ForumsQuestionsSub Sub Tasks
Sub Sub Tasks
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AntonioTroitsky |
Do you plan to do subsubtask in your toodledo like what you have did with outlines notes?
It will be more helpful if you create to do list for toodledo "Upcoming features". The users could vote for some new features that they want to be added first. I guess it will help everyone. |
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Jake Toodledo Founder |
We do not plan to do sub-subtasks in the Tasks section. If you want to break things down into sub-subtasks, please use an outline. Soon, you will be able to attach an outline to a task to make this easier.
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cgava.mah |
Dear Antonio, Jake and All
This topic of sub sub stuffs is a major issue of Toodledo IMHO, even if the rest is, IMHO too, skillfully and very professionnaly addressed. I don't have time to find the post where Toodledo member detailed why this position, and why this issue, but I remind the explanation sound correct, and very acceptable. But, it does not remove the issue of synchronizing Toodledo with business that have deep breakdown structure, like classical project management. When dealing personnal tasks, deep breakdown structure can be adressed by combining folders/projects/tasks. The issue comes when you want to use Toodledo as personnal frontend for ALL your tasks, event thos coming from over repositories, mainly professional, like issue manager or collaborative project management. Having no deep breakdown structure capability is there REALLY annoying, because one shall do a mapping with the hiearchy of the original repository (Project on one side becomes folder on the other, subproject becomes projets, and other nested items shall then be combined in the name of the task, with - or _, and a naming rule, or some other complex mapping)... So, event if I am totally satisfied from other perspectives, this issue may constraint me to leave Toodledo, if the mapping is too complicated. Anyway, the product is good, and the team responsive. Best regards |
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James_1331156503 |
This was the reason I left Toodledo and went to omnifocus instead. It's a shame, but they seem to think there are no users out there that have complex projects or broad use cases.
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Salgud |
Posted by James_1331156503:
This was the reason I left Toodledo and went to omnifocus instead. It's a shame, but they seem to think there are no users out there that have complex projects or broad use cases. It could be that, or it could be that they think that they'll attract more new paid users, and make more money, buy adding features like Outlines instead. While I may not personally like their decision, having owned my own businesses, I understand that they are in business to make money. If I owned TD, and thought I could bring in 10% more paid customers by adding a new feature, or keep 2% of my present users by enhancing old functionality, I wouldn't spend a lot of time agonizing over the decision. |
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Jason Bushell |
Put simply, TD isn't really designed for massive project management.
I think that kind of feature would probably only be used by a minority of users, and that most people who had large projects to manage would use software specifically geared for that purpose. It caters for people who want to manage individual workloads, and for smaller teams to keep track of tasks. |
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DSM_2 |
On that note, I have two suggestions for Toodledo to implement immediately:
1. Find a way to integrate these forums into the Toodledo apps or into some other mobile devices (iPhone, Android, etc.) apps. For instance, get it added to the TapATalk network. This would make it easier to communicate on the forums. 2. Add a "Use Cases" forum to the list of forums here. In this forum, users could detail the particular Use Cases they are looking to solve, Toodledo admins could break down the Use Case into manageable pieces, and finally the thread for each Use Case could be marked with a status (solved, considering, in-progress, rejected, etc.). Users could also add their support to particular Use Case needs this way. In the long run, this would go a long way to making Toodledo seem responsive to customer needs as well as provide more direct documentation on how to use Toodledo for customer-specific issues. |
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Jake Toodledo Founder |
Thanks for the feedback.
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eddie.hillard |
I run a business integrating security trading software into some of the nation's largest brokerage firms those plans, using the previous posters words are "massive projects" and I would not expect TD in its current iteration to handle those projects.
I use TD to manage my family of five. And even with that limited scope I find not having sub subtasks very handicapping. Without them TD quickly becomes a to do list rather than a tool to help us become more effective and efficient in the things we need to do. TD, you should reserve unlimited subtasks for future upgrades, but adding one or two additional levels to a paid Gold subscriber does not seem like an unjustified request. |
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Jason Bushell |
Can you give us an example of a scenario where you would use sub-sub-tasks?
