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For the record, there's only one developer, Dan G. The rest of us are just fans that are happy to contribute to a good common cause.
About File Link Inheritance, do you mean you want each subtask to inherit one or more links from a parent?
To my knowledge that's not in there, and it seems like it might be problematic since we can have multiple file links.
What do you think about having a single sub-task is just a container for all the file links for a given parent? The "task" there is itself to ensure that you have all files. It may or may not be complete, but when complete you'll know that whenever you look at a parent that needs tasks that this special subtask will have all the files.
You can identify these special tasks with a tag or category, or icon or custom attribute. I beleive (could be wrong here) you could also get other tasks to refer to this one, and then just use a hotkey to go to that one task from any that need it.
Another approach would be with a bit of automation, getting a UDT to pull the file links from a parent and then loading the current task with that data. That solution requires a developer but it's certainly possible and with not too much effort.
Anything good in there?
(If you like ToDoList, please consider supporting the software with a Like, +1, etc on any of the sites where we hang out. )
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I was amazed when I detected multiple links for this attribute after I modified it multiple times. I don't see the problems you see, but I might not understand most of your reply. I'm new to TDL and probably don't understand its vocabulary yet.
I tend to plan tasks based on the results (work breakdown structure) I need. As we still use files, not more detailed objects, a file can be used in multiple tasks, not the other way around. That's why I need inheritance for this attribute.
ATM I don't see the purpose of simple inheritance applied to other attributes. However, I'm thinking about more sophisticated methods for combining priorities (and risks) of parent task.
I currently use an XSL stylesheet to extract all the data I need at any moment. I use TASK ancestor navigation to find the file link for subtasks if there are any. I was wondering why exactly this attribute has no inheritance.
I hope this clarifies my suggestion better.
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Currently, TDL simply overwrites the subtask's attribute with whatever the parent contains, with no attempt to only copy over what changed.
This would mean that if you made changes to a subtask's file references and then subsequently modified the parent, the parent's changes would overwrite the subtask's prior changes.
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Hello, I am trying to set default reminders for my tasks. I noticed I can manually set them up but there appears to be no option to automatically populate the reminders when entering new tasks.
Thanks so much.
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This is not possible in 7.0.x, but I will add it to 7.1.
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Hello,
TodoList is a fantastic tool that I can use in my departement, but with inter-department projects, I MUST use MS Projects (and I cannot change this).
How can I import/export/merge from and to MS Projects.
Your suggestions are welcome
Thanks
Serge
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There is a CodeProject page[^] which discusses the topic of export to Microsoft Project. That's probably too far out of date for use.
There isn't a direct connection to MS Project yet. However, Dan has been working on the TDL plugin model to facilitate import and export via .NET programs. So with knowledge of the MS Project API this is certainly do-able. I'd do it now with a gun to my head or enough pizza and beer in front of me.
I hate to say it again, but my Library was designed for this kind of thing as well. I just haven't published it yet. If your company could help fund some of my time for this freeware, I'd be happy to continue development during normal working hours. Otherwise it remains an "as time permits" personal project, which right now gets it no time at all.
You might be able to do this yourself. The ToDoList .tdl schema is available (I probably need to update it) and can be used to generate code to process the .tdl XML. Or you can use XSL on XML provided through the Transform feature. So now let's say you have XML data and a means of morphing it. But morph to what? I haven't looked at Project recently but I know it imports from various formats. You need to put the TDL data into a format that it will accept, whether XML, CSV, Excel, or some other. It's just a matter of putting specific fields where the Project importer expects it. For more refined integration with existing Project files, their API can be used along with XML handling libraries to pull data from the .tdl transform into Project.
Going in the other direction, from Project to ToDoList is not as straightforward (and the above is!?! ). You would need to use the Project API to pull from the source, or export to a convenient medium format, and then use XML tools to merge that data into existing .tdl files. Again, this is where the Library would do all of the work for you, allowing you to work with the .tdl file through a nice OOP API.
So there are options here but nothing built-in yet and nothing immediately available. Hey, it's FOSS.
