Wish: Delegation workflow
 

Dear Omni Team,

One feature that I really expect in such application is some kind of advanced task delegation workflow ... Like I delegate, the person receive (via mail, I guest this is the easier) the task, and we keep synchronizing the task avoiding unnecesary followups until the task is complete ... a little bit like with iCal and invitations (I like the notification inbox in iCal to see that I have unprocessed notifications about some events) ...

We are a small team of consultants working widespread in the world (well at least Europe) ... Having staff meetings or coordination meetings is very complicated for us, and very expensive ...

Is it on your plans ?

This seems like a little more on OmniPlan side of features.

BZ

Had to register to weigh in on this one! :o)

I think you are partly right BwanaZulia, however its a mater of scale.

I think both applications would benefit significantly with the abillity to delegate tasks.

I see OmniFocus or any GTD app as a way to dump all my tasks or tasks I generate. As we all know part of the idea is to get it out of our heads and into a system. So it would seem perfectly natural for me to think...

"I need fred to do X as part of this project I am working on"

Enter it into OF then click delegate and send it off to Fred to do... the item would then be in some pending state waiting for a completion notice back from Fred.

OmniPlan is just a scaled up version. I am co-ordinating a plan for an entire multi-resourced project, having OP delegate the tasks out to the resources would be one less thing for me to do, and if they are using OF at the other end as well - all the better!

My 2p worth! Might change my mind once I get access to OF.. should be in the next batch of invites given the date I registered... Omni just couldn't have done an extra day in the last run... they just had to make me wait that bit longer! Ever had one of those weeks, read the update about invites... "..last batch brings us up to all who registered before..." NoooOoooooOoooOoooo!

Hi,

well for me the line between delegating small tasks and managing bigger projects is thin. So I would rather see a closer integration with OmniPlan rather than the iCal type send a task off to someone else.

I got plenty of delegated tasks to follow up on different projects with deadlines. So far, I use OF, but there are definitely features in OP that would make that more efficient, if linked back to OF (e.g. managing ressources across projects, see conflicts with deadlines etc.)

Cheers

Mario

I think the difference is that OF is for personal productivity and planning while OP is for groups.

Delegation, for me, falls into groups.

in GTD, if you ask someone to do something, you put it in your project as "Waiting for"

BZ

OP is for project planning ... Delegation doesn't mean Pert and Gantt charts ...

[QUOTE=BwanaZulia]in GTD, if you ask someone to do something, you put it in your project as "Waiting for"

BZ[/QUOTE]

Ok thats fine, but from a making it easier to delegate point of view. To be able to enter a task then click 'delegate', have the task sent off through Omni wizadry to that person and have the task marked as 'waiting for' in my project is a nice way to work. To then have a response come back through some more Omni wizadry to mark the task as complete when its done would be even better.

My review process would show it as a waiting for task (and hopefully who its been delegated to) so I can follow up with the person if needed.

For me its one less thing to worry about... Enter task that needs to be delegated - then forget to delegate it. Thats the risk with current systems for me. Then again it might be that I am just not doing the GTD thing properly yet and that when I do, delegation won't get forgotten. Until then having OF able to do it when I think of it would be good.

Delgation / Waiting
 

Waiting is part of GTD, isn't it. There are things that you simply must wait for. Like to see what projects are in a waiting state. I'd like to get as many tasks into a waiting state, a view of my tasks that would tell me which ones are close to a stage where I'm waiting on someone else. Chances are if I'm one next action away from waiting on someone else, then someone else is waiting on me.

If the social aspect of work is going to be relegated to OmniPlan, GANTT and PERT charts, then I don't know how I'm going to trust the system to help me manage my obligations to others (which is how I've come to view my work).

Delegation and Waiting How To
 

To answer my own question, I did create a waiting context. At the point where I'm waiting for someone to reply or take action, I add a task called "Wait for so-and-so to respond to request for comments on brochure copy." Not I can work on projects until the ball ends up in someone else's court.

