More "Recurring" Task Options

[pxlnic]

I really like the options available already, but the custom one could add some more flexibility. Currently it looks like it can just repeat from the date you initially select. It would be nice to choose options like

• Second Tuesday of each month
• 15th of each month
• Yearly
• Yearly on the 1st tuseday of given month

I don't know how difficult these options would be to implement, but I have seen them in other tools, but those lack at least some of the organization and clean UI of TaskTrove :). I really want to see this project bloom.

[dohsimpson]

Love these, I think all of these make sense. NLP will definitely support them. For due date picker UI though, not sure yet. I wonder if they will make the UI too complicated.

[dohsimpson]

Pinning this discussion item. Let's use this to identify more missing recurring patterns that make sense.

[pxlnic]

Maybe incorporating a time range where the task can be completed

• Every month on first/last week
• Every quarter but has to be within the first/last 30 days

[dohsimpson]

More recurring options is coming in next release (0.5.0). Note this release only covers advanced pattern from GUI, NLP support will come at a later day.

[pxlnic]

Those recurring options in 0.5.0 are nice. Appreciate the feature set.

[preArcMed821]

Would also be nice to have an option to recur again "x days", "x weeks" etc AFTER completion. For example water plants, if you set it every week and instead of completing on the 7th day you complete it on the 12th day, the next instance of that task will always be 7 days after it is completed, not 2 days later

[preArcMed821]

Just noticed this was added in 0.3, I must have missed this. Apologies.

[ZeroKnight]

This is more on the NLP side of things, but considering that we can already type things like "every X months", I think it would be nice to be able to augment it with something like "starting tomorrow" for example to set the starting period rather than it defaulting to today.

Currently it's easy enough to open the date picker and do this, but it'd be even more ergonomic to have the smart parsing handle it :)

[dohsimpson]

This is more on the NLP side of things, but considering that we can already type things like "every X months", I think it would be nice to be able to augment it with something like "starting tomorrow" for example to set the starting period rather than it defaulting to today.

Currently it's easy enough to open the date picker and do this, but it'd be even more ergonomic to have the smart parsing handle it :)

Great idea, I'm actually revamping the NLP feature to make it supports more patterns, and this is a good suggestion.

More generally, I've been thinking about implementing something like a start date (#15 (comment)), in comparison with a due date. Where due date acts as a deadline, and start date act as the time that a task CAN BE started and shown in today view for example. The difference between start date and due date is that due date acts like a deadline, where a task pass due date is considered overdue, and start date is kind of like "show this task after this date". I think "starting WHEN" and "from WHEN" is the NLP pattern for this (maybe?)

I want to design this right, could use some brainstorming on what kind of patterns should be supported?

For example,

For recurring task: every X months starting dec 1st, or every X months from dec 1st -> due date: dec 1st
For non-recurring task:

• book that vacation on dec 1st -> due date: dec 1st
• book that vacation from dec 1st -> start date: dec 1st (no due date, task show after dec 1st)
• book that vacation starting dec 1st until dec 30th -> start date: dec 1st; due date: dec 30th (shown as overdue after dec 30th)
• book that vacation util dec 30th -> due date: dec 30th\

---

Does the recurring patterns seem complete? Is there situation where recurrence could use the start date field as well?

[ZeroKnight]

I want to design this right, could use some brainstorming on what kind of patterns should be supported?

"starting WHEN" and "from WHEN" both sound like solid choices to me. Another synonym could be "beginning WHEN". Likewise, "to WHEN", "until WHEN", or "ending WHEN" all seem like natural English patterns for an end date/due date.

If you ever add support for end dates for recurring tasks (recurring tasks currently recur indefinitely AFAICT), that could make the pattern language tricky since it could become easy to confuse with due dates. Similarly, perhaps you want the start date of your recurring task to be different from its due date—maybe you've already done the task and are making it retroactively. Though that raises a question: what happens if you give a start date that doesn't agree with the interval based on the end date? Maybe you thought about this already and that's why there aren't end dates (yet) 😄

Overloading the meaning of the "starting" and "ending" pattern sets could potentially add uncertainty; either set could refer to a due date depending on the context. Perhaps in addition to or in lieu of the "ending" pattern set, something like "due WHEN" could unambiguously refer to a due date in either case. Then the "ending" set could be reserved for the hypothetical end dates for recurring tasks.

Overall, I think there's a balance between flexibility/expressiveness and ambiguity at play with these patterns.

Sorry if this isn't the most comprehensible idea dump; I had several thoughts come to me while I was thinking about this. Some of these may be non-issues and I just haven't thought them out enough.

[faykhet]

Bumping this, some syntax I'm familiar with and use often:

• Every day starting (from) tomorrow
• Every day except (for) Sunday
• Every two weeks at 8pm starting (on) the 1st of next month