Support Daily Note Workflow

[tgrosinger]

Hey there, this plugin looks really awesome!

I'm the author of Slated. It looks like our plugins have a lot in common, but the biggest thing Slated has that is missing here is support for the daily note workflow. For example, when I check off a recurring task, rather than creating the next task in the current file, it would be created in the daily note for that day.

I'll be honest and say I haven't been giving Slated as much love as it deserves recently. I'd be interested in seeing if I we can add some of the bigger features from Slated to your plugin, and then I can deprecate Slated. Let me know if you think this daily note workflow could fit in your plugin. 🙂

[WillPlatnick]

On the flip side, while there's a lot of things I love about Slated, I really dislike Slated's behavior here. That workflow ends up creating daily notes for you ahead of time. If the task gets repeated in a month, it'll create a daily note one month later. By the time that day arrives, my daily template will have changed and then I need to manually grab the task out, delete the note and recreate it.

I really like the workflow that Obsidian Tasks has here. I can just throw all my repeated tasks into their own file, and then query them into my daily note.

[schemar]

@tgrosinger Hey there! Of course I know who you are and what slated is 😊
@WilliamDurin Yes, I think it would need to be an option in the settings that you need to turn on specifically.

I think the daily flow could fit. Possibly as an optional extension in the settings.
However, I would need a more concrete understanding of "the daily flow".

For example: I use daily notes. Each of my daily notes uses a template that integrates the calendar plugin's date functionality with tasks' queries. Pretty similar to what's in the readme: README#Daily Agenda. This way, I see every day:

• what's overdue
• what's due
• what's coming
• everything without a due date

The tasks themselves are not in the daily note, but rather scattered around the vault wherever their contextual fit.
This is my "daily flow". And I have to admit there is something about this workflow that isn't nice and I haven't come up with something better: recurring tasks create really long lists over time and you won't find any tasks in those lists without a query. Not cool. I think this is one key point where your daily flow improves the handling.

Now I need to better understand how your daily flow differs.
For example, is the following assumption correct?

Given that I have a recurring task in a daily note
When I toggle that task "done"
Then Tasks should create the next occurrence of the task in its respective daily note
(And not above the original task that was toggled)

Another topic: would you need to "roll over" tasks by moving their due date to the next day? I think that's not really necessary with how Tasks currently works. Due dates can be "real" due dates and then you pull everything into your daily note. And when it's overdue, it will still show up in your daily notes. As overdue, which I think is correct if you use "due dates" as hard dates where tasks must be done and don't attach due dates to regular tasks that are never really due.
On the other hand, maybe you use due dates as "scheduled" dates, where a task on a day means you plan to do the task on that day. And when you didn't do it that day, you need to reschedule all scheduled, open tasks ("roll them over to the next day"). In that case I would suggest we add a scheduling option on top of the due dates so that "due" is a "hard" date and scheduling is flexible? There is already an open discussion: #67

What do you think?

By the way: when I read the title of the issue, I was prepared to point the requesting person to slated 🙈

[tgrosinger]

By the way: when I read the title of the issue, I was prepared to point the requesting person to slated

Haha, I really appreciate that!

By the time that day arrives, my daily template will have changed and then I need to manually grab the task out, delete the note and recreate it.

@WilliamDurin this is a very good observation, and a problem that I have run into myself many times in my plugin. I find it a mild annoyance, however I don't use a very elaborate daily template, so I can see how it could be a lot more annoying in some cases.

Given that I have a recurring task in a daily note
When I toggle that task "done"
Then Tasks should create the next occurrence of the task in its respective daily note

@schemar, your understanding is spot on. In Slated (at least the way I use it) a task is added to the daily note for the day in which I will care about that task again. There is no distinction between a "scheduled date" and a "due date" just for simplicity reasons. I could certainly imagine the daily note being the scheduled date and the task optionally having an additional due date.

And I have to admit there is something about this workflow that isn't nice and I haven't come up with something better: recurring tasks create really long lists over time and you won't find any tasks in those lists without a query.

This is the primary reason why I made Slated. I felt like most task list I have used in the past end up with a giant list of finished and unfinished tasks. I actually often delete the daily note for days in the past if the tasks are all checked and there's not additional content of value.

But I sure do wish I could also have composite view queries of my tasks. I think it's the biggest thing that Slated is missing and the thing I'm most excited about in obsidian-tasks. I'm imaging a world where I can have tasks anywhere in my vault (like this plugin) or in a daily note, in which case the scheduled date is inferred from the note date. I could then have queries in my daily note template that show me over-due tasks, or task from elsewhere in the vault. Just spitballing...

But William has a point, it's possible that having separate plugins for separate workflows makes the most sense. If that's where this heads, I think this is still a very valuable conversation! If you want to take components from Slated, (maybe the recurrence builder?) please do! Likewise, I'd be interested in adding task querying to Slated. If that's the direction we end up heading, maybe we can make a shared library that both plugins can use (just like how Liam created the daily-notes-interface and calendar-ui libraries).