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Salgud |
I can. I am involved in a large, 5 yr project. That project is run by several work groups, which, in turn, have projects. So the heirarchy would be the main project, CPM, a work group, say PPWG, the project they are doing, and it's tasks. So if TD had more levels, it would look like
CPM -PPWG --Project X ---Task1 ---Task2 And there are more than a few instances where yet another level would be appropriate. The way I manage this now in TD, is that CPM is a lifetime goal, each work group is a long-term goal, and and each project is a parent task, each task a subtask. I also use the midterm goals and short term goals in some instances. It works, but it's kludgy and, at times, awkward. |
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shelbyp |
I love toodledo, but I do not use it for large scale project management, it lacks some key features which are critical for large projects such as:
dependency modelling (and gantt charts) cost estimations/risk assessment resource availability I don't really expect this from Toodledo, for me these two areas are different. In the same way, I would not use Microsoft Project for my personal todolist (even if it was free, it is just overkill) What's great about TD, is that it is fast, simple, intuitive and fun to use... |
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Ryan |
I agree. I've tried to adjust to the 3 levels of hierarchy: Folders > Tasks > Subtasks.
But it just doesn't fit my brain. Project (titles) vs proper tasks (actionable) are too muddled. I need to conceptually break down complex problems, in a logical (ie hierarchical) way. Without flexible hierarchy support, Toodledo forces these awkward compressions of levels of abstraction, which makes recalling a project structure for future triage difficult. I find myself wanting to abandon toodledo for mindmaps and such. But then I miss all the actionable and context filtering goodies. I would like to be able to nest both both a project list, and infinite task nesting within a project. The new outline feature is disappointing because it is not well integrated. It almost like a separate app that they bolted on. Why should I have to go to separate chooser screen with it's own organizational structures to nest a list, outline, or note within a project. Also the fact that it is reserved for the top tier price plan shows that this is not considered an essential feature in the developer's eyes. A very simple alternative would be to have multiple notes under task, and and be able to re-order them via drag and drop, and also "complete" or cross them out. These notes could then be used as light-weight subtasks. Todo7 sort of does this with thier checklists feature. Todoist and Any.do also have similar functionality. Again I don't think Toodledo's new checklist feature fits the bill here. I've suffered a long time under this (ostensibly well meaning limitation), but I've just about given up on Toodledo to help me manage the complexity in my life. (despite it's overy-complex and fugly UI's) This message was edited Nov 09, 2013. |
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DSM_2 |
Actually, I still think people are looking at this in the wrong direction -- that is, they are looking at it top-down when they more often think bottom-up. How often in your personal projects do you really think of breaking down the tasks into subtasks and subsubtasks and so on? You often do this for large scale projects at work, but at home?? More often, I think you're more likely to create a bunch of seemingly unrelated tasks and then realize that TaskD can't be done until TaskA, TaskB, and TaskC are completed. This does *NOT* imply a hierarchy and is the problem with subtasks.
Perhaps a more elegant and flexible way of implementing this with Toodledo is not through pre-defined task relationships, but rather through open-ended scripting. That is, the following: 1. Add a Script field to all tasks. 2. Expose the (read-only) ID field of all tasks. 3. Implement a scripting language where we could say: if TaskA#.status == COMPLETE && TaskB#.status == COMPLETE && TaskC#.status == COMPLETE then TaskD#.status = NEXTACTION 4. Initially, the scripting language could be simple like above, but later could be enhanced to allow access to all task fields, perform calculations on task fields, include many types of functions (like Time), and so on. This would be a killer! |
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DSM_2 |
As noted elsewhere, active subtasks could be done via scripts like:
if TaskB.status == COMPLETE and TaskC.status == COMPLETE then TaskA.status = COMPLETE However, you wouldn't be able to do passive subtasks (ie. tasks that are merely marked as the child of another task). That might not be an issue for most people, though. |
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Peter Scott |
Adjusting status isn't the hard part, and if I wanted to do what you suggested, I could program it through the API. I do GTD, so multilevel projects easily show up in personal life:
Visit relatives for Christmas --------Get present for mother-in-law ----------------Shop for present ----------------Wrap present --------Do Christmas cards ----------------Take photo for cards ------------------------Decide on location/theme for card ------------------------Schedule photo Happens all over the place. This message was edited Nov 14, 2013. |
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DSM_2 |
Hmmm. I'll have to look at the API more. However, I don't think you can implement anything in the API unless the Toodledo DB implements the relationships (dependency and subtask). In the long run, from Toodledo's perspective, if subtasks/dependencies are useful/standard use cases, it might be less intensive for them to implement the status change than to have (most?) all users scan the system via the API on a regular basis to see if the status needs changing.
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User |
I'd just like to add that I left Toodledo years ago because it does not support sub subtasks.
I came back to this forum to see if that had changed, and I am disappointed that Toodledo still does not consider it important. Toodledo could be such a great tool if this single feature was added. It could, at minimum, be added as an option for those who do need it. |
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