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[Feature Request] Repeating tasks

Open revjtanton opened this issue 7 years ago • 149 comments

Repeating tasks, like calendar items, would be a really useful feature. Right now I'm putting repeating tasks in the calendar (stuff like taking out the trash weekly) but really that'd be better as a repeating task in this app.

I'm not very familiar with the Nextcloud platform, but it looks pretty straight forward. I will fork this repo and try my hand at adding this feature myself. Between my unfamiliarity with the platform, and other projects, I may not ever get it done though. I'm posting the idea here in hopes that someone else who is more knowledgable about this project take up this cause.

revjtanton avatar Jan 14 '17 19:01 revjtanton

I second that, recurring tasks would be really useful because I could then replace my GTD tool and bring everything into NextCloud tasks,

jurgenhaas avatar Feb 02 '17 13:02 jurgenhaas

I've looked at doing this myself a little bit, and I think I have an idea on how this could function in-line with current Tasks functionality.

Currently a Task can span many days or months. The task has a progress bar. This is not similar to other task programs like Todoist or others where a task is simply due on a date, or recurring.

To create a repeating option for Nextcloud Tasks I suggest it act as a reminder for a task in progress. So you set your task start date/end date, then under a repeating or reminders tab (just like a calendar item) you set how you will be reminded (pop-up, email, etc) and then the interval (every 1 day, 1 month, etc--this is where it is different than Calendar and is a combination of the reminder and recurring tabs).

I'm not sure how this would work with third party items like DAVdroid/Tasks on Android (for example), but I think this type of recurring reminder would be complementary to the way Tasks is currently implemented in Nextcloud.

revjtanton avatar Feb 02 '17 15:02 revjtanton

+1 for repeating tasks

Perelandra0x309 avatar Mar 16 '17 13:03 Perelandra0x309

I would also like this feature

ddanielww avatar Mar 21 '17 12:03 ddanielww

me also ;-)

xpilgrim avatar Apr 20 '17 09:04 xpilgrim

yes, this would be awesome

schnups avatar May 02 '17 19:05 schnups

I like it too

durchflieger avatar May 19 '17 08:05 durchflieger

This would be very helpful. Maybe a quick method would be to put a database table in place for repeating task info, then install a cron job to read that table and create the new entries in the app database table?

tschiu avatar May 28 '17 13:05 tschiu

+1

rnolty avatar Aug 01 '17 01:08 rnolty

+100000

ghost avatar Aug 15 '17 14:08 ghost

Hello! Are there any plans on implementing this feature? A deadline?

Love the whole software and this is the only feature that keeps me using another app for managing my shit. :)

Trollwut avatar Sep 06 '17 21:09 Trollwut

I would love to see this feature as well. This would make things much easier for my family to track our activities. I'm willing to give $20 toward this feature if it would help.

SeaDude avatar Oct 20 '17 01:10 SeaDude

@SeaDude at Bountysource you can pay a bounty for specific issues, so that developers get paid if they solve them.

Haven't used that platform for specific bounties (just to donate devs in general) and don't know if there's an open issues for repeating tasks. But I guess that would be where those 20 bucks could be heading to. :) https://www.bountysource.com/teams/nextcloud/issues

Trollwut avatar Oct 20 '17 07:10 Trollwut

An implementation of recurring tasks I had used before (in another app) just spawned the next occurrence, if the current one was marked as done. Currently I do this in a more manual fashion by just moving the entry to the next occurrence instead of recording it as done. Not sure if the implementation suggestion above provides the same level of information (see the next occurrence as a due entry in the task list). Good interworking with clients (DAVdroid/Tasks and Thunderbird/Tasks in my case) is of course quite crucial... And of course a big thanks for providing this app in the first place!

rsudev avatar Dec 20 '17 18:12 rsudev

I am also in favor of repeating tasks. I wanted to add a few more thoughts.

Suppose I schedule a repeating task for every Monday. On Monday, when I look at my "Today" tasks, it should appear. If I mark it off as complete, it should disappear until next Monday, when it should reappear. I suspect there's wide consensus on that point.

If I don't do it on Monday, however, to my mind it's still outstanding, so on Tuesday it should still appear as an (over-)due task. There may be a few cases where people will want it to just disappear (e.g. if you didn't take out the garbage on Monday, there's no point in doing it on Tuesday), but those are probably few enough that just checking them off as done is sufficient. Perhaps an option is needed there, but I think it's probably low priority.

For tasks that are completed late, there's the question of when to reschedule them. In many cases, if it is scheduled for Monday, it should be rescheduled for next Monday regardless of when it has been completed. However, there are other cases where the interval is more important then the start date. Suppose I want to change the oil in my car every three months. I set up a task to start on January 1 and repeat every 3 months. Come April, though, I'm out of town and don't change the oil until April 15th. Some people will think the next oil change should be June 1, but others will want June 15 (because that's when the oil is 3 months old). Other scheduling apps handle this by allowing rescheduling to be on a date (1st of the month every 3rd months) or on an interval (every 3 months).

