Calendar Talk:Lightning:Task management

(Captured raw from the original, community-created Task management page:)

I would like to suggest that the Calendar:Lightning:Task management project enable users to not only create stand-alone tasks, but also allow users to create projects. As a result tasks could be assigned to specific projects. This would allow users to easily group and organize tasks.

I've spent the last nine months developing a web-based Project/Task tracking system. Based on my experiences and results I think you may be able to entice corporate users if you offer both Project and Task Tracking instead of just stand-alone tasks with the very-limited grouping functionality of Outlook.

I look forward to seeing the fruits of your labor!

Addition from Roel Meeuws:

I think it would also be a good idea to be able to track your tasks and project progress in your calendarviews. So, if you look at the current week you also see when your tasks are due, running, or about to start. Maybe it would also be a great idea to be able to add project overviews where you see a timeline with all the tasks.

Expanding on Roel's suggestion of projects. That could possibly be done with an expanded mail label system and message grouping or by using calendar categories. Though for proper project management integration a more robust system might be better.

Addition from Ed O'Loughlin:

It would also be good to allow tasks/appointments to reference emails, allow creating a task/appointment from an email. See http://gtdsupport.netcentrics.com/tour/ for a good, low ceremony implementation of this.

Expanding on the above from Ed it only requires adding "Defer" and "New Task" actions after the "Reply" "Reply all" "Forward" buttons to get task/appointment integration, which is already available. However it would be usefull to either move such mails to a "Deferred" folder or puting the email contents into the task as a note or associating, as appropiate. Task management will need to have allocation/delegation added at some point... The existing Forward window requires a "Add Reminder" (new task) checkbox for delegations.

Jan Eldenmalm:

My experience from working with Outlook is that the grouping of tasks generally does not support my two main activities when scheduling work. 1. Planning ; 2. Execution. With this background I would like to suggest that the task "GUI" will offer the end user the possibility of creting tasks that are "dependent on" or "part of" some other task. This simple relation between tasks make viewing (planning or executing) of them more efficient. Also these two basic relations turn the "task" manager into a quite advanced project management tool, as external plugnins can be made to "display" critical path and other "project" management related information derivates - without demanding it from the basic task manager.

(From the main Lightning Q&A page:) Q. Will Lightning support Notes as known from Outlook - and will it be possible to keep them in a hierarchy by folders?

Simon Massey: From a team collaboration perspective I feel that notes organised into a hierarchy would be a very powerful tool.

Task categories

(Addition from Billy Charlton) While many of these grouping features sound really enticing, it's important to keep the task functionality SIMPLE enough that it can be eventually shoehorned into Palm PDA's. Countless people use PDA's to organize tasks into categories (@Home, @Office, @Computer, @Errands, BigProject) and these groupings transfer effortlessly between Outlook, a PDA, and Palm Desktop etc. More features may be nice from a project management perspective, but the basic task list just needs decent grouping in order to be very effective. This is the core idea behind 'The Zen of Palm' organizing. Keep it simple!!

Minor practical suggestions

Can I offer for consideration the following deficiencies which have annoyed me over the years when working with other task management software? #1- a # days to deadline field (obviously easy for a PC to compute) should be rendered next to every task which has a deadline, and sorting on this field would be nice also, #2- instead of (or in addition to) task reminders, I think tasks with deadlines should become visible in a section of the calendar display reserved for tasks a user specified number of days in advance of the deadline, and continue until checked-off, #3- what makes #1 and #2 non-trivial is when tasks have a recurrence, but that's also what makes my life complex. I am having to keep track of what I need to work on a day or so before each Wednesday deadline, and a few days before some end of the month tasks, and a few days before certain upcoming events. I have never found it useful for PC apps to keep track of when my events and tasks are due, I could do that with a paper calendar purchased at any drug store. I want to have an intelligent view of where I stand each day as I near various deadlines, and I suspect others have the same challenges in their business and personal lives.