ForumsTips & TricksAccidental Completion/Deletion of Parent Task
Accidental Completion/Deletion of Parent Task
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jashead |
By a slip of the mouse i completed a parent task which completed all subtasks. This also had the effect of removing all details such as repeats. This took me quite a lot of time to even figure out what the error was i had made so that i could start restoring the tasks. After that another three hours later i was able to figure out most tasks that had been under that parent task, and restore them with repeats and other details. Needless to say this petrifies me regarding future self-induced errors. Am i missing something, looked for an undo button (that would have saved all the time as it would have undone the error I was unclear about).
An undo button would be a great addition as would a flag for a parent task being completed or deleted -- Thanks, i would appreciate any guidance if i have overlooked a function that would have made this less painful. |
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Anders |
What you did was fine for the non-recurring tasks, but the recurring tasks are more complicated. When you marked the parent task, and therefore all subtasks, complete, any recurring tasks should have generated their next occurence, so now that you have recreated those tasks you will end up with duplicates of all the recurring tasks in the future.
What I would have done is find all the next occurrences of the repeating tasks that were accidentally completed, and change their due dates back to the previous occurrence. What you probably want to do now is find the next occurrences that were generated by the accidental completion. You may have to turn off your "Hide future tasks" filter, or use a search to do it. Then either delete them, or move their dates back, and delete the new ones like I mentioned above. ~Anders |
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jashead |
Thank you
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Jake Toodledo Founder |
In a future update, we will check to see if you are completing a parent task with uncompleted subtasks and popup a warning to make sure that it isn't an accidental check.
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Linden |
Could it be possible to make this pop-up warning optional? Default=on would be fine, but I'd quickly get frustrated if I had a pop-up every time I completed a parent task.
For me, confirmation pop-ups like this quickly become habit for frequent activities, and the check+confirm reaction that develops leads to the same chance of a mistake. Still, having the pop-up as an option would be great as a general solution -- I'd just like the option of turning it off as well. :) |
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thpope |
Just thinking about this. Does it make sense to remove the ability for the user to check off a parent task? IOW, Toodledo would check it off automatically if all sub-tasks are completed. The parent task check box would be grayed out but still visible.
I like this, but maybe someone has a reason to leave the parent task uncompleted even when all sub-tasks are complete. There could be an option for this, but I honestly would prefer not. I get "option fatigue" if you know what I mean. |
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Linden |
Good point about "option fatigue", thpope. To be honest, I'm sure I'm not familiar with all of the options currently available.
I'm one of those people who will sometimes have empty parent tasks. I use parent tasks as projects (like many here) and sometimes I'm done all of the current steps but still have more that haven't been identified. At times like this, I still want the parent around as a reminder that it needs more work. However, this idea of not being able to check off parent tasks is a MUCH better solution than a popup. It would be easy for me to identify a "complete this project" subtask so my parent project isn't auto-checked. |
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TheGriff_2 |
I tend not to like software making the decision for me. I wouldn't want to have parent's checked off automatically.
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thpope |
Good points. Here's another idea, add a tiny completion bar to all parent tasks (This is how TreNotes does it, google it for more info). The bar fills up based on how many sub-tasks you've completed. I really liked this.
The check box still can be there and can be marked complete or not. Posted by TheGriff: I tend not to like software making the decision for me. I wouldn't want to have parent's checked off automatically. I love it when software makes the right decision for me. ;) This message was edited Jun 03, 2009. |
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toodledo |
Hm. I can't see why you would want to auto-check all sub tasks. A parent is either done because all subtasks are done (in which case you should have checked them) or they became obsolete (in which case you don't want to complete them, but delete them instead). Ergo I agree with thpope. Don't allow parent tasks to be checked at all unless all sub-tasks are done.
But automatically checking off the parent wouldn't work for me either. I often have tasks like 'get new mortgage' that need a lot of subtasks, so I start defining next actions, but not all of them upfront. I just add new next actions when I run out of existing ones. This would work a lot better if (like in LifeBalance or MyLifeOrganized) parent tasks would not show in the to-do list at all (for flattened lists) unless all their sub-tasks are completed. Can that be added as a feature? It always annoys me that both the parent and the sub-tasks show up in the flattened list without a clue to the relationship and I never can do anything about the parent tasks except for find the subtasks elsewhere and work on them. This message was edited Jul 07, 2009. |
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