Calendar:Lightning:Task management: Difference between revisions

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I would like to suggest that the '''Calendar:Lightning:Task management''' project enable users to not only create stand-alone tasks, but also allow users to create '''projects'''. As a result tasks could be assigned to specific projects. This would allow users to easily group and organize tasks.
(Most of the discussion -- lots of great stuff there, thanks! -- was moved to the Discussion area for this page. Click the tab above, or press Alt-T to see and join it.)


I've spent the last nine months developing a web-based Project/Task tracking system. Based on my experiences and results I think you may be able to entice corporate users if you offer both Project and Task Tracking instead of just stand-alone tasks with the very-limited grouping functionality of Outlook.
Some very clear user requirements have emerged for task management:


I look forward to seeing the fruits of your labor!
* Hierarchical task relationships, including dependencies
* Hierarchical task storage, such as by folders
* Rich categorization and grouping primitives, including "project" creation, and association with related mail categories/folders/labels.
* Good email-to-task creation capabilities; Ed O'Loughlin points to the excellent examples at http://gtdsupport.netcentrics.com/tour/.  I also endorse a way to create tasks from selected text, so that it's easy to excerpt email and web pages into personal TODO items.


Addition from Roel Meeuws:
Some of these pieces (E-to-T, categorization, hierarchical storage) are excellent analogues to existing Thunderbird features, and would be good first-release candidates to demonstrate the value of the integration.  This is not to say that all of these things are not fantastic features -- "must have", even, from my perspective -- but I'm trying to stay conscious of the market-timing value in having a first useful release in the summer of this year. Help me be strong!
 
I think it would also be a good idea to be able to track your tasks and project progress in your calendarviews. So, if you look at the current week you also see when your tasks are due, running, or about to start. Maybe it would also be a great idea to be able to add project overviews where you see a timeline with all the tasks.
 
Expanding on Roel's suggestion of projects.  That could possibly be done with an expanded mail label system and [http://kb.mozillazine.org/index.phtml?title=Thunderbird_:_FAQs_:_Message_Grouping message  grouping] or by using calendar [http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/requirements.html#categories categories].  Though for proper project management integration a more robust system might be better.
 
Addition from Ed O'Loughlin:
 
It would also be good to allow tasks/appointments to reference emails, allow creating a task/appointment from an email. See http://gtdsupport.netcentrics.com/tour/ for a good, low ceremony implementation of this.
 
Expanding on the above from Ed it only requires adding [http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/images/sunbird-new-event.png "Defer"] and [http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/images/sunbird-full-toolbar.png "New Task"] actions after the "Reply" "Reply all" "Forward" buttons to get task/appointment integration, ''which is already available''. However it would be usefull to either move such mails to a "Deferred" folder or puting the email contents into the task as a note or [http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/requirements.html#associating associating], as appropiate.  Task management will need to have allocation/delegation added at some point... The existing Forward window requires a "Add Reminder" (new task) checkbox for delegations.
 
Jan Eldenmalm:
 
My experience from working with Outlook is that the grouping of tasks generally does not support my two main activities when scheduling work. 1. Planning ; 2. Execution. With this background I would like to suggest that the task "GUI" will offer the end user the possibility of creting tasks that are "dependent on" or "part of" some other task. This simple relation between tasks make viewing (planning or executing) of them more efficient. Also these two basic relations turn the "task" manager into a quite advanced project management tool, as external plugnins can be made to "display" critical path and other "project" management related information derivates - without demanding it from the basic task manager.

Revision as of 18:10, 24 January 2005

(Most of the discussion -- lots of great stuff there, thanks! -- was moved to the Discussion area for this page. Click the tab above, or press Alt-T to see and join it.)

Some very clear user requirements have emerged for task management:

  • Hierarchical task relationships, including dependencies
  • Hierarchical task storage, such as by folders
  • Rich categorization and grouping primitives, including "project" creation, and association with related mail categories/folders/labels.
  • Good email-to-task creation capabilities; Ed O'Loughlin points to the excellent examples at http://gtdsupport.netcentrics.com/tour/. I also endorse a way to create tasks from selected text, so that it's easy to excerpt email and web pages into personal TODO items.

Some of these pieces (E-to-T, categorization, hierarchical storage) are excellent analogues to existing Thunderbird features, and would be good first-release candidates to demonstrate the value of the integration. This is not to say that all of these things are not fantastic features -- "must have", even, from my perspective -- but I'm trying to stay conscious of the market-timing value in having a first useful release in the summer of this year. Help me be strong!

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