Alert trigger | >5 warn, >15 critical. Engineering-led teams often tune to >3 warn because Height’s emphasis on real-time triage means a stagnating queue is unusual. |
| Sentiment key | Threshold-based, {warn: 5, critical: 15}. |
| Time zone | Height’s timestamps are ISO-8601 UTC. The card aligns the 14-day cutoff to UTC, so a task last touched at 23:55 UTC on day 0 becomes abandoned at 23:55 UTC on day 14 regardless of the merchant’s local timezone. |
| AI Copilot interaction | Height’s Copilot can auto-suggest assignees, status updates, and labels; these suggestions accepted by a human count as movement. Copilot suggestions left unaccepted do NOT count. |
| Roles | owner, operations |
Calculation
Calculated automatically from your Height data. See the At a glance summary above for what the metric tracks and the worked example below for a typical reading.Worked example
A 22-person UK ecommerce engineering team using Height for everything (engineering, design, ops, marketing). Single Height workspace, four Lists taggedvortex_iq_outbound. Snapshot taken on 02 May 26 at 11:30 BST.
| Height List | Open Vortex IQ findings | Abandoned (>14d no movement) | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Engineering, Production | 14 | 4 | Three checkout-error findings post 18 Apr release, one slow-query finding on PDP. |
| Design + Marketing Ops | 8 | 3 | Meta-description regressions on the Easter campaign collection pages. |
| Customer Operations | 5 | 1 | Returns-policy URL drift; assigned but never picked up. |
| Site Reliability (on-call rotation) | 6 | 0 | Engineering closes these inside the on-call sprint; healthy. |
| Total open | 33 | 8 | Above warn (>5), below critical (>15). |
- Status hit warn at +100% vs 30D average. Height’s emphasis on real-time triage means a doubling-vs-baseline is a stronger signal than on Asana or Trello, where multi-week dormancy is more common. Treat this as urgent action this week.
- Engineering Production has the largest cluster (4). Three are post-release debt from the 18 Apr release; one is a slow-query finding. Post-release debt is the #1 cause of abandonment on engineering-led teams; the team shipped the release, moved to the next sprint, and never came back to the audit-flagged regressions.
- Design + Marketing Ops at 3 abandoned is the highest-revenue-risk cluster. Meta-description regressions on Easter campaign collection pages map directly to organic-traffic loss; pair with Google Search Console crawled-but-not-indexed counts to quantify.
- Site Reliability at 0 abandoned is the model. The on-call rotation absorbs SR findings inside the active sprint; this is what good audit-finding triage looks like. Replicate the pattern (clear assignee, fixed cadence, sprint inclusion) on the other three Lists.
- Use Height’s Copilot to suggest the next action. Height’s AI can suggest re-assignment based on past task closures; for the 8 abandoned tasks, Copilot’s suggestions are usually within the right team within 60 seconds. Accepting a Copilot suggestion counts as movement and resets the abandonment clock.
- Pair with
hei_vortexiq_findings_open. A growing open count is acceptable if the team is closing fast enough; abandoned-rate spike alongside a growing open count is the real warning sign on engineering-led teams using Height.
Sibling cards merchants should reference together
| Card | Why pair it with Abandoned Findings | What the combination tells you |
|---|---|---|
| VortexIQ Findings Open | Abandoned is a subset of open. The ratio is the steadier read. | Abandoned ÷ Open above 25% means a quarter of the queue has gone dormant. |
| Finding Resolution Rate (90d) | Resolution rate drops first; abandoned count rises second. | Resolution falling for two weeks then abandoned spiking is the textbook capacity-collapse sequence. |
| Tasks by Assignee | Tells you whether abandonment concentrates on one person. | If 70% of abandoned findings sit on one assignee, the fix is reassignment, not hiring. |
| Avg Time-to-Fix | Cycle-time peer. | Time-to-fix rising AND abandoned rising = team starting then stalling, not refusing the work. |
| Sprint Progress / List Velocity | Findings that never enter a sprint are the ones that abandon. | Low sprint velocity + high abandoned = findings being filed but never planned in. |
| Copilot Acceptance Rate | Height’s AI assist effectiveness. | Low Copilot acceptance + high abandoned = team is bypassing the AI’s suggestions; consider why. |
| Datadog Health Score | Independent peer for technical findings. | Datadog elevated + abandoned rising on technical findings = engineering firefighting and ops falling behind simultaneously. |
| Shopify / BigCommerce Conversion Rate | The downstream truth metric. | Abandoned rising for 14+ days predicts a conversion-rate dip in the following 2 to 4 weeks. |
Reconciling against the vendor’s own dashboard
Where to look in Height’s own UI:Height app and open each List taggedHeight does not ship a built-in “abandoned” view; this card is closest to the saved-filter pattern Height users already know. Why our number may legitimately differ from a saved Height filter:vortex_iq_outbound. Use Height’s filter language (completed:false AND vortexiq_finding_id:* AND modifiedAt < 14d ago) at the top of the list view. Save the filter as a “Smart List” via the Save as filter menu for repeat use. Height’s CLI also supports the same query:height tasks list --filter "completed:false AND vortexiq_finding_id:* AND modifiedAt<14d". Useful for ops-team automations.
