Priority is a judgement your team makes — this matters more than that.
The due date is a fact about the calendar — this was owed by Friday.
Neither one changes the other. Setting something to High does not move its date; a date passing does not raise its priority.
Side by side
| Priority | Due date | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | An attention level someone chose for this condition, on this project. | The date evidence is expected by. |
| Values | High Normal Low Normal is the default. | A date, or none at all.Most conditions have no due date until someone sets one. |
| Who sets it | Certifier or Admin, by hand — on the row's actions menu, or in bulk. | Certifier or Admin, by hand. |
| Where it shows | The row, the Priority filter, and the dashboard's high-priority list. | The Due Date column, with late dates marked. |
| Does it send email? | No. Priority is silent. | Yes — due dates drive the reminder emails. |
| Is it inherited? | No. Every High or Low was set deliberately on this project and is recorded in the activity trail. | No. |
Priority is deliberately project-local. It is never copied from a template or carried over when conditions are duplicated. If a condition reads High, somebody on your project decided that — which is what makes the High list worth trusting.
The behaviour that surprises people
Uploading a document against a late condition quietly stops it looking late. The amber row, the red date chip and the dashboard's Overdue badge all disappear the moment evidence arrives — even though the date itself has not changed and the condition is still open.
This is intentional. Those warnings exist to say “nobody has delivered this”, and once somebody has, continuing to shout at the project team is noise. The date stays visibly past in the Due Date column; it just stops being flagged as a problem.
One exception worth knowing. If the uploaded document is then rejected in review, the condition's own warning colours come back — because there is now a real problem again. Evidence arriving silences lateness; evidence failing review does not.
Which should I use for what?
- “What does this project need from me first?” → Priority. It is the only signal that reflects a human decision about importance, so it is the one that survives a project where everything is technically late.
- “What should we be chasing?” → the due date, via the Documentation filter's Overdue value. That combines “past due” with “nothing delivered” — see Outstanding, Overdue, Submitted.
- “What's genuinely at risk?” → both. A High-priority condition that is also Overdue is the shortest, most useful list on the project.
A note on the word “urgent”
DocuBuild deliberately avoids it. “Urgent” blurs the two things this page separates — whether someone decided it matters, and whether the calendar has run out. Keeping Priority and due dates in separate columns means you can always tell which of the two you are looking at.