Why do you keep messing around with the ability to drag tasks off boards and onto the timetable?

Avatar
  • updated
  • Under review
This is just massively frustrating. Every time you change this it completely destroys my work flow. I want the ability to drag tasks off a board onto the schedule and for them to disappear from the board. Without this I have to go through and manually remove them from the board every time - it adds loads of friction to my work. More fundamentally, you just can't go making significant changes to the UX every couple of months. I feel you don't really understand the kind of product you are producing - this is something I used every day at work to support all the other work I'm doing. I don't ever want to think about it. I don't ever want to HAVE to learn anything new. I just want it to work seamlessly in the way that it always have. New features and changes are good, but they need to be implemented gently, to be used and integrated into my work at a time of my choosing. I know I'm not the only person who wants to be able to drag things around and have them actually move place. I've politely requested this feature in the past and been patient, but basically what has happened is that the behaviour keeps changing. This is really not acceptable for a paid product which is such a core feature of my working life.
App:
Avatar
jshields

Sounds like there might be 2 possible solutions to this??

  1. Have an option in the setting to remove tasks from the list when scheduled
  2. Grey out the tasks in the list that have been scheduled

For me, I like to have the tasks appear in the list... even if they have been scheduled. 

-jj

Avatar
Aymeric Founder
  • Under review


We have a few things to consider:

  1. We want the Roles board to work the same way as the Boards (and ultimately it will be merged with the list of Boards)
  2. When you drag a task from role board, it is expected that the task retains its role

I think the solution is to collapse all scheduled tasks in Boards and Role board, not show them once they are completed.

I hear you about the frustration of having the design changes. Unfortunately the main complaint we receive from our users is they find that they are not using the tool to its fullest, that the user experience is confusing. 

So we want to improve the user experience, and it comes with user interface changes. For example, moving the Edit Task dialog into the sidebar allows users to drop tasks as subtasks, or schedule subtasks very easily.

The recent layout change puts the emphasis on the plan of the week, which is the core of the Week Plan methodology. Up until now, many people have been misusing this section because of how the user interface presented it. So we want to guide the users more.

I don't foresee any major changes in the next months, we are going to introduce a new Weekly Review process, and put the Roles board into the Boards (and rename it to Backlog).

That's about it. We are going to do a lot of work on the onboarding to teach people to use the tool but you won't be affected by that.

Avatar
jshields
Quote from jshields

Sounds like there might be 2 possible solutions to this??

  1. Have an option in the setting to remove tasks from the list when scheduled
  2. Grey out the tasks in the list that have been scheduled

For me, I like to have the tasks appear in the list... even if they have been scheduled. 

-jj

Seems like a good plan... You can't please all the people all of the time :-) 

Avatar
jshields
Quote from Aymeric


We have a few things to consider:

  1. We want the Roles board to work the same way as the Boards (and ultimately it will be merged with the list of Boards)
  2. When you drag a task from role board, it is expected that the task retains its role

I think the solution is to collapse all scheduled tasks in Boards and Role board, not show them once they are completed.

I hear you about the frustration of having the design changes. Unfortunately the main complaint we receive from our users is they find that they are not using the tool to its fullest, that the user experience is confusing. 

So we want to improve the user experience, and it comes with user interface changes. For example, moving the Edit Task dialog into the sidebar allows users to drop tasks as subtasks, or schedule subtasks very easily.

The recent layout change puts the emphasis on the plan of the week, which is the core of the Week Plan methodology. Up until now, many people have been misusing this section because of how the user interface presented it. So we want to guide the users more.

I don't foresee any major changes in the next months, we are going to introduce a new Weekly Review process, and put the Roles board into the Boards (and rename it to Backlog).

That's about it. We are going to do a lot of work on the onboarding to teach people to use the tool but you won't be affected by that.

"onboarding to teach people to use the tool "

This is probably the key. If the new user has not read 7-Habits and GTD, they might be confused.

A series of short videos might fix this situation.

Avatar
Aymeric Founder
Quote from jshields

"onboarding to teach people to use the tool "

This is probably the key. If the new user has not read 7-Habits and GTD, they might be confused.

A series of short videos might fix this situation.

