Auto Completing Projects
 

A feature request I would like to put in the hopper, is for auto completing projects.

If it could be a inspector based option for projects (off by default) when set, the last task of a project, when completed, triggers that project to be marked complete.

This would be great for some of my constantly reocuring projects, with a limited amount of set steps, like "Pay Verizon Bill". I want to go click, click, click done.

What do you think?

BZ

As long as the option was off by default, this would be fine. Now that the school year has started, I'm using more template projects. While I don't want auto-complete for ad-hoc projects, which are less fully planned, I would appreciate it for template projects where the steps are always the same.

This is an excellent idea. I remember one problem I had with kinkless gtd was when you completed the last item in a project, the project went away. I had to create a final action that said, "this project is complete." So, I would want the default to keep the project open until it is manually closed.

[QUOTE=BwanaZulia;20152]A feature request I would like to put in the hopper, is for auto completing projects.

If it could be a inspector based option for projects (off by default) when set, the last task of a project, when completed, triggers that project to be marked complete.

This would be great for some of my constantly reocuring projects, with a limited amount of set steps, like "Pay Verizon Bill". I want to go click, click, click done.

What do you think?

BZ[/QUOTE]

It sounds like a convenience feature and sometimes it would be, but there's always the chance that a project would disappear before you were really comfortable with its completeness. I think as an option, it could be useful, but as a default setting, it would be more dangerous than helpful.

I like being able to see my completed projects during my review and then marking each one completed. For one thing, it really helps me actually review what I've done. For another, it's just satisfying.

It would be even more useful if the option could be configured on a per project basis. If I could set some of my repeating projects to autocomplete, that would be handy, but I wouldn't want all of my projects to autocomplete.

Definitely as an option and definitely off by default.

As I go through my projects, a large percentage of them are totally fixed and repeating. For those, auto-completing would be really nice, especially in the "Due" filter of projects and context view, so I would know these projects got completed and repeated without having to switch or project view to find them and complete them.

A nice to have for 1.0 but would be great in a 1.1 or so.

BZ

Option-click on last task
 

There seems to be a healthy debate about this, and both sides have reasonable positions.
(1) Some don't want to lose a project until they specifically acknowledge that there aren't some more tasks lurking (after the last identified task is checked off).
(2) I hate having to flip back to View mode to manually go to the Inspector for a dozen old projects that are just hanging around long after all of their tasks are done.

The suggestion I made was that in Context view, the default can be for the project not to be auto-completed but give the final task for the project a slightly different icon and either option-click or a right-click command would check it off and complete the its project.

chuck

[QUOTE=chuckbo;20208]
The suggestion I made was that in Context view, the default can be for the project not to be auto-completed but give the final task for the project a slightly different icon and either option-click or a right-click command would check it off and complete the its project.[/QUOTE]

That's a great idea. Additionally, when a project isn't complete, the different formatting for "last actions" would serve as a trigger to decide what the next action should be.

I like this idea, but I think I might vote for an icon system, rather than just coloring. The formatting already risks getting overloaded trying to distinguish between:

- next actions
- singletons
- regular actions
- completed
- inactive

Actually, what I'd like is a (subtle) indicator showing the number of actions left in the project. That way, when I'm scanning in Context view, and I only see three next actions, I'm not given a false sense of security about having little to do if each of those next actions is hiding a whole bunch of remaining actions.

[QUOTE=chuckbo;20208]The suggestion I made was that in Context view, the default can be for the project not to be auto-completed but give the final task for the project a slightly different icon and either option-click or a right-click command would check it off and complete the its project.
[/QUOTE]

I like this idea, although I would love to see the option-click summon the Quick Entry window with the current project pre-filled (this would facilitate moving a project forward with new tasks; I mentioned this in another thread). These two functions could be integrated with a slightly modified Quick Entry window in which a "Mark Project Complete" button would be added.

Usage: Option-click on a task checkbox. This summons the Quick Entry window pre-populated with the project of the completed task. You can then:[LIST=1][*]Add another task to the project, or[*]Select "Mark Project Complete" (if task was the last in the project)[/LIST]On your merry way you go to get more things done.

[QUOTE=dbyler;20288]I like this idea, although I would love to see the option-click summon the Quick Entry window with the current project pre-filled (this would facilitate moving a project forward with new tasks; I mentioned this in another thread). These two functions could be integrated with a slightly modified Quick Entry window in which a "Mark Project Complete" button would be added.

Usage: Option-click on a task checkbox. This summons the Quick Entry window pre-populated with the project of the completed task. You can then:[LIST=1][*]Add another task to the project, or[*]Select "Mark Project Complete" (if task was the last in the project)[/LIST]On your merry way you go to get more things done.[/QUOTE]
Why not simply have a popup appearing when the last action is completed? The options made available would be something like "Mark project as completed", "Add another action" or "Ignore for now" (although in GTD one is supposed to make decision and not ignore...). That would not overload the interface and ask a clear action at an appropriate time...

Em