Task Coach

A few initial queries

Asked by James Griffin

Just been trying Task Coach for the last 30 minutes and im quite liking the features of this software, these are my initial opinions, and have a few things to ask.

1) Category Selection / Task Assignment

I am used to (as I would imagine many others are) viewing the categories/tasks in a similar way as windows explorer shows folders / files, ie. if I select a category (by just clicking/highlighting the category) then this will show me just the tasks for that category. Also, if I select a category and then add a new task, the new task should automatically be assigned to the selected category.

At the moment you have to tick the checkbox for the above functionality to happen - I find this a bit of hindrance / not so intuitive. I realize that with the current method, you can select multiple categories etc... which gives you extra flexibility which you would not want to break.

Is there an option / could there be an option added for "Filter tasks to selected category" which would do what I suggested above.

2) "Viewers" bound to categories only?

I want to have "Effort" and "Notes" displayed below "Tasks". Again, the default behaviour for me is somewhat confusing as these views seem to be bound to the categories only, which I just couldnt get my head around at first. I realized these viewers are bound when I enabled the "Categories" column - until that point I was getting a little stressed, maybe other new users have felt the same ?

I would like to click on a task, and then the effort will be shown for that task in the "Effort" window, and the notes for the task will be shown in the "Notes" window. If I was to click on a category, then the effort and notes would be show for the category (as it currently only does).

Is it possible to make these viewers bind to the tasks as well as the category (depending on what is selected - task/category) rather that just being bound to the category (I find it confusing, annoying and limiting)

3) Re-ordering of columns

I would like to be able to re-order the columns that are viewed - there doesnt appear to be any way to do this at the moment?

4) Sort order of columns in "Effort" window

You cannot sort and of the columns other than the "Period" column.

Thanks for a potentially really useful application - if a couple of the items above where addressed then I think I would become a long term user!!

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Frank Niessink (frank-niessink) said : 		#1

Hi James,

Welcome to Task Coach.

1) Task Coach works exactly as you describe, but you need to "check" the category using the check boxes displayed next to categories in the category viewer. Checking a category limits the tasks displayed to the tasks that belong to the checked category. And when you create a new task, it is automatically assigned to the checked category or categories.

2) If you want to see effort belonging to a specific task you can either double click the task and go to the effort tab in the task edit dialog or open a "effort viewer for one task" (View->New viewer menu).

3) Reordering columns is not supported at the moment.

4) Correct.

Hope his helps, Frank

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James Griffin (james-griffin) said : 		#2

Hi Frank,

Thanks for the verification on the workings.

However, I did realize all of the above functionality. I suppose you could take what I was saying as less of a question and more of a suggestion.

I find the current way of working (as you have described) slows down the flow. For example with being able to view efforts and notes for more than 1 task. The current way to do it would be, double click on task, find the "Efforts" tab and click it, and view the efforts data, then click on the notes tab and view the data, then close the dialog, select your next task and repeat all the above steps once again.

The way I am suggesting (and just thought it would work this way by default) would be, I would have the efforts and notes viewers below the tasks window. I then would click on a task, and this would update the efforts and notes data, I would then click on my next task and again, the efforts and notes window would update. This way, in 2 mouse clicks I have achieved what would take about 10 mouse clicks with the current way of working.

This just seems like a much more natural way to work for me.

Im hoping its something you would give consideration to implementing.

Revision history for this message
Frank Niessink (frank-niessink) said : 		#3

Hi James,

You may want to add this as a feature request at http://taskcoach.uservoice.com, but do realize that people are submitting feature requests faster than we can even review...

Cheers, Frank

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