What do you think your next step would be? DIY? Get someone else to help create an interface? Skip it?
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Hello,
Thanks for your clear answer. I will do some tests by my own.
ToDoListLib .NET. is quite old (2014), so I think it is a dead project and I will not use it.
Best Regards
Serge
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Well, not dead, but the project page sure sets that impression. It's simply been on hold pending time and motivation to continue on it.
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Hello,
Thanks for your suggestion.
Best Regards
Serge
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Thanks Dan's great works!.
About Kanban plugin,I have two suggestions,could you implement it in next version?
Feature One
Can One Column title come from a combination of one or more attribute values?
for exmple,When I define a column title(Doing),which including three status(Open/New/Delay),
these three status could be comninate with comma.
The background is that in our project,the status defination is more than ten.
Feature Two
Can add swimming lanes in kanban plugin?
for example,the Column status(todo/doing/done) was displayed by vertical,and category properties as swimming lanes was displayed by horizontal.
The backgroud is that ,when one story was divised to some taks, I want to see which task in wich status clearly.
thanks!
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tonghuali wrote: Can One Column title come from a combination of one or more attribute values? Currently when you drag tasks between Kanban columns the task assumes the status associated with that column.
So the bit I've yet to figure out is what to do when you drag a task into a column having more than one status associated with it?
tonghuali wrote: Can add swimming lanes in kanban plugin? This requests presumes a solution to the previous one so I'll wait until we have solved that first before answering.
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.dan.g. wrote: So the bit I've yet to figure out is what to do when you drag a task into a column having more than one status associated with it?
The company bug tracing system status have more than 10 values,In fact I only want to know whic bugs done,which bugs doing(the doing status may be include 5 status values,I want to display them with One customer Status).
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I understand that you have specific requirements but that doesn't help me solve the problem I identified.
It might be easier for you to just use filters...
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Hi,
i would like to second esp. Feature 2.
Chris
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Can you comment on the issue I raised with the OP?
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Both are worthy considerations, if quite advanced and not that common in free software.
FWIW, the only way I can see this working is if TDL asks the user at the time of moving (e.g. dialog, which is probably ugly). I don't think a default action would be useful.
Further, I don't think that the single select status needs to be handled differently to the multi-select category.
zajchapp
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zajchapp wrote: I don't think that the single select status needs to be handled differently to the multi-select category. Are you suggesting that dragging an item to a column with only one status would still require the user to be prompted to change the status to the only possible value?
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No. Sorry for the lack of clarity.
I was merely suggesting that status is single select. Moving a task from one column to another replaces the status. If moving to a column that is a combination of statuses, the user would need to choose the status, probably via dialog.
In the case of the swimlanes, these rows are likley to be defined by a multi-select attribute, such as Category, Tag, Assigned to, or some user defined attribute. In this case, when moving from one row to another, one category would be removed, and the new one added. Again, if the row had multiple categories, the user would need to choose the new category to add.
On further thought, I am not sure moving between rows or having rows contain multiple categories would be a common thing, unless the rows are for people and teams. At least much less common than for columns. Should functionality for moving between rows / multiple categories for rows possibly be deferred?
zajchapp
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zajchapp wrote: Moving a task from one column to another replaces the status. If moving to a column that is a combination of statuses, the user would need to choose the status, probably via dialog. Thx Johannes, then we are in total agreement
zajchapp wrote: Should functionality for moving between rows / multiple categories for rows possibly be deferred? I think I will go further and also postpone swimlanes for 7.1 simply because they're beyond the scope of my plan.
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.dan.g. wrote: I think I will go further and also postpone swimlanes for 7.1 simply because they're beyond the scope of my plan
Fair enough.
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Hello!
This is a new feature request which I think maybe useful to many people.
The basic idea is that you might only have so much time for a given task (especially if, as in my case, a task represents some definite time period like a week, a work-week, or a quarter).
