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Vikunja – Open-source, self-hostable to-do app

vikunja.io

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Re: Vikunja – Open-source, self-hostable to-do app

#71

Post by kolaente »

bioemerl wrote: post #39
kolaente wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Creator of Vikunja here) Thanks for the in-depth comment! > But my first impression using this is that it's going to need a lot more work on the depth of the features rather than the breath. > but when you add little features like that instead of bigger systems, you're going to find that you get lots of people wanting to add new little features to fit their use cases. Oh definitely. My method until this point was to…

It's cool to hear from you and see you're planning on working on a lot of this. > There is a little circle indicator on a task with the number of total vs done items on a task checklist, similar to how github does it. Is that what you meant? Yes and no - yes in the sense that that's basically what I'm talking about, but no in the sense that when I saw that button I was looking more for "a system of progress" - a way…

> This isn't so much me saying X feature is a good idea, but to describe what the mismatch was for me between expectation and result.

Gotcha. Thanks for the input!

> I used Crontab (and making it so that you can't open a template twice) to handle scheduling - putting a UI over it - it's been pretty darn good, but crontab also has some serious flaws in it - mostly around things like repeating tasks once every X > 5 days. For hourly/monthly/day-of-month and day-of-week, it works very well though.

Crontab sounds nice but I probably can't give that to someone who has never used it. Still like the idea to use it to handle repeating intervals though.

Your tool sounds nice. Like the sweetspot between "here's a thing I need to do regularly" and the usual habit trackers.

Re: Vikunja – Open-source, self-hostable to-do app

#72

Post by rounakdatta »

kolaente wrote: post #31
bioemerl wrote: post #28

I'm biased. I'm making a tool that's kind of like this one. Please keep that in mind, because I'm about to give a whole bunch of criticism here. First things first, the UX and UI is really neat and there's lots of really good design and thought put into how fast the app is and how well it is handling a whole bunch of users. I was sitting in there with everyone in hacker news creating tasks and it was keeping up amazi…

(Creator of Vikunja here) Thanks for the in-depth comment! > But my first impression using this is that it's going to need a lot more work on the depth of the features rather than the breath. > but when you add little features like that instead of bigger systems, you're going to find that you get lots of people wanting to add new little features to fit their use cases. Oh definitely. My method until this point was to…

Regular user of Vikunja, it brings a lot of value to my life!

> It's just not as straight forward as you might think (and that's a problem): you'll need to create a task with a due date of next Tuesday and a repeating schedule of every week / every 7 days.

This is my complaint as well, if I have a task scheduled every Sunday and I'm ticking off this week's, I want that to disappear for a while until next week arrives. Currently it just doesn't go away.

Other suggestion points: - Due time - There should by default be a reminder at the due time. I find myself setting a due date and then separately setting a reminder for it. Possibly a small checkbox with default-opt-in like `- [x] Remind?`

- Other reminder options - Email reminders are awesome, webhook reminders would also have been great. I had a WIP PR for that, but the design makes it slightly hard to have webhooks for absolutely everything (like created, updated etc events)

- Reminder UX - Reminders are there, but how can I know in advance which reminders are soon to go off? What if there was a small indication beside the task item like `Reminds in 3 hours`?

- Archive option - Oof, we definitely need this. Not all task items are executed successfully. If we mark Done / Delete a dropped/discarded task item, that's definitely lossy.

- Gantt chart - I find this not at all usable. I wish this had the Google Calendar like UX.

- Labels - In the Labels section, clicking a label should list down all the task items associated with it (O(1)). Otherwise, I find myself going to individual lists and applying filters (O(n)).

- Full text search - Since my life is on Vikunja, I'm waiting for this day when full-text search just works. I know there's an open discussion on the implementation of it.

- Templates - Templates would be nice to have. I use Vikunja to notify me (say) when a bond would mature - productivity would go ++ in these cases.

- Analytics - It'd be pretty cool to have a day-wise summary. It should tell me the task items I created today, items I moved to done etc. These stats/recap can give better insights into what's not being prioritized.

It's an OSS project, and I'd love to contribute to have these improvements in the product.

Re: Vikunja – Open-source, self-hostable to-do app

#73

Post by TeMPOraL »

solarkraft wrote: post #36
TeMPOraL wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. To me, it seems like a weird market blind spot. Most of the tools in this space can't even do a proper tree - typically they limit you to 2-4 levels, like "project", "task", "subtask" and "checklist". The few that don't, stick to the tree model, even though work naturally structures itself into a DAG. From the other end, I know MS Project has pretty much all the things you need, but has questionable UX, is quit…

> I started to tag as #ItsAGraph, #NotATree Oh, epic! While I do agree that most things that are modeled as yes are conceptually actually graphs, maybe my standards are lower/I just use worse software - I'd be very happy to get more trees. My typical rant topic is "just give me a damn tree". The worst offenders regarding this I can think of are note apps with their weird "notebook", "chapter","page" concepts rather t…

I feel the pain. So much software doesn't even expose a proper tree, much less a DAG. But that seems to be improving somewhat - I see trees in software more often. I just worry I'll retire before the ecosystem makes the cognitive jump to start implementing/exposing DAGs.

> I can think of are note apps with their weird "notebook", "chapter","page" concepts rather than just letting me choose the depth of nesting I need.

Exactly! And then you end up using "outliner" software for this, and then people are surprised that you need rich text capabilities in it. In reality, what's needed is to combine both, to get a note-taking app with arbitrary nesting levels.