I think the idea of delegating in OF has its merits. If the person that a task is delegated to has OF as well they will have it show up in their Inbox. When they finish they just report back and your project gets 'activated' again.

This should be possible with files attached to mail messages that will carry the info. Click the attachment and it does its omnimagic...

So if your co-workers (or whoever-else is involved in a project) use OF as well, it might be a good way to streamline some workflows.

Somewhere in version 1.x this would be a very nice feature...

I think that task delegating really doesn't belong in OF. In fact, it sounds like exactly what OmniPlan is supposed to do. There are many other ways to do small-scale delegating without loading OF down with the need communicate with other implimentations of OF.

It can be a quick phone call or email, you can send someone a stikkit... or you can use monkeyon.com (my personal favorite, but not as professional as an email.)

[QUOTE=GeekLady]I think that task delegating really doesn't belong in OF. In fact, it sounds like exactly what OmniPlan is supposed to do. There are many other ways to do small-scale delegating without loading OF down with the need communicate with other implimentations of OF.[/QUOTE]

OF is for implementing GTD ... I think one of the first advise of David Allen is to push for delegation and follow-up so that you can concentrate on what you really have to do ... By transition, task delegation belong to OF ...

But I don't want to ask for task delegation, I guess it will be implemented (well I hope so, I also hope to have a chance to test the alpha version), just to have an efficient communication via mail instead of marking it delegated and then going through manual actions ...

Another point about this thead ... OP is for project planning (Pert & Gantt, resourcing, timesheet and cost estimations) ... I'd like to meet the one who use a project planning application (even though the application is great easy to use one) whenever he or she wants to delegate a single task ... Integration with OP is a great idea as well because then every one receive in his inbox/project folder new actions related to a project and a more advanced way to organize tasks and probably also to report, but this is for really complex project ... The GTD project term is just an task that require more than one action (OMG, I speak like a GTD addicted adept ... help !)

I think of buying a solution like OF for my company so that I don't have to deploy a solution like Lotus Notes or MS Exchange just for it ...

I think for just collecting and managing a task list, as said David Allen in his book, a simple text editor is enough ... Of course, for people that are not expecting to use it as a collaboration tool, this wish doesn't seem justified and I appriciate it ...

[QUOTE=GeekLady]It can be a quick phone call or email, you can send someone a stikkit... or you can use monkeyon.com (my personal favorite, but not as professional as an email.)[/QUOTE]

Whenever I can avoid the phone (and especially cleaning it because I have it against my hears all day long ... :)

OF is for personal task management in general, not strictly for GTD. As such should be just as useful for those at the bottom of the heap as for those at the top. And when you're at the bottom of the heap, delegating just isn't important. You can't even rely on those above you to be kind enough to all use OF (or even Macs) when delegating stuff to you.

There's no need for some sort of advanced OF to OF communication/delegation system. Basic delegation within OF could be simply implemented with the ability to create a new email from a task and to create a new task from an email. This would be much more flexible - have other uses than delegation, as well as be usable for everyone not just those who have coworkers also using OF.

And what I just described can be done just using QS (for creating emails) and QE (for adding tasks).

Anything more advanced sounds like a description of how OmniFocus should integrate with OmniPlan.

The Applescripting interface for OF seems robust enough to implement a simple delegation workflow. That might be a nice interim solution.

I'm experimenting with a workflow for auto-generating "awaiting" actions when I send emails for which I need responses. I'll post it once I work out the kinks. It would be a short step from there to passing tasks around by email.

Another nice thing about this approach is that it doesn't weigh down the application.

[QUOTE=curt.clifton]The Applescripting interface for OF seems robust enough to implement a simple delegation workflow. That might be a nice interim solution.

I'm experimenting with a workflow for auto-generating "awaiting" actions when I send emails for which I need responses. I'll post it once I work out the kinks. It would be a short step from there to passing tasks around by email.