When planning for the next time period you would thus create this parent task which should represent say a work-week or a project, and you know that you can spend no more than 100 hours for example. Then you would either drag-drop or copy-paste existing tasks into it, or create new sub tasks. When those subtasks have time estimate set, the program would check if the newly added subtask will push overall time for the parent task above it's specified maximum value, in which case:
- a warning maybe given?
- subtask is marked as being "outside of time budget"
- some otehr predefined behavior?
What I do right now is to basically end all parent tasks with something like /150h inidcating total maximum time. This is of course less than optimal and is prone to errors. For one thing you need to manually check if you are "above the budget". Then there is no data speration between task title and actual value.
So perhaps you can introduce this duration bounding feature in some fashion. Potentially the same can apply for custom columns too. Most obvious case would be cost calculations, where each task might have associated cost, and you should not exceed the overall maximum cost for the parent.
That's my feature suggestion.
As always, thank you for such an excellent product!
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I think this and similar requests could be best handled by an enhancement to allow us to perform calculations with attributes, especially custom attributes.
In the current example we should be able to perform this custom/unique logic in a UDT, though at the moment I'm not sure how to make it happen:
- I'm thinking of passing a UDT a selection with multiple tasks.
- The data for those would include either estimates or maximum allocated time (custom attribute).
- One of the selected tasks would be the parent, also including a max time field.
- The UDT passes the data to a command-line program, where any language can be used to perform calculations on the fields passed in, and it will return a result.
- "Somehow" that result then needs tobe re-integrated into the selected tasks. Perhaps the Risk field could be kicked up to indicate the parent task has a high risk of failure due to long-running subtasks. And/Or a comment can be set.
All of this could be done easily with the .NET Library, though I still regret that I haven't had time to publish it.
But what I'm getting at is that while I think the original idea is useful, it's another creative usage of the data that's already in TDL, and I think we'd do better to have a mechanism that allows us to perform calculations on fields, and to set fields with the results, rather than to get individual solutions as Dan considers the merits of each.
For example, I think it might be more helpful in the long run to have a custom attribute which could calculate the value of other attributes, like a field called RealisticEstimate with a calculated value of "$(TIMEESTIMATE)*5" with some mechanism that allowed for changing the background color of task's parent to red if that value was greater than some other literal or computed value. Something like this:
$(PRIORITYCOLOR)="255" * ($(TIMEESTIMATE)*5 > $(CUSTOM_MAXTIME))
So if the realistic estimate is over budget (value = true = 1) then the priority color goes red, otherwise it's 0 = black.
Another way to do this would be to create the custom attributes for MaxTime, add data, then export the .tdl to CSV. You can then use Excel to manipulate that data fairly easily. With a UDT and perhaps some macros or an Excel template I think this could be done rather elegantly.
In other words, there is already a solution for this, just not built-in. To the next possible, reasonable, and perhaps expected response of "well, I'd like my idea to be built-in" : ToDoList could do a Lot of things, depending on what Dan wants to do with his software. But I think it's power lies in its potential to allow us to do whatever We want, rather than trying to get every possible cool feature built-in. It's the "teach a man to fish" concept: If Dan teaches this software how to do calculations based on data that we provide, then we'll all "eat for a lifetime", but for each one feature added, we "eat for a day".
What do you think?
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Actually, as a matter of fact, when I wrote this suggestion yesterday I wanted to elaborate on it and bring up the idea of custom calculations, but thought it would be another feature request. I am glad you did bring this up though, as it is certainly something I was looking for, however thought it would be more consuming to implement than the Max Allocated Time feature, so did not mention it.
But to extend on it, ideally something Excel-like would be really awesome (in as far as allowing calculations on numeric fields - custom and built-in). For example having a "CalculatedColumn" column type where you would enter a formula like in Excel.
One particular usage scenario for me was basically to determine what should be done first, second, third, etc., where just sorting by priority or multi-sorting on priority and due date for example is not enough. For instance, you might want to decide you should first do only top-priority tasks, but those that can be done quickly (presumably because the impact will be the biggest on those). As such you could define a custom calculated column: Priority / TimeEst and sort tasks on those.
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