Recurring Checklists

Susan_Kleinfelter · July 4, 2019, 4:18pm

I have some recurring tasks. e.g. Every week I need to do Computer Backups and this effort includes a dozen tasks.

So I created an item, “Computer Backups” and I gave it a date of !(2019-07-03 | 1w) . Then I made it a checklist and added 12 indented items under it.

The first time I executed Computer Backups, I checked off each indented item, and when they were all done, I checked off the top level Computer Backups. I got a new top-level “Computer Backups” item, but none of the sub-items.

How do I create a recurring, hierarchical item?

Stephen_Dewitt · July 5, 2019, 6:22am

Edit: I just did some testing on this and yes, if you have the option:

then indeed the new item doesnt have children, which is not the behaviour we want. Can we flag this up @Erica @Shida ?

With the option:

it all works fine though, a la:

Before checking the parent item:

After checking off parent item (note date change):

Susan_Kleinfelter · July 5, 2019, 1:41pm

Thank you for investigating. I don’t agree that it all works fine with “existing date gets updated”. It shows that the detail items for the future are completed.

If I mark the roll-up task “Computer Backups” complete for this week, I haven’t completed the sub-task “Backup Wife’s Computer” for next week.

If the recommended practice is to use “Existing date gets updated” then updating that date should result in auto-clearing the checkboxes of the child items.

Pch · July 9, 2019, 10:56am

I don’t know if it’ll help but I played around a little bit with this and came up with something but it’s not pretty .

Instead of repeating the task, I created a recurring dates for each sub-tasks and put the date as a note (which I found easier to read)

It works whatever settings for the recurring dates you chose (dates get updated or new item is created)

Stephen_Dewitt · July 9, 2019, 12:06pm

Oops yes forgot to mention that - we would want them automatically unchecked absolutely

Erica · November 5, 2019, 4:01am

Sorry for the late reply, from my testing, the old item will lose the subitems, where the new item will have them. This sounds different from what you described, @Susan_Kleinfelter. Did I misunderstand anything?

Susan_Kleinfelter · November 12, 2019, 1:16pm

If Recurring Date = Existing date gets updated, ALL that happens is the date in the parent item gets updated.

If Recurring Date = Next date appears in new item, ALL that happens is that the parent item gets copied and the new copy gets the new date.

In other words, regardless of the Recurring Date setting, the child items are ignored.

I don’t see the subitems getting copied to the new item. Perhaps you have different settings that I?

Erica · November 12, 2019, 4:43pm

There might be some misunderstanding, because I’m clearly seeing different results. Maybe because what we mean by “the child items get moved” is different?

This is what I see:

e5140601-5df7-415e-a871-45e8674e3de4

My setting:

Susan_Kleinfelter · November 12, 2019, 6:23pm

I’m not set up to do animated GIFs, so here’s a series of partial screenshots, using Chrome on a Mac.

Now, imagine I start with the below. It represents me finishing the child items, and now I’m ready to mark the group complete.

What I would expect to see is a Parent and a Task 1 and a Task 2 and a Task 3, to be worked on, beginning on the 20th. What I get is:

Honestly, I’ve just abandoned checkboxes. They seem to work OK for a straight grocery list, but beyond that they seem unaware of structure.

Susan_Kleinfelter · November 12, 2019, 6:28pm

Well shucks. That paste didn’t work real well. Here’s the same message again, with pictures:

I’m not set up to do animated GIFs, so here’s a series of partial screenshots, using Chrome on a Mac.

Now, imagine I start with the below. It represents me finishing the child items, and now I’m ready to mark the group complete.

What I would expect to see is a Parent and a Task 1 and a Task 2 and a Task 3, to be worked on, beginning on the 20th. What I get is:

Honestly, I’ve just abandoned checkboxes.

Erica · November 12, 2019, 6:50pm

I see, so you expect the checked items to get unchecked.

I didn’t understand this part when you said “I got a new top-level ‘Computer Backups’ item, but none of the sub-items” in the original post. Is it because you hide completed items by default?

Susan_Kleinfelter · November 12, 2019, 6:56pm

I’m sorry, but I don’t recall. (It has been a while since I said that.) The long and the short of it is that if I check-off a recurring group-level item, I’d expect to see a completed group and a new, ready-to-use group and children.

If that’s not what the product is intended to do, I can live with that, but it is hard for me to imagine that anyone (outside of someone looking at code) would expect completing a group-level recurring item to do anything other than set you up with a group (parent and children) ready for the next occurrence.

Erica · November 12, 2019, 7:08pm

Oh yeah, I just realized it’s been a few months. I was quoting the first post in this thread at the very top.

That makes sense to me, I’ve added it to our todo list. I’ll update here once the change is in place. Thanks!