Another nice thing about this approach is that it doesn't weigh down the application.[/QUOTE]
Cool. I was thinking the same thing.

In my mind I imagine selcting an action and hitting a keystroke that brings up a dialog for looking up a contact in the AddressBook (or overiding for no match) and a couple of buttons to either just delegate the action in Omnifocus or additionally create a new email to the contact.

Afterward, the action would be prepended with "Delegated:" or similar, moved to a (user-defined) WaitingFor context [sic], and the note appended to reflect the date it was delegated, to whom, and a link to the email if it was created.

Being more of an AppleScript dabbler than anything, I thought the OF half of the script would be simple to implement, but the Mail/AddressBook stuff would be much harder.

If someone more skilled than I wants to tackle a script, I would be most grateful.

Extra credit for linking to the AddressBook entry and/or including a start date some user-defined time in the future.

[QUOTE=GeekLady]OF is for personal task management in general, not strictly for GTD. As such should be just as useful for those at the bottom of the heap as for those at the top. And when you're at the bottom of the heap, delegating just isn't important. You can't even rely on those above you to be kind enough to all use OF (or even Macs) when delegating stuff to you.[/QUOTE]

I agree with your sentiment here in that it should be useful across the board. But for someone at the top of the heap not having an integrated delegation workflow is a hinderance. Put it in, but allow it to be hidden so that it does not distract those people who don't need it.

As for the level of integration, applescript with email might be enough. But Omni could do much better with something fully integrated.

Also I have to disagree regarding OmniPlan, just because I want to be able to delegate a task does not mean I should be using OmniPlan. OmniPlan is for much larger scale projects.

At the end of the day as long as OF can do what you need it to do fine. If its got some features to support power users without adding bloat - all the better.

With that in mind delegation for power users is a really good idea if not a must have.

[QUOTE=jstrat]I agree with your sentiment here in that it should be useful across the board. But for someone at the top of the heap not having an integrated delegation workflow is a hinderance. Put it in, but allow it to be hidden so that it does not distract those people who don't need it.

As for the level of integration, applescript with email might be enough. But Omni could do much better with something fully integrated.

Also I have to disagree regarding OmniPlan, just because I want to be able to delegate a task does not mean I should be using OmniPlan. OmniPlan is for much larger scale projects.

At the end of the day as long as OF can do what you need it to do fine. If its got some features to support power users without adding bloat - all the better.

With that in mind delegation for power users is a really good idea if not a must have.[/QUOTE]

I guess I'm not really explaining myself well.

In my opinion, having a built in, OF-to-OF delegation-specific conduit is not a good solution. It would rely on both delegator and delegatee using OF and be useless for delegation situations outside of OF. It would bloat the software for everyone for very little gain to a subset of users.

Properly done Mail hooks would be more broadly useful AND serve as a way to delegate tasks that isn't dependent on the delegee also using OF. And there are other uses for Mail hooks, even if you never have to delegate.

My primary interest is keeping OF small and functional, because I have to use it off a USB key. And if a specific feature can be replaced with a more broadly useful feature, I'm going to come down on the side of the feature that offers more.

[QUOTE=GeekLady]I guess I'm not really explaining myself well.

In my opinion, having a built in, OF-to-OF delegation-specific conduit is not a good solution. It would rely on both delegator and delegatee using OF and be useless for delegation situations outside of OF. It would bloat the software for everyone for very little gain to a subset of users.

Properly done Mail hooks would be more broadly useful AND serve as a way to delegate tasks that isn't dependent on the delegee also using OF. And there are other uses for Mail hooks, even if you never have to delegate.[/QUOTE]

Properly integrated OF-OF delegation would, I imagine, still use Email and if done correctly could still work for non OF endpoints. There is no reason why it couldn't work in some way like calendar invites. Some sort of formatted email message that is meaningful to human reading as well as structured enough to allow automation with an OF endpoint. This would then satisfy all users.

