Unsorted issues > Bug

Cyclic Tasks / #3598

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open
Dec 29, 2006
Dec 30, 2006 / guest
Jun 3, 2008 / stenyak
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A feature I´d like to see in this very impressive product are cyclic tasks. So if you add a new task it should be recreated in a given interval eg once a day.

Example:
For quality checking a special thing: "Check XY" (every 9:15 am)
If this item gets closed the new one is created.

Issue report

Minor
Have not tried
 

6 Comments

pixtur

Jan 5, 2007
I am not sure...
Do we really need this feature in the standart distribution?

I would suggest a modifacation like:
  1. create new page like "revertTasks"
  2. similar to notifications trigger this page by cronjob
  3. copy all tasks with a certain tag in the name:
closed Task "Cook coffee <template>"
  copied ->
  open Task "Cook coffee on 2007-01-07"

This would be about 2 pages of code without any modification to the standard php code.

xl

May 28, 2007
agree
pixtur, i would love to have it that way to manage my recurring / standard tasks!

pixtur

May 30, 2007
some more discussion...

1. Doubles

What about doubles? If you didn't finish the task yesterday, does the cronjob create a new one for today?

2. Weekdays

How do we configure when each task is been dublicated? We don't not want to work on sundays, to we?

3. Efforts

I think it would be strange to book efforts on the copies, because it will be hard (probably impossible) to sum up the efforts on a certain task type.

xl

May 30, 2007
version 2
good points!
> 3. Efforts
it would be perfectly alright for me to be able to sum up the efforts for tasks inside one folder, because thats where they should live imho

i thought a while about this. it ends up the questions "when is a new task created" and "how are the new dates calculated

1 no date calculation

for now an easy solution might be like this:
  • a task has a recurring property
  • when i finish the task, i get a task edit view pre-populated with a copy of the current one
  • i set the new start and end date manually

1a simple overridable date calculation

for now an easy solution might be like this:
  • a task has a recurring and a offset property
  • when i finish the task, i get a task edit view pre-populated with a copy of the current one, shift by offset
  • if necessary i set the new start and end date manually

2 fixed but overridable repeat intervals

  • a task has a recurring property
  • when i finish the task, or when end-date expires, a new copy of the actual task is created as follows:
    • start date and end date are incremented by repeat-after.
    • if next-on property is given, an appropriate offset is added to start date and end date, so that start date equals next-on (edit: we should be able to choose if this applies to start or end date)
    • the new copy has the same repeat-after, but no next-on
    • the recurring of the actual task is set to false

3. the bells-and-whistles-solution

we would have to provide a full-blown "recurring events" interface like the ical calendars do. perhaps we could get a library from projects like egroupware or so.

my proposal

for me solution 1 would be a good start: if i dont have solution 3 (which is far away imho) i have to think about the next dates anyway.
for example with monthly press releases which are due to every 10.: i might set a 30-day offset, but would have to correct this anyway.


pixtur

May 31, 2007
version 3
hmmm.
I don't like the idea of an edit form popping up after you close a task. That's somehow weird.

xl

Jun 1, 2007
hmmmhmmmm
the question imho ends up in: at which point in time does the user specify the recurrence date?
  • the answer of solution 3 is: once upon creation of the template, and the specification machine is so mighty that i can say things like "every 3rd wednesday per month but not in august"
  • if we dont have solution 3, the mighty autopilot, but a simpler solution, say with a fixed offset in days, the calculated next-date will not always be what is needed.
and at least for me, i would forget to adjust the date if i am not forced to. but ok, thats me and perhaps someone elses workflow is different. if someone insists we can add an option so the user "check date after task creation?" (which i would set all the time)

what do you think?

(have you noticed? i really want this one, as simple but as fast as possible ;-)
 
 

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