Be able to set task progress, not just complete / incomplete

[Abe Pazos]

I really like the way Taskfreak implemented this. You can quickly try it out at http://demo.taskfreak.com/

With one click you can set, for each task, how much is completed. They use 6 possible levels (0,1,2,3,4,5). Clicking on the 5th level means the task is done. Instead of using a boolean to indicate "complete" (I don't know if that's how it is stored), one could store a value between 0 and 100.

Why?
There are tasks that take days or weeks to complete. For example reading a book. Being able to see that the task was started, and to see the progress is helpful, I believe. Otherwise you see the task there sitting for a week, like no progress was done, until one day it is done. Watching a task list with progress indicators gives you a very quick overview of what's almost finished, what was started and what not. What's your opinion?

(hopefully this was not proposed already, I spent some time searching for it)

[Lionel Dricot (ploum-deactivatedaccount)]

I personally do not like such a feature as it makes the UI a lot more complex, requires a lot more interaction to be useful (all your tasks have to be up-to-date).

I really believe that a task is either done, either not done. Any intermediary step is bullshit for manager. (have you done your presentation ? "Yes, at 80%" means "No")

I really oppose to have anything like that in the main UI. If any, it should definitely comes as a plugin.

[Luca Invernizzi (invernizzi)]

I agree with Lionel. GTG focuses on being as simple as possible to be fast to use. Then, every user can customize his own version of GTG with plugins to better suit his organization style.

[Abe Pazos (hamoid)]

In my opinion one extra button per task doesn't make the UI *much* more complex, but it's obviously simpler without it.

Actually, it can reduce the number of clicks. Now you do two clicks to mark a task as done, with this feature it's just one.

I don't think it "requires a lot more interaction to be useful". Imagine a one week long task. Each day in the evening when you stop working, you do ONE click to update the status, that's it. Currently you update nothing until you are finished (except maybe the notes inside the task). For small tasks you just click 100% and forget about it, one click less than currently.

The example about the "have you done your presentation?" is just one type of task, but there are others where progress does matter.

Is it possible to add a button to each task in the list, using a plugin? If it's not possible, and you have to go to a menu to find out the completion percentage of a task then it looses it's meaning. The good thing in Taskfreak is that you can see the status of a project just with one quick look. I think from the UI point of view, that's good. You understand the status quickly and with little effort.

In any case thanks for GTG!
I use it every day and it's very useful :)

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

On Wed, Nov 10, 2010 at 10:29:24AM -0000, Lionel Dricot wrote:
> I really believe that a task is either done, either not done. Any
> intermediary step is bullshit for manager. (have you done your
> presentation ? "Yes, at 80%" means "No")

Heh, well said.

There could be some value to having a way to express fraction of work
done, maybe in a more explicit way. For instance, if someone were to
use tags for grouping project tasks together, then expressing "8 of 10
tasks done" in some form might be meaningful.

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

On Wed, Nov 10, 2010 at 03:11:33PM -0000, Abe Pazos wrote:
> In my opinion one extra button per task doesn't make the UI *much* more
> complex, but it's obviously simpler without it.

"It is but a wafer thin mint!"

> I don't think it "requires a lot more interaction to be useful". Imagine
> a one week long task. Each day in the evening when you stop working, you
> do ONE click to update the status, that's it.

Everyone has a different workflow for how they manage their tasks, but
I think the default design intent with gtg is at a smaller level of
fidelity than this. For instance, I try to define most of my tasks as
1-4 hour work chunks. If I have a task that I know is going to take
several days, the first thing I do is figure out how to break it up into
smaller task chunks.

So for me, and others who manage their tasks in gtg similarly, a
task-level percent-done indication is going to be superfluous.

But, like I mentioned in my other message, I could see this useful if
the measure were at a tag level, for workflows that use tags to organize
projects, as a way of tracking progress towards an objective.

> Is it possible to add a button to each task in the list, using a plugin?

You can pretty much do any UI manipulation you wish via plugins. You
use the plugin api to retrieve the browser object and can access its
internals pretty liberally. If this sounds like something you'd really
like to see in gtg and either know or are willing to learn some python,
it could be a good learning challenge.

[Lionel Dricot (ploum-deactivatedaccount)]

We discussed that a lot between GTG developers and we agreed that not having any task "progress-meter" is a strong core design decision. People who really want this feature can use other softwares or maybe implement a plugin for that.