Yes, and it is high on the list, but since we are changing the UI, we want to do the changes in the UI before recording the videos :)

Avatar
DavidCullen
Quote from Aymeric


We have a few things to consider:

  1. We want the Roles board to work the same way as the Boards (and ultimately it will be merged with the list of Boards)
  2. When you drag a task from role board, it is expected that the task retains its role

I think the solution is to collapse all scheduled tasks in Boards and Role board, not show them once they are completed.

I hear you about the frustration of having the design changes. Unfortunately the main complaint we receive from our users is they find that they are not using the tool to its fullest, that the user experience is confusing. 

So we want to improve the user experience, and it comes with user interface changes. For example, moving the Edit Task dialog into the sidebar allows users to drop tasks as subtasks, or schedule subtasks very easily.

The recent layout change puts the emphasis on the plan of the week, which is the core of the Week Plan methodology. Up until now, many people have been misusing this section because of how the user interface presented it. So we want to guide the users more.

I don't foresee any major changes in the next months, we are going to introduce a new Weekly Review process, and put the Roles board into the Boards (and rename it to Backlog).

That's about it. We are going to do a lot of work on the onboarding to teach people to use the tool but you won't be affected by that.

Are you telling me that you have no intention of making changes so that drag & drop from the boards onto the schedule moves the task? I will have to rethink whether I want to pay for this tool in the future if that is the case.

The way I use Week Plan is that I have an inbox board that auto-populates when I more things from another task management app. My system is based on GTD, and the nature of my work means that I constantly have to manage very large numbers of tasks, many of which will not ever get done. I need to be able to quickly put tasks on the schedule or move them to other boards for consideration later. The whole point of the inbox in GTD is that you clear it, right? How am I supposed to have a functioning inbox if I can't clear it quickly? If you can suggest a workflow with the tool as it's currently configured that works for me I'd definitely consider adopting it, but I can't see one at the moment.

I hear what you are saying about UI changes and I appreciate you being responsive to criticism about the recent changes. I'm here on this forum registering my complaint because I think you have the bones of a very strong product here, and I'd much rather it worked for me than have to try and hack something using a different, inferior tool. But it's very frustrating to be spending my time trying to make that happen rather than doing my actual job. I hope you are able to take my needs into account. Thanks.

Avatar
Aymeric Founder
Quote from DavidCullen

Are you telling me that you have no intention of making changes so that drag & drop from the boards onto the schedule moves the task? I will have to rethink whether I want to pay for this tool in the future if that is the case.

The way I use Week Plan is that I have an inbox board that auto-populates when I more things from another task management app. My system is based on GTD, and the nature of my work means that I constantly have to manage very large numbers of tasks, many of which will not ever get done. I need to be able to quickly put tasks on the schedule or move them to other boards for consideration later. The whole point of the inbox in GTD is that you clear it, right? How am I supposed to have a functioning inbox if I can't clear it quickly? If you can suggest a workflow with the tool as it's currently configured that works for me I'd definitely consider adopting it, but I can't see one at the moment.

I hear what you are saying about UI changes and I appreciate you being responsive to criticism about the recent changes. I'm here on this forum registering my complaint because I think you have the bones of a very strong product here, and I'd much rather it worked for me than have to try and hack something using a different, inferior tool. But it's very frustrating to be spending my time trying to make that happen rather than doing my actual job. I hope you are able to take my needs into account. Thanks.

We are going to introduce a proper inbox feature next week.

It is implemented, we are testing it right now.

Avatar
DavidCullen
Quote from Aymeric

We are going to introduce a proper inbox feature next week.

It is implemented, we are testing it right now.

I await that with interest. I use Zapier to auto-populate the board I use at the moment, which I guess just hooks into your API, so I hope the API will be able to create new tasks in the inbox.

Avatar
Aymeric Founder
Quote from DavidCullen

I await that with interest. I use Zapier to auto-populate the board I use at the moment, which I guess just hooks into your API, so I hope the API will be able to create new tasks in the inbox.

Thanks for the reminder. We will update Zapier.

Avatar
DavidCullen
Quote from Aymeric

Thanks for the reminder. We will update Zapier.

I'm coming back to this because my work flow is still all over the place. I can't find any option in Zapier to add the tasks to the inbox. The drop-down only includes the board lists. What gives?