mattermost-community
Add ability to sort items in To Do list
Adding a feature where items in the To Do list can be sorted would add alot of value.
With sorting, you could sort the items by priority instead of just having them listed oldest to newest.
How would the user select the kind of sorting? What do you mean with "priority"?
We would need a spec to decide how the sorting should be implemented. But, to clarify the end goal - The user should be able to set in what order they are listed rather than chronologically by creation. This way the items in the to do list can be sorted in the order they want to work on them.
From a user:
I’d like to be able to see the most recently created “To Do” at the top of the list
I can't imagine sorting alphabetically would help. But sorting with a priority level would be useful.
I'd much like a "Bump" button that would move the issue to the top of the list (and eventually, a Snooze that would move it to the bottom, but bump to the top after a duration). I'd hope to avoid "fields" for as long as possible, keep it simple.
@aaronrothschild would you mind if I filed a separate ticket for a Bump button?
Should we make a HW ticket to change the time sorting (i.e. newest first or oldest first)? Since there is no "priority" system in place right now, we cannot order by priority. We can have another HW ticket to add this "priority" system and do sorting on it.
Right now, the implementation is doing an implicit sorting by creation time (whenever you create a new item, you put it at the end of the list). If we were to do the date sorting, we could just show the list on reverse.
If we were to keep that, bumping would be quite easy to implement: move element X to the front of the list. But then we won't have really date ordering, since we are breaking the implicit contract. Actually, this is what is being done with bumping of sent items.
To allow true date ordering and bumping, we would have to consider two options:
- Bump updates the creation date.
- Creation date and last bump date are different fields.
I would prefer going with option 2, but it adds a bit more of complexity to the code (not much I think, but more complexity). Also, it would imply more complexity in terms of UX. Should we allow to order by creation date instead of by last bump date? How do we show that?
I would go with some wording that leaves clear that you are always sorting by last time bumped.
There was a Audition that provided a design for re-ordereing if anyone wants to implement: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1CGUd6RgcOPosac_VVMKC0Xd_wxracC7x6Mp0FCIHbtI/edit
I'm thinking we can have three levels of priority. Then the user can sort or filter on items by priority. The daily reminder could factor this in somehow as well.
This is one of the main reasons I don't use this plugin much. Most of my todos entered into the plugin are not urgent, which makes it so any urgent ones are lost in the noise. Being able to label urgent ones accordingly would let me utilize the plugin more efficiently.
@asaadmahmood and I have been working on significant UI/UX improvements to the plugin, but prioritized tasks aren't something we have considered yet. I like the idea, but I think we should get the plugin in a better UX state first.
I'm wondering how far the issue is solved already? Otherwise I'm adding here my userstories:
- I would like a to do list, which adds new items at the bottom of the list so it is sorted naturaly by date. Between the sorting by date I would like to have a line so I know which to dos I arranged myself.
- I would like to arrange the single to dos with drag and drop. So I can drag an item to the top when I think this is the to do I wanna work on today.
- I would like to see the date I added the item to the to do list, so I can see how old it is already.
General Feedback: I like the simplicity and availability of the to dos in a sidebar compared to the boards. This means they are visible to me and don't get lost.