How this is done, well it probably could be done using AppleScript and that might even be the most appropriate way to do it given the level of AppleScript integration in Omni products. How it works under the hood is not really that important as long as it is seamless.

I think the key thing here is that its a feature that a large portion of the user base would really appreciate.

I have a context 'WaitingFor'. It has a few sons for key people in my life, like 'WaitingFor Bob', 'WaitingFor Alice', 'WaitingFor Nestor'...

I synchronize OmniFocus with iCal.
From iCal, I've published the calendars to a webdav server, and communicated the link.
That way, they have a list of what I've asked them and that I'm waiting for.

One minor drawback:
If I'm waiting for a package that someone needs to send me, and I know it won't arrive before 2 weeks, I usually put the start date 2 weeks ahead to keep view uncluttered. As the task is not available, it don't show up in the calendar of the remote person.

Note:
I always ask personally (face to face, IM, mail...) before adding a task to a WaitingFor context. First, I have a task like 'mail bob asking to do this'. Once completed, I add an other task in the WaitingFor context, to keep track of it.

I would find rude to get tasks pushed to me without initial consultation. Please keep that in mind if you integrate a delegation system into OmniFocus.

More thoughts on this.

I don't mind that the shared calendars are not editable by remote person.
If I'm waiting for something, there must be an outcome, and I and only I judge if its satisfying, ie if the task is completed.

Delegation Help
 

Omni Team, and Other expert Users:

Delegation and Followup is an integral part of my life. I usally do most of it via e-mail (entourage because of Exchange) I really feel that some scripts work great on following up (sending email) and creating tasks into OF.

I know GTD is the fundation of OF but not its sole intent. I will love to understand how people are using OF for delegation, and follow up.

thanks

Delegation and Followup Methodology using OF
 

I supervise 18 people in 6 countries, and delegation and followup is crucial for me. I have not found a way to do this efficiently in OF . I have been using TR as a tool for two reasons, Delegation and Followup, and PocketMod Printing. TR lacks a lot of things and I want to move on to OF.

I have read many porst on this subject and I understand that OF is not only a GTD tool. My question is simple: can anyone help me on how to manage delegation and followup with OF? can anyone share their methodology? I would like to know details, for example, what you use each field for, start date, due date ,and review date, what contexts do you use and how you set up filters. Also how you differentiate followup from waiting for something from that person.

Here is what I do so that you understand my situation.

1- I do most of my communication through email (entourage), that includes task delegation, and followups.
2- I need to be able to have a clean and uncluttered list of tasks. (no future followups showing)
3- with some sort of filter, I need to be able to see what I have assigned to a person even though the followup date is in the future.
4- with a filter I need to be able to see things I need to followup on tomorrow, next week, today, and overdue.

all your feedback will be greatly appreciated.

thanks

Jack

[QUOTE=jbursztyn;23263]My question is simple: can anyone help me on how to manage delegation and followup with OF? can anyone share their methodology? I would like to know details, for example,

what you use each field for, start date, due date, and review date,
what contexts do you use and how you set up filters.
Also how you differentiate followup from waiting for something from that person.
...
2- I need to be able to have a clean and uncluttered list of tasks. (no future followups showing)
3- with some sort of filter, I need to be able to see what I have assigned to a person even though the followup date is in the future.
4- with a filter I need to be able to see things I need to followup on tomorrow, next week, today, and overdue.
[/QUOTE]

Since no-one else answered, I will share a few things. Unfortunately, I don't delegate much, so I don't treat delegation any differently from waiting for.

Work in context view to manipulate the actions; in planning view, the view bar settings work at the project level, not the action level. First, set the followup date. If you want to limit your followup date to one day, put the same date in both start date and due date. If it is a longer time range, put the earliest date in start date and the latest date in due date.

To get a clean and uncluttered list of actions with no future followups showing, put a start date in the future for the actions to be hidden and set the filter to available. Anything with a future start date will be hidden when the filter is set to available.

