Repeating Task Issues / Problems
I realize there's a symbol that shows up to identify repeating tasks before they show up as due, but I do not see anything that identifies these tasks as repeating on the days they are due. It would help enormously to have this showing on active tasks so 1) we can determine if we need or don't need to add another replacement task and 2) so we will know the consequences of deleting the task from Nirvana (I am assuming for now that deleting one repeating task deletes the entire series that follows it. If that's not the case, then I am not clear - because repeating tasks don't seem to be identified as repeating when presented on their due date - how to cancel the repeating action of task when it appears on its due date). Regarding the deletion of a repeating task, I think it would be extremely beneficial to have a clearly defined option to delete one task or delete the entire repeating task series.
2 Posted by Lasse on 10 Apr, 2011 05:12 PM
Just wanted to post the same suggestion. I just went through my list of tasks in Focus and wasn't sure which items I could check off (because they're a repeating task) and which I had to re-schedule instead of checking them off. Because nothing identifies the repeating tasks as such, I had to switch between Focus and Scheduled to be sure.
3 Posted by Lasse on 12 Apr, 2011 07:36 PM
A different suggestion that relates to repeating tasks: I just made a change to a repeating task in Focus and noticed that the "spawn" in Scheduled wasn't changed. In my opinion changing one should also change the other.
Support Staff 4 Posted by David McLaughlin on 12 Apr, 2011 09:38 PM
Hi guys,
If I understand your questions and comments correctly, I believe there is a bit of a disconnect as to the way we've implemented recurring tasks.
To be clear, I'm going to define my terminology so we can make sure we're talking about the same thing -- terms not what you (or me) might normally use I suspect, but I think it will help avoid confusing terminology.
There are two components to a recurring task; the scheduled pattern task (pattern) and the new tasks created from it (spawned) that are created as a Next task in Focus based on the pattern.
The pattern task is always in scheduled, has the little recycle icon, and the displays the next date a task will be spawned. It serves two purposes; hold the pattern and determine when the next spawned instance is to be created. That's it.
When the pattern is examined, and a new task is to be created (spawned) -- the pattern determines the information the spawned task will contain, the new task is created, and it's placed into Focus and the scheduled pattern task will be updated to show the date when the next spawned task is to be created.
No attachment or relationship is maintained between the pattern task and the spawned task.
Changing the attributes on the spawned task has no effect on the scheduled pattern -- at this point it is effectively independent of the recurring pattern task.
While it has the same attributes initially because of the pattern it was created from, there is no restriction intended to be enforced that would keep you from changing the spawned task attributes, including changing a due date for the task, adding a tag, etc. -- or simply deleting it entirely. None of those actions has any effect on the pattern task you see in the Scheduled category.
If you want to change the recurring pattern (or totally delete it), that won't affect already spawned tasks -- again, they're independent.
There is one issue we noticed, that we will be fixing in a later release, recreating deleted spawned tasks.
If a spawned task has been deleted (it was not completed and was not logged), when the scheduled pattern task is examined to see if a new task should be spawned, it's not aware that a task was ever spawned, and will re-spawn a task under certain conditions.
I hope that helps -- feel free to ask any questions.
Thanks,
David
5 Posted by Lasse on 12 Apr, 2011 10:30 PM
@David, thanks for the clarification. I wonder what the rationale is for making the spawns independent from the pattern task. I was a bit surprised since from what I can tell, this is not how it works in most apps. This is neither good nor bad, it's just that many might not expect this behavior. Now that I know it, it's not a big deal. It's just that I added a note to a spawned task, checked it off later in the day and fortunately saw that the note was missing in the pattern task in Scheduled before I emptied the Trash. Had I not noticed it in time, the note would have been lost.
Your answer doesn't address the other issues mentioned, though (and maybe it wasn't supposed to). It makes sense that the pattern task does just what it says - it defines the pattern according to which the spawns are created. But since there is the option to define when the next copy is created, it would make sense to use this feature to allow for a deviation from the pattern (while keeping the general pattern unchanged). Not all of my repeating tasks follow a pattern to 100%. For example, I have tasks that I need to do every Tuesday. However, if I'm out of the office the next Tuesday, I need to get the task done on Monday. Here it would be helpful if I could simply adjust the "Next" date so that the next copy is created on Monday without having to change the pattern. Sure, I could check "Each copy has a due date" and then choose to make the task appear in Focus a day early. But that way I'd have to a) set a due date and b) change the rule again on Monday. And doing a) could be sacrilegious, since dates are sacred in GTD, as Proximo has recently pointed out! :) And b) would just be a hassle.
The other issue mentioned was that currently there's no way to tell from looking at Focus which task is a copy of a repeating task and which is a non-repeating task that I don't want to delete. I have a number of tasks which I have to do weekly but which don't follow a pattern. Sometimes I need to do it on Monday, sometimes on Wednesday. Therefore I can't make it a repeating task because it lacks a clear pattern. That's why I simply re-schedule the task once I've completed it (instead of checking it off). But since it's not always easy to remember which tasks are copies that I can simply check off and delete, and which ones aren't copies and need to be re-scheduled, it would be helpful if there was a way to immediately recognize a repeating task in Focus (for example by adding a symbol next to the task name). Unlike some others I have a fairly large number of scheduled and repeating tasks and can't always remember which are which.
Support Staff 6 Posted by David McLaughlin on 03 May, 2011 02:09 PM
@Lasse - I've put a task on the project list to be able to "force-spawn" the next occurrence of a recurring task. You could then spawn the occurence early and change the spawned task as needed, such as making it scheduled for Monday.
You can now tell a recurring task by doing a right-click to get the context menu; a recurring task will have the task name, a ~ and the date it was spawned.
And I did forget to put in one caveat to my statement...
No attachment or relationship is maintained between the pattern task and the spawned task. which should have appended
..., except the spawned task knows which pattern task it was spawned from.
That is why in the spawned task context menu you have the option to Edit Repeating Rules... which will bring up the recurrence rules for the pattern task.
David
7 Posted by Lasse on 09 May, 2011 01:37 PM
Great, thanks!