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Re: New task state: waiting

 

That makes sense.

As Nimit and Izidor pointed out, it's actually more-or-less doable
with the current features. However, this is a bit of a hack, and one
could perfectly argue that this should be directly available and not
"constructed" through the currently available mechanisms. Many other
task organizers actually provide this feature.

However I would break this idea in several features:

 1) The "waiting" state. As said, it would correspond to items that
wouldn't be actionable even when they have no dependency, since they
depend on an *external* event/action (btw, this would typically be the
state of a task assigned to someone else in a collaborative
environment)

 2) The ability to browse tasks in the waiting state, together with
the ability to know for how long a task in "on hold". This feature
would be useful to help someone who is reviewing his/her organization,
which is a crucial step in every organizational system. However, to
provide something really useful to the user, I think we should
consider the "reviewing tasks" aspect as a whole (i.e. we should not
just focus on the issue of tasks with the "waiting" state), especially
since we're currently discussing a GTG re-design. To speak more
concretely, I think it means we should reorganize the task browsing
primitives (currently: the sidebar, "work view" button the "closed
tasks" pane. In the future: sidebar+topbar+...)  to ease the
identification and selection of specific "views" for  the user,
depending on what he/she wants to do (e.g.: have a "waiting" view to
display stalled tasks, with "on hold" times, have a "closed tasks"
view to get a peak at the work done, etc.). To progress in this issue,
scenarios should be defined, it will help to identify the best UI. We
started that some time ago with the redesign effort, but it's
currently on hold. (my fault, sorry)

 3) The ability to have "on hold" tasks to pop-up back in the task
list after a given time. This is not really required for the whole
"waiting"-state tasks stuff to be useful, but it's certainly a feature
that would appeal to some people. As such, IMHO, it should be viewed
as an optional feature (only use UI space if explicitely requested).
And if its implementation ends out to require significant UI space
(new pane, dedicated item in the sidebar, dedicated parameters, etc.),
then I would squarely recommend to implement this as a plugin

Bertrand

On Thu, Jun 14, 2012 at 2:11 PM, Izidor Matušov
<izidor.matusov@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> It is possible to do with GTG features:
>
>  * Set start. I would like to wait a week, I set the start date in the next
> week
>  * Create a special tag like @wait, @delegate and set this tag to hide in
> WorkView
>  * Set due date to Sometimes (in case the doctor doesn't have time for the
> next 6 months)
>
> We might need to propagate those features better. Any ideas how?
>
> Izidor
>
>
> On 06/14/2012 01:08 PM, Lionel Dricot wrote:
>>
>> Hello,
>>
>> I've discovered that, very often, a task is not done but I can't do
>> anything about it because I'm waiting for someone else to make an
>> action. There are multiple example but let's take one:
>>
>> - Get a medical certificate for sport
>> --->  Making an appointment with the doctor.
>>
>> I call the doctor and he replies that he will call me back another day.
>> I can not mark the task as done (I don't have an appointment).
>>
>> What I would like is to mark this task as "waiting".
>>
>> A waiting task will not be displayed in the workview. Also, any parent
>> will not be displayed. (I don't need to see "get a medical certificate
>> if I'm waiting for the doctor to call back).
>>
>>
>> A list of waiting task will be available (probably through the sidebar)
>> and, for each waiting task, the waiting time will be displayed. That
>> will give you at a glance what waiting task need to be reconsidered. (if
>> I see that it has been two weeks since making an appointment is in
>> "waiting", I will re-active it.
>>
>> Additionnally, you could mark a task as "waiting" for a given amount of
>> time. This would then have the same effect as "start time" but with
>> another kind of UI. In fact, it might even completely replace start
>> time, which is not the most intuitive feature of GTG.
>>
>>
>> What do you think ?
>>
>> Lionel
>>
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>
>
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-- 
Bertrand Rousseau


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