| Reason | Direction | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Time zone | Boundary day off | Vortex IQ aligns the 14-day cutoff to UTC; Height’s UI uses your account-profile timezone. A task last touched at 23:55 UTC on day 0 becomes abandoned at 23:55 UTC on day 14 in our view, which may be a different calendar day in your local UI. |
| Custom-field deletion | Ours lower | If vortexiq_finding_id is cleared from a stale task, the task drops out of our count even though it is still abandoned operationally. |
| Cross-list aggregation | Either | Card aggregates across all vortex_iq_outbound Lists; saved Height filters are typically scoped to one List. Open the per-List stack panel to reconcile. |
| Sub-task counting | Ours lower | Vortex IQ creates findings as parent tasks. Untouched sub-tasks beneath a parent do not separately count; only the parent. |
| Copilot-suggested but unaccepted changes | Ours lower | Copilot can show suggestions on a task without modifying lastUpdatedAt. The card treats only accepted suggestions as movement. |
| Webhook delay | Up to 60s stale | A movement event from the last minute may not have reached our index yet. |
| Card | Expected relationship | What causes legitimate divergence |
|---|---|---|
datadog.dd_incidents_active | Independent. Datadog tracks live engineering incidents (server-side); Height tracks the planned remediation work for findings (audit-side). | Datadog growing + Height abandoned growing = engineering firefighting + ops falling behind. |
newrelic.nr_open_incidents | Same shape as Datadog comparison. | Same reasoning. |
shopify.refund_rate | Inverse correlation; abandoned findings on returns/checkout clusters drive refund rate up over a 4 to 8 week window. | Abandoned rising + refund rate rising = compounding signal; act on the abandoned bucket today. |
Known limitations / merchant FAQs
Height shows my task was modified yesterday but the card says abandoned. What’s wrong? Almost always one of two things. (1) The “modification” was a Copilot suggestion shown but not accepted; the card treats only accepted suggestions as movement. Open the task and check the activity feed for an explicit human action in the last 14 days. (2) Webhook delay: an edit made in the last 5 minutes may not have reached us yet; refresh in 5 minutes. What counts as movement on a Height task? Any of: status change, assignee change, sub-task added, comment posted, due-date change, custom-field edit, or completion. Renaming the task or editing the description also counts. Copilot suggestions accepted by a human count; suggestions left unaccepted do not. Following or unfollowing the task does not count. The 14-day window feels arbitrary. Can we tune it? Yes, in Settings, Connectors, Height, Abandonment threshold (days). We default to 14 days because it sits one full sprint plus a buffer. Engineering-led teams using Height often tune this down to 7 days because Height’s real-time-triage culture catches stagnation faster than slower-cadence PM tools. We use multiple Height workspaces. The count looks alarming. Most Height teams use one workspace; if you have multiple (e.g. one per agency client), the card aggregates across all by default. Open the per-workspace stack panel to see which one drives the abandoned count. Velocity dropped, abandoned count rising. What changed? Standard playbook. (1) Open Tasks by Assignee and look for sudden concentration changes; a key person on leave is the single most common cause. (2) Open Sprint Progress; if velocity dropped because findings stopped entering sprints, the bottleneck is the planning meeting, not the team. (3) Cross-check against Datadog incidents; a sustained incident burst pulls the team off audit work for days at a time. (4) Check Copilot Acceptance Rate; a low rate means the team is bypassing the AI’s suggestions and the manual triage friction is the cause. The abandoned count appears suddenly higher overnight. Why? Because the 14-day clock keeps ticking even when no one is editing. If five findings were last touched on the same day exactly 14 days ago, all five become abandoned at the same time the next day. Normal and self-corrects within 24 hours of the team picking the queue back up. Should I close abandoned findings or fix them? Both, depending on triage. Run a weekly 30-minute “abandoned review” with one ops lead. For each: if no real merchant impact, mark asCancelled (Height’s terminal state for “won’t do”; closes the task cleanly). If real merchant impact, reassign and put in next sprint. We see Height-using teams close 30 to 50% of abandoned findings on this triage; the remainder being correctly prioritised is the actual win.
Can Height’s Copilot help me clear the abandoned bucket?
Yes. Open the abandoned filter as a Smart List and right-click any task to invoke Copilot. Copilot suggests next-action (re-assign, update status, mark cancelled, escalate to a different List) based on past task closures and the task’s age. Most teams find Copilot’s suggestions are within the right team within 60 seconds. Accept the suggestion and the abandonment clock resets.
Is this card the right primary watch metric for Height-using merchants?
Yes. Findings Open tells you the queue size; this card tells you the queue health. Use Findings Open to size the team’s workload; use this card to detect execution-discipline regressions. Both are hero cards because they answer different questions; if you only watch one on a Height-using team, watch this one.
Why doesn’t Height ship an “abandoned” view natively?
Height ships the filter primitives (modifiedAt < 14d, customField:value) but not the curated “abandoned” view. The card’s added value is the cross-List aggregation, the Copilot-suggestion handling (treating accepted-only as movement), and the alert thresholds. Engineering teams comfortable with Height’s filter language can build the saved Smart List themselves; the card adds the historical trend, threshold-based alerts, and cross-connector context.
A finding important enough to fix manually but we never used Height to track it. Do we close the task?
Yes. Mark the task completed: true once the work is done. Otherwise it stays in the abandoned bucket. Vortex IQ does not auto-close findings just because the underlying audit signal cleared.
Does Height’s CLI work with this card?
Yes. The card’s filter logic is replicable via Height’s CLI; engineering teams running Height typically build a height-finding-triage shell script that runs the equivalent query and posts the result to Slack. The card adds the Vortex IQ Nerve Centre dashboard view and threshold-based alerting on top.
My team uses Height for everything. Does the count include design and marketing tasks?
Yes if they are in vortex_iq_outbound Lists. The card scope is set by the connector configuration, not by the type of work. To restrict to engineering-only Lists, change the vortex_iq_outbound tag in connector setup.