It’s interesting to see the wide variety of feature requests I get for Tasks Pro™ and Tasks. Some people want an Outlook replacement with contacts, appointments and e-mail. Others want dependancies, reporting and Gantt charts (edit: some reporting is on the future plan already). Others have asked for an integrated contacts/journaling system to track calls, etc. Still others want a locked tight system where users can only mark tasks complete, not create or re-assign anything.
Each of these can lead in different directions (some are complimentary). I wonder what other requests are brewing in people’s minds that they haven’t shared with me yet, and what directions they will point to.
This post is part of the project: Tasks Pro™. View the project timeline for more context on this post.
In one respect, I’d like Gantt charts.
In another, I know that you’re going to pick my brain for hours on Gantt chart generation. 😆
The only thing that I really want is dependencies, but I know that as soon as that happens, Gantts are close behind it.
Maybe it’d be good to set up a poll with the top 10 most requested features in the forum. That would provide a visible way to garner feedback and would give people the opportunity to discuss the ideas of what they would like.
After the discussion, you can pick the best one or two features and go from there. Just an idea. 🙂
The basics are all I’m after still. I haven’t switched to Tasks yet because I’m one of those waiting for the better reporting. I’d like to use it to track my time, but my Filemaker system I created in 1997 still works better for now. As soon as some easier cleaner reports enter the mix, I’m there… I’m sure I’m not the only one. I listed these before, but if anyone could expand and if it’ll even display here, here is my current wish-list:
– Preference to turn off relative dates displayed like “yesterday”, etc. (I may have overlooked this)
– The reports I think will solve a lot of my issues, like ‘expanding’ all that you discussed previously
– Option to make date required (for my specific workflow)
– When performing a search, I can’t see what parent task it belongs to without clicking one of them (?Could the parent be listed in one of the columns?)
– ‘Time Spent’ aligned to the right or in it’s own column would help me be able to read the info easier
– Also, time always displayed preference without having to expand would be VERY nice. So if there is no time on the main task, but there is on the sub-tasks, the ability to display this would be helpful.
– Consider a preference for display from “2 Hours, 15 Minutes” to “2:15”
– Desired reports for billing here:
=======================
Company/Task 1 (total hrs: 5)
– 5/10/04 task name (hrs: 2.5)
task description
– 5/9/04 task name (hrs: 2.5)
task description
Company/Task 2 (total hrs: 12)
– 4/10/04 task name (hrs: 6)
task description
– 4/9/04 task name (hrs: 6)
task description
===================
If this is the wrong tool, I’m open to other suggestions…? thx
The main features for the next 2 major releases have been outlined already:
Task templates and recurring tasks in the next release and reporting (including printable views) in the subsequent release. The poll was taken already and these areas are far and away the hot button issues for people.
Brett, you’re after the basics of another type of system. I know that you want a time journalling system and I think Tasks will come closer to fitting your needs with some of the new functionality that is currently planned for future releases. (FYI – You can show the hierarchy for each task in a list by enabling an option in the Server Settings.)
I’m not talking about minor feature additions here. Each of the directions listed above, if followed, have the potential to double (or more) the current codebase.
I’m waiting for Tasks 2012, where it actually does the Tasks you give it.
Barring that, I’d like to see more of an actual API made for the tool. We use a full SCM tool for source code, and it would be nice to link to the tool without lots of source code changes or additions (which require maintenance as new versions are released).
Couldn’t you do quite a bit using HTTP requests? That isn’t a documented API, but it is an open protocol.
Feel free to e-mail me on this, I’m curious about specific problems keeping this from working for you.
seems to me the direction is right at the moment. One thing I like about taskspro is that there are not too many options or settings. You often stick your neck out and essentially say “this is the way you will work” (good examples are that a task can only have one owner and that completing subtasks completes the task; a bad example is the default groups for a child task, which I understand you are fixing). After all you aren’t trying to compete with MS Project are you.
That is why we all appreciate the discussions in the forums about what *are* the simplest and most effective behaviours.
Having said that, I am now going off to the forums to suggest loads more features ….. 🙂
I’m pretty new to tasks (just started using it yesterday) but I was thinking that a feature that could convert emails into tasks would be pretty cool. Most of my tasks come to me via email. My current solution is to leave them marked “unread” until I get to them. Everyonce and awhile I will mistakenly flag a message “read” when I haven’t completed the task yet. A week later I get a phone call from an angry client.
Anyway… I was thinking that if you could set up an email account ex. tasks@yourserver.com and anything you forwarded to that email address would become a task. The subject could be the title, attachments could remain attachments, the body of the email would be your description.
I have no idea if this has been requested before but I would really love this feature.
It’s on the list – you may want to check out the discussion on this in the forums.