Anything that can be done for repeating tasks would be wonderful. The above is just to help raise the issues a developer may want to consider. If I complete the task on Tuesday, it should disappear until

ghost avatar Feb 20 '18 18:02 ghost

just a hint if some of you didn't know: (i had problems importing an calendar with recurring tasks and alarms as you can see in https://github.com/nextcloud/calendar/issues/777, but) syncing recurring tasks, ticking and modifying them in a client seem to work fine... but it's really a pity, that only the first task is displayed in nextcloud-tasks. - the only way for now is to don't tick these "master", because this will tick all it's "subtasks" in your clients. ...and to be on the safe side i also don't edit them within nextcloud to don't mess things up. :disappointed:

DJCrashdummy avatar Mar 18 '18 14:03 DJCrashdummy

Just posted a $10 bounty at Bountysource for this feature. Will accept the claim if implementation of repeating tasks is compatible with Tasks (Astrid To-Do List Clone).

Dr-Cool avatar Jun 30 '18 12:06 Dr-Cool

+1

SkylightXD avatar Jul 18 '18 12:07 SkylightXD

@MartinConsultingServicesInc I've been using etm up until now, and it handles what you describe in a simple way. Repeating tasks can have an "overdue" rule to select desired behaviour. It defaults to "keep", or can be set to "skip" or "restart". "Keep" has overdue tasks stay until complete, and future repetitions are not affected; "skip" has overdue tasks disappear, and future repetitions are not affected (like your garbage example); and "restart" has overdue tasks stay until complete, and further repetitions are scheduled based on the completion date (like your oil change example).

In my experience, these three options are sufficient to cover most any case I've encountered, and might be good inspiration for repeating tasks in Nextcloud.

randyheydon avatar Sep 03 '18 15:09 randyheydon

Any update on this? It's the only thing currently missing that disables me from completely switching to Tasks with my work management :)

995190 avatar Sep 15 '18 16:09 995190

I was just about to add a feature request for this until I found this! Only just started playing with this in Nextcloud, but so far it looks really good. This was the first thing I found to be missing, as a long time OmniFocus user.

crazybadger avatar Jan 09 '19 13:01 crazybadger

This is actually already supported by the server. If you manage your task list with an external app, such as the Tasks app in macOS or Evolution on Linux, you can manage recurrence. There's just no way to do it through Nextcloud's UI.

mrstegeman avatar Jan 09 '19 13:01 mrstegeman

What's the Tasks app in macOS?

crazybadger avatar Jan 10 '19 21:01 crazybadger

Sorry, it's called Reminders, not Tasks.

mrstegeman avatar Jan 10 '19 21:01 mrstegeman

Ah, right. I didn't even think about that or know that I could sync it with Nextcloud. Unfortunately, recurring tasks is about all it's useful for as you can't nest tasks. Should mean recurrence wouldn't be too difficult to add into Nextcloud though?

crazybadger avatar Jan 11 '19 09:01 crazybadger

Just posted a $10 bounty at Bountysource for this feature. Will accept the claim if implementation of repeating tasks is compatible with Tasks (Astrid To-Do List Clone).

same goes for me. Just added $15 to the bounty. I will accept the claim if implementation of repeating tasks is compatible with Thunderbird(Lightning) and Tasks (Astrid To-Do List Clone)

thrdroom avatar Jan 15 '19 10:01 thrdroom

This is actually already supported by the server. If you manage your task list with an external app, such as the Tasks app in macOS or Evolution on Linux, you can manage recurrence. There's just no way to do it through Nextcloud's UI.

If I test it with eM Client (Windows) and Nextcloud as caldav-server it really works, recurring tasks are transferred throught Nextcloud correctly.

But I did not find any Android app which also supports this. DAVdroid syncs, but neither aCalendar+ nor OpenTasks can handle these recurring tasks. Are there any solutions? Thanks.

canufarm avatar Jan 20 '19 20:01 canufarm

But I did not find any Android app which also supports this. DAVdroid syncs, but neither aCalendar+ nor OpenTasks can handle these recurring tasks. Are there any solutions? Thanks.

OpenTasks has it in its beta channel https://github.com/dmfs/opentasks/issues/462 And I can confirm that it works for the Android App "Tasks" when using CalDav https://tasks.org/ https://f-droid.org/packages/org.tasks/

netzwerch avatar Jan 20 '19 20:01 netzwerch

And I can confirm that it works for the Android App "Tasks" when using CalDav https://tasks.org/ https://f-droid.org/packages/org.tasks/

Great, thanks! Tasks works. It's better than the aCalendar+ OpenTasks combination.

The only issues which remain are, task reminders set in Android/Tasks are not synced to eM Client (seems they in principle are not synced to Nextcloud) and when adding a new task on Android/Tasks after sync to eM Client the timezone is set to "Floating", no idea why.

PS: The "Floating" display in eM Client tasks start and end date also occurs when adding a task in Nextcloud-UI.

canufarm avatar Jan 20 '19 21:01 canufarm

aCalendar+ with OpenTasks has always worked for me correctly. The recurrence was handled properly. The data was always synchronised across devices. In addition, it allows me to see the tasks with due dates on the calendar. So, statements like "it is better than aCalendar OpenTasks combination" are dubious at best.

alensiljak avatar Jan 21 '19 08:01 alensiljak