To see what you have assigned to a person even though the followup date (start date) is in the future, change the filter to remaining. Anything not completed will show up when the filter is set to remaining.

To see things you need to followup on tomorrow, next week, today, and overdue, set the view bar to *group* by due date, *sort* by due date, *filter* by either available to hide actions with future start dates OR remaining to see everything not completed, *filter* by any time, and *filter* by all regardless of the flag setting. The date you put in the due date field determines what group the action is in. You can group by start date instead if you prefer. Also, you might want to try sorting by something else. You will still get the groupings you want (tomorrow, next week, today, overdue, etc.) but the order of the actions within each group will change.

As for what contexts to use, you could create a context called "agendas" with sub-contexts for each person. What you see in the outline in context view is limited to the context(s) you select in the sidebar. If you want to see the actions for just one person, select that person's context. If you want to see the actions for all of the people, select agendas. If you want to see something in between, you can Cmd-select multiple non-adjacent contexts at the same time.

I don't use the review feature, but if you search the forum for "review", you will probably find several threads on topic. I do know you have to be in planning view to use the review date. You cannot filter by review date, but you can group and sort by it. And there is a toolbar button to mark items reviewed, which sets a new review date in the future at the interval you set.

I hope that helps. Maybe someone who has the same work structure that you do will refine my comments.

Thanks for the reply, any more OF users want to share on their methodology

[QUOTE=jbursztyn;23263]Also how you differentiate followup from waiting for something from that person.[/QUOTE]

I don't. I have a Waiting For context for stuff I've delegated.

I have an agenda context, for stuff I need to discuss with concerned people without delegating to them (very useful when you meet someone unexpectedly).

This two contexts are subclassed to quickly access to the key people:
WFor
WFor Bob
WFor Alice
Wfor Joe
Agenda
Agenda Bob
Agenda Alice
Agenda Joe

Regularly, I review the tasks in WFor (part of my weekly review), and send the follow-up required.


If I know a task I'm waiting for won't be done before a week, I set the start date in 6 days, so I'm not bugged with it until its time. This way, the task won't be shown with the filter available, but I can still look at it with the filter remaining.

I use Mail.app, MailTags and Curt's scripts to navigate between Mail and OmniFocus. I also use MailActOn to trigger Curt's scripts.

I hope that helps.
Do you have any other question?

Hi Jack --

You may want to look at [URL="http://inik.net/node/88"]iNIk.net[/URL], where Nik wrote a four-part series on adapting Entourage to fully implement GTD. I don't know entourage, so I can't evaluate what he's done, but I do know the work he did on kGTD extra functionality was first-rate. Maybe you can handle your situation within an augmented Entourage.

I don't think plain-vanilla GTD (or the current OmniF) has a good answer for tracking delegations with so many people. I adapted kGTD to solve a similar situation by adding metadata for Who the task is related to. I then could print out a list for each person of all the remaining tasks related to that person (and groups that they belonged to), sorted by context (or project).

This gave me, in effect, an agenda for each person while leaving the various tasks in different contexts. This is important to me because I have who are sometimes in 5 or 6 indepepndent roles in my life, so we have delegations and followups going both ways.

I hope that OmniF will let me add and sort by the information that is relevant to me.

How do you view all of Bob's actions and projects
 

[QUOTE=Lutin;23333]I don't. I have a Waiting For context for stuff I've delegated.

I have an agenda context, for stuff I need to discuss with concerned people without delegating to them (very useful when you meet someone unexpectedly).

This two contexts are subclassed to quickly access to the key people:
WFor
WFor Bob
WFor Alice
Wfor Joe
Agenda
Agenda Bob
Agenda Alice
Agenda Joe

Regularly, I review the tasks in WFor (part of my weekly review), and send the follow-up required.


If I know a task I'm waiting for won't be done before a week, I set the start date in 6 days, so I'm not bugged with it until its time. This way, the task won't be shown with the filter available, but I can still look at it with the filter remaining.

