To Do / Task List?

[mashby]

I searched the forum, but I didn't find anything. If this is answered elsewhere, please respond with a link.

I'd like to add a "To-Do / Task List" list to my forum.


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Background
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I run a small private vBulletin board for leaders of Palm User Groups [link]. Since we are basically a support organization, our members come up with ideas all the time that they'd like to see us implement. I bet that you run into the same things with your board as well. :knockedout:


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The Problem
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Anyway, as I was sitting here today, I started thinking about how the heck I was going to manage all these tasks. You see, I'm lucky enough to have a few volunteers, so some of these tasks get delagated to them. How do I keep everyone on the same page?

I've worked with some online task lists in the past and in most cases they are nothing more than threaded discussions with a "Complete" button. So, why couldn't this be added to vBulletin?


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The Idea
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The obvious solution would be to have a task list for everyone to use. This could be incorporated in one of three ways: 1) Task List per user, 2) A single Group Task List, 3) Both.

Regardless of Personal/Group dynamic, a task would "function" the same way. Here's a workflow example:

1. A Task Item is created. This post is basically a description of what is supposed to be done.

2. If people have questions, they can post it to the bottom of the task.

3. If the person assigned the task has an update, they too can post it to the thread. Thus, you have a full disclosure of everything that has occurred during the course of that task.

4. When the task is complete, the owner of the task has the option to "Complete" it by pressing a button. This could work like the "Install" feature of this board perhaps?


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Getting Complicated
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Ideally, there would be specific fields that would have to be filled out when creating a task instead of having an open check box. Here's a list of possible fields:
1. Title (already part of vB)
2. Start Date (a date and possibly calendar field)
3. Target Finish (a date and possibly calendar field)
4. Actual Finish (date field and recorded when the task is "Completed"
5. Description (already a vB field)
6. Intended Results (open text)
7. Assigned To (who the task is assigned to and tied to the member profile)
8. Priority (this would be a field where you could rank your tasks with 1,2,3, or A,B,C and it would sort the list accordingly)


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Projects
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If you have a project, then you could, in a sense, create a new Forum to contain those tasks related to that particular project. This would probably only work with a Group Task List, but that's ok because in most projects, it's a team that's involved anyway.

BUT, this is where the "Priority" category comes in to play big time. If you have 10 tasks for a particular project, you need to have a way to rank them.


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Am I Crazy? aranoid:
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Ok, I've gone on long enough on this. I'm curious if anyone has any feedback on this subject. Does something similar to this exist for vBulletin? If not, does anyone want to create this "super hack?"

I welcome any and all feedback.

[mashby]

I guess I'm alone in wanting this feature, or my post was so convuleted, that it didn't make any sense. Regardless, I still love the idea and think that it would be a fantastic addition of vBulletin.

I did some further thinking on it this weekend and made a little progress. I created a new forum called "Tasks" and another new forum called "Completed Tasks." I create a new task in the "Tasks" form and when it's complete, I close the thread and move the thread to the "Completed Tasks" forum. This gives a very rudimentary version of a task list, but it's a start.

The only thing missing is a method of ranking the tasks so that they have a priority. One possible solution would be to:

1. Add a field to the db for rank
2. Add the field to the new post template (I forget the name)
3. Create a new templata, a' la pluhnews that shows the posts from the task forum sorted by the "Rank" field.
4. Add the field to all the other views.

This is a rudimentary implementation, but it's a start. If anyone has any feedback, insight, whatever, I'd love to discuss it!