View parent task from subtask
I typically use the Today view or the 7 Days view, but I also use a lot of subtasks. The problem is that the subtasks appear in these views without any context to their parent task. For example, say I have a task to "Prepare for trip to LA" and I have a subtask of "Book flight". When viewing the Today view, I only see the "Book flight" task. There is also no way to navigate to the parent task from the "Book flight" task. This can be a problem if I have two trips I'm preparing for. When I see "Book flight", I don't know if that's for my LA trip or for my NY trip.
Currently, I use tags to identify what parent task subtasks belong to. But this is tedious because then I have to tag every subtask I create. I could also make the parent task a project instead, but then I don't have the ability to assign a deadline.
It would be nice to be able to see the parent task of a subtask from any view. Maybe if you hovered your mouse over it, it would should the parent task. Or, maybe the parent task could appear in gray above it.
3 comments, asked by Darren Biel on Nov 28, 2012 - 09:04
11
votes
David Trey
on Nov 28, 2012 - 09:11
Hello Darren,
Thank you for your suggestion, we appreciate it and will consider improving the 7 days view in the future.
For now, there are 2 ways to achieve this:
1. On the right side of each task, the name of the project is displayed. Clicking on it brings you directly to the task it's referring to and highlights it for a moment.
2. If you add a due date to the parent task, if will also display in this view, but will have an arrow which you can use to collapse/expand its sub-tasks for reference.
Best regards,
David
Gabriel on Apr 26, 2013 - 12:13
I've thought about it too and agree with Darren that it'd be nice to have some visual reference to where orphan subtasks belong. Otherwise one need to write lots of redundant info to avoid the "book flight" type of example he gave.
The problem I see with the given workarounds are:
1. This doesn't seem to be available in the Android app, so only works in certain platforms. Also, it's an extra step before being able to get started on it.
2. This can be a problem if there are multiple subtasks with different due dates, or if the parent tasks has a final due date but the subtasks are schedule for a different time.
I think a fair non-intrusive way to deal with this is having (in small text, like tags are shown on the browser, or how dates are shown in the Android app) a folder-like address.
For example when 2-nd level subtask2 is displayed as an orphan, have below it, in small font: "project/task/subtask1/"
Or maybe just "task/subtask1/" since the project/subproject is already shown in the current setup (in a nicer, more prominent way).
I do understand the dilemma of trying to minimize clutter, but I think displaying the address only for orphaned subtasks can help with that (and perhaps even toggling it on/off if people don't want the extra information, I'm sure it's hard to keep everybody happy!).
Overall though, I do greatly enjoy using Todoist and have found it very helpful. Keep up the great work!
jiangweiran on May 24, 2013 - 12:07
I write a lot of redundant info in subtask for this reason,so it just keeps me from being a happy user.