Re: Vikunja – Open-source, self-hostable to-do app

#74

Post by TeMPOraL »

michaelsalim wrote: post #44
TeMPOraL wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. To me, it seems like a weird market blind spot. Most of the tools in this space can't even do a proper tree - typically they limit you to 2-4 levels, like "project", "task", "subtask" and "checklist". The few that don't, stick to the tree model, even though work naturally structures itself into a DAG. From the other end, I know MS Project has pretty much all the things you need, but has questionable UX, is quit…

I made Recall[0] which is all about this. Managing tasks using a tree structure (like folder/files, no level limit). And dependency representation with DAG graphs. Give it a try, you might like it. Unfortunately the project is currently paused since i can't figure out how to make it work financially (you can still use it though). The space is really crowded and most people don't really think about dependencies, so it…

On mobile now. I skimmed the landing page and this looks interesting, I'll check it out after the weekend. Thanks!

Re: Vikunja – Open-source, self-hostable to-do app

#75

Post by progval »

flakeoil wrote: post #64
k1t wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rather than just a pile of tasks, the ability to establish dependencies. This task must be done before that one. Ideally then, given all these tasks and their dependencies, what should I work on next?

Couldn't you have one main task which describes the overall task and then it has a list with checkboxes that has links to the other tasks it depends on? When one subtask is done, you check it off. "Ideally then, given all these tasks and their dependencies, what should I work on next?" I doubt a system can automatically propose the ideal task to work on anyway. There will be many tasks equally important and which are…

> Couldn't you have one main task which describes the overall task and then it has a list with checkboxes that has links to the other tasks it depends on?

That only works for trees of tasks, ie. when a task is a dependency of at most one other task.

Imagine you have two high-level tasks: "repair the chair" and "repair the computer", which both depends on the task "buy a screwdriver". Without support for DAGs of tasks, you would need a "buy a screwdriver" bullet point in both tasks, and remember to check both after you buy it.

Re: Vikunja – Open-source, self-hostable to-do app

#76

Post by yewenjie »

Has anyone found a personal productivity /todo app that

- gets out of your way

- doesn't feel like a chore even after months of use

- has some sort of intelligence built-in

?

IMO all apps I've tried so far feel good in the beginning and then start to become an annoyance.

Re: Vikunja – Open-source, self-hostable to-do app

#78

Post by thijser »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #29
darkteflon wrote: post #21

I’ve been a paying Todoist customer for many years. For some reason, they steadfastly refuse to introduce blocking/blocked by flags. It seems so strange to me to do all the hard work of allowing arbitrarily nested projects and tasks, sub-tasks, labels, complex filters and collaboration, but then not do dependencies. Imo dependencies is the big difference between something you can use on complex projects, and a “mere”…

This. To me, it seems like a weird market blind spot. Most of the tools in this space can't even do a proper tree - typically they limit you to 2-4 levels, like "project", "task", "subtask" and "checklist". The few that don't, stick to the tree model, even though work naturally structures itself into a DAG. From the other end, I know MS Project has pretty much all the things you need, but has questionable UX, is quit…

Have you tried Trilium (https://github.com/zadam/trilium)?

It's a generic note storage (with a DAG based model) that's very extensible and comes with a demo task manager implementation: https://github.com/zadam/trilium/wiki/Task-manager

Re: Vikunja – Open-source, self-hostable to-do app

#79

Post by koheripbal »

yewenjie wrote: post #76

Has anyone found a personal productivity /todo app that - gets out of your way - doesn't feel like a chore even after months of use - has some sort of intelligence built-in ? IMO all apps I've tried so far feel good in the beginning and then start to become an annoyance.

I use a simple document with daily sections. Simple. I've been using it for three years straight.

I started using simple markup, then switched to orgmode. Although, I'm still mostly just adding a day to each day on a single document.

Keeps me focused

Re: Vikunja – Open-source, self-hostable to-do app

#80

Post by lonelyasacloud »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #29
darkteflon wrote: post #21

I’ve been a paying Todoist customer for many years. For some reason, they steadfastly refuse to introduce blocking/blocked by flags. It seems so strange to me to do all the hard work of allowing arbitrarily nested projects and tasks, sub-tasks, labels, complex filters and collaboration, but then not do dependencies. Imo dependencies is the big difference between something you can use on complex projects, and a “mere”…

This. To me, it seems like a weird market blind spot. Most of the tools in this space can't even do a proper tree - typically they limit you to 2-4 levels, like "project", "task", "subtask" and "checklist". The few that don't, stick to the tree model, even though work naturally structures itself into a DAG. From the other end, I know MS Project has pretty much all the things you need, but has questionable UX, is quit…

> This. To me, it seems like a weird market blind spot. Most of the tools in this space can't even do a proper tree - typically they limit you to 2-4 levels, like "project", "task", "subtask" and "checklist". The few that don't, stick to the tree model, even though work naturally structures itself into a DAG.

I did wonder that myself. But having tried implementing, I'd wager that deep many-to-many parent-child relationships are not directly visible more often is because no one has figured out good paradigms [1] to surface the functionality in a way that users would want to use most of the time (witness MS Project) versus the alternative tags, saved search, etc approaches.

[1] It's a fairly chunky challenge. Consider for example, what happens, and how is it presented to the user during the simple operation of removing an item. What happens when it has multiple parents? What about if it also has child dependencies? What about if some of those children have different ancestors? And it must be undoable and also needs to be usable on the limited screen estate of a mobile phone? ...

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