I use Mail.app, MailTags and Curt's scripts to navigate between Mail and OmniFocus. I also use MailActOn to trigger Curt's scripts.

I hope that helps.
Do you have any other question?[/QUOTE]



thanks for your reply, I understand what you are doing with the agenda and waiting for, but how cqan you filter to view all of bob's actions (waiting for and Agenda)

[QUOTE=jbursztyn;23528]thanks for your reply, I understand what you are doing with the agenda and waiting for, but how cqan you filter to view all of bob's actions (waiting for and Agenda)[/QUOTE]

You can select multiple contexts by Cmd-clicking them. (Perspectives will save those selections, too.)

Team Delegation and Sharing SOLVED!?! we hope :)
 

Over the past month I've been looking for a solution to Delegate tasks to my team. I've looked at online solutions, but in the end, I had to keep everything locked down, so this map illustrates how we solved our particular needs.

Anyhoo, here's the Process Flow Map
[IMG]http://www.policarpo.us/postings/gtd-share.jpg[/IMG]

Here's how it currently flows:

Process:
. At the beginning of each week I review my InBox and begin the delegation process
. I Print to .PDF an overview of our week schedule and submit this to my PM's and Director and my Team.
. I push out Teammate Tagged Tasks to the team (I have a CONTEXT for each of us and sync over just our respective tasks via the iCal sync Tab)
. We use Anxiety to review our tasks
. If we need to comment or add notes, we do so in iCal via the ToDo Panel (or I update Notes in OmniFocus since I manage the db)
. When a task is complete we check it off in Anxiety
. I review our progress and update accordingly

Setup
. iMac running BusySync and iCal
. Individual Calendars in iCal for each Teammate
. Our respective calendars are password protected and are loaded into our local iCal

My ultimate wish is to have us all on OmniFocus doing the above process and bypassing the BusySync and iCal setup altogether.

Oh well, until then, it seems to be working...wish us luck. :)

If anyone has a similar setup or advice, I'd love to hear your experience.

Wish us luck! Let me know if anything in this setup will cause us problems down the line. :)


Many thanks,
-policarpo

Back to GTD2CYA

Well, FWIW, almost a month into this and everything seems to be functioning properly.

Great job on developing and presenting this workflow. I hope that version 2 of OF has better team support.

Steve

Sharing & Delegation: Local Server
 

Ok I know I've posted this quite a bit but I figure why not make it a poll since I think it's something we need when applying GTD in a collaborative environment.

How about the choice: Meh, not important to me.

I don't have an opinion on the GTD-ness of automatically sharing tasks and projects, but I personally have no interest in additional sharing features in OF. I don't work or live in an environment where that would be useful and would prefer OG direct resources toward other things (more feature parity between OF versions, OmniOutliner for iPad).

I'm not discounting that some (maybe many) people would find more sharing useful, but I think the single 'no sharing' response in the poll confounds the issue with GTD dogma, making the poll biased.

Hrmmm isn't option 2 the same thing as your Meh persuasion? ;^)

Delegation of tasks to others
 

I wanted to ask the Forum how you folks are utilizing OmniFocus when it comes to delegation of tasks to others? I've tried a few different options (including Curt Clifton's script that adds "Reply On:" to the task and switches it to the waiting context) and am still looking for a good compromise that works well with OF and sticks to GTD methodology. The problem with Curt's script is that many of these tasks were assigned to specific Agenda:Person contexts that were then lost when I switched them to "waiting".

So, after I have a meeting and discuss the topic with the individual, I simply flag it for follow-up meaning that I've spoken to them and am awaiting a response.

Something tells me thought some folks out there have come up with some excellent work-flows to handle this type of scenario with OmniFocus. Thanks in advance.

-Scott

I try to keep it really simple: a question for a person or a task assigned to a person gets assigned to their context.

When meeting with a person, I check their context and cover those topics, recording new stuff or checking items off as needed. Start dates are used to defer actions I don't want to worry about; I don't find a waiting context helpful. If an item I deferred hasn't come back, that gets caught during review and an email gets sent.

It's basic, it's simple, but it gets the job done for me.

Delegating tasks
 

I am slowly being driven nuts by delegating tasks to other people on my team. We all have OmniFocus but we cannot send tasks to one another on any platform. This is ridiculous. Surely a small addition to a task would be to e-mail it to someone else - especially is (as we have found) we have someone leaving us and we need to get their tasks taken over across the rest of the team.

I agree. OmniFocus needs more attention to the delegation. I suggest to make also a state: "Delegated"

Me three.

I'd settle short term for the ability to email actions directly out of the iPhone version like I can from the iPad version. I can also do he same from my Mac but had to write an AppleScript to do it.

I don't understand why this is so low on the features priority list. It's essential for anyone in a management role or leadership position.

[QUOTE=Landshark;112446]We all have OmniFocus but we cannot send tasks to one another on any platform[/QUOTE]

I tend to [URL="http://www.complexpoint.macmate.me/Site/OmniFocus_to_Taskpaper.html"]export tasks to email[/URL] (in TaskPaper text format).

An email recipient can [URL="http://www.complexpoint.macmate.me/Site/Taskpaper2Omnifocus.html"]import them from TaskPaper[/URL] text format to OmniFocus.

Those two scripts could both be adapted a little for specific workflows.

There is also built-in TaskPaper export (with some minor bugs in conformity to the standard) from the OmniFocus main menu. [B]File > Export > Plain Text (TaskPaper)[/B]

[COLOR="White"]--[/COLOR]

Exporting or emailing tasks in the desktop or Mac version is simple. With AppleScript you can pretty much do whatever you want.

The capability does not exist in the iPhone version. It does exist in the iPad version albeit rudimentary where you can only email a single task one at a time. One needs to be able to send a list of tasks at once.

But emailing is the most basic means of sharing tasks and is not especially good for real collaboration. There needs to be some sort of server connection and the ability to share server records through a cloud connection.

[QUOTE=JohnJ80;112463]Exporting or emailing tasks in the desktop or Mac version is simple. With AppleScript you can pretty much do whatever you want.

The capability does not exist in the iPhone version. It does exist in the iPad version albeit rudimentary where you can only email a single task one at a time. One needs to be able to send a list of tasks at once.

But emailing is the most basic means of sharing tasks and is not especially good for real collaboration. There needs to be some sort of server connection and the ability to share server records through a cloud connection.[/QUOTE]

The bottom line here is that an expensive software product for task/project management does not permit native delegation without someone tinkering around the edges. I'm not messing around with AppleScript to fix what is a serious defect (IMHO). This is the first time we have had a 'leaver' in the team so we had never had to address this before.

[QUOTE=JohnJ80;112449]I don't understand why this is so low on the features priority list.[/QUOTE]

It's relatively high on the priority list, actually. It's just that the number one task is a very big one. (A new, more modern interface is by far the most common request we get for the Mac app.) As/after we complete that task, we've got a lot more freedom to work on other things.

With regards to this specific feature, there's probably also a bit of a chicken-and-egg thing going on, to be honest. Because the existing app was designed around a single-person workflow, there are a large number of customers that use it that way and request features they'd like to see. For example, Forecast view and requests for more repeat patterns both have more than twice as many requests attached as delegation does.

None of the above should be read as discouraging folks from requesting this - or other features they want, for that matter. Quite the opposite! It's going to be a while before we'll have anything visible to show for the work we're doing now, but feedback we get during that process still matters.

Forgot to mention, updated the appropriate items in our development database appropriately. Added Landsharks' request for task emailing, for example - several of the recent posters had existing requests for the things they want in there already.

Here PERTy PERTy, here PERTy PERTy... where is the PERT?