Thanks! I really appreciate the conversation 🙂

[schemar]

Thank you! I will need more time thinking about this. Two things stood out immediately, however:

1. I'm imaging a world where I can have tasks anywhere in my vault (like this plugin) or in a daily note, in which case the scheduled date is inferred from the note date.

This sounds awesome. I need to think about it more. But at first sight: add optional scheduled dates to tasks and infer scheduled dates from tasks in daily notes; then allow querying for scheduled (on|after|before) (e.g. in the daily notes). Then allow bulk re-scheduling (schedule everything that was scheduled "before today" to "today" or similar). This is definitely something I want to look into. However, this wouldn't solve the issue of long lists with recurring tasks. But still: maybe this allows you to use obsidian-tasks your way. If you deleted old daily notes in the past, maybe it is ok to have one file with all recurring tasks in it (like @WilliamDurin; thank you for the input!) and then only access those via queries. In practice, recurring tasks rarely need the context that one-off tasks often require.

2. Likewise, I'd be interested in adding task querying to Slated. If that's the direction we end up heading, maybe we can make a shared library that both plugins can use.

Absolutely! I started thinking about which parts would need to be extracted and which parts would be specific to obsidian-tasks. I realized that my current implementation is not very modular in that sense 🙈
At first sight, the extracted, shared components would be the cache, the query, and the query renderer. And the lib consumers would need to tell the cache how it creates a task from a line in a file (and the tasks' type; generic). The query renderer could use any "task" implementation, as long as it implements toLi(), I think. But that will be extended soon with optional parameters for parts that should or shouldn't be rendered (#81). The challenge is that the query also works on task specific fields for filtering, etc.

Overall I completely agree that this is a valuable discussion already, no matter the outcome 👍 Thank you @tgrosinger and @WilliamDurin

[FiekeB]

I use the Tasks plugin. With a Daily Note template that generates my tasks for that day and the week to come, under separate headers.

I may sound silly, but I just keep all done Tasks in a separate note called Done Tasks. And leave the query for them out of my Daily Note, so that doesn't get cluttered. I also frequently delete (non recurring) Tasks once they're done. If I really need to remember that I did some task and when, I'll just copy it over to the Daily Note where it makes sense and remove the - [ ] bit which leaves just the text and the icons and the dates etc.

I also have a separate note where all my recurring tasks reside. Mostly stuff that isn't Obsidian or digital stuff related, like my household chores. All other tasks are in notes where they make sense. Very often they are questions that I need to find the answers for, like howto things etc. In that case, once the task is done I remove the - [ ] bit and that leaves me with just the question and I write its answer right below it. If I need the due and done date, I copy the task over from my Done Tasks note before i strip the - [ ] bit and paste that over the original task and then remove the - [ ] bit. Seems like a lot of work when I type it out, but it's really not.

Maybe I'm missing something obvious here, but this way I keep that long Done Tasks list as short as possible. You don't have to have the Done tasks in your Daily Note if you don't want to.

Of course the information about a done task is stored somewhere, and perhaps an option to remove instead of archive that info would be nice. Just don't know how that would work with recurring tasks.

[tgrosinger]

Okay I've been doing a bunch more thinking about this and I'm actually now considering a new plugin which is build specifically to be used with DataView. I've been resisting the one-node-per-task workflow, but I've decided to give it a shot. I can then have one directory with all my tasks, not really meant to be interacted with manually. DataView will be used to display my tasks for any given day, as well as overdue tasks. It's an experiment, but we'll see how it goes. I'll report back 🙂

[schemar]

OK. Let us know how it goes!

I have also been thinking about this on and off over the past weeks and the more I dug in, the more edge-cases I dug up. I think the effort to really, truly support the workflow where tasks are moved around daily notes is too much effort for me to do at the moment.

However, maybe there would be some smaller, quality of life improvements possible which would make this plug-in work for you?

[flatlines]

@schemar @WilliamDurin do we care when a recurring task was completed? I personally don't and primarily use these to describe rituals (e.g. recurring meetings in my calendar). If moving tasks forward in time in Daily Notes like Slated is problematic, then perhaps another solution would be to amend the original recurring task with the updated due date once it's done.

i.e. if I check off:

• water the plants 🔁 every week 📅 2021-06-01

it becomes:

• water the plants 🔁 every week 📅 2021-06-08

this would cause the task to show up in your daily note for that day (assuming you have Tasks embedded in your template as a view) without getting into the faff of writing new Daily Notes ahead of time.

Another option would be to only write the Daily Notes a week in advance and run some sort of check every week. This would limit the amount of maintenance required if the template were to change later.

[schemar]

Good idea. You could even add all previous done dates, if you wanted 🤔

[flatlines]

Yes, indeed you could! I hadn't even considered that angle, very elegant. You'd probably want to make it configurable to some extent though, in case people have different opinions on how it should work. For me personally, appending done dates could get messy if the task was weekly (there would be 52 dates by the end of the year..).. perhaps if there was a way to limit the volume of done dates? Or configure them to track over a particular time frame?

…

On Tue, 1 Jun 2021, 10:29 Martin Schenck, ***@***.***> wrote: Good idea. You could even add all previous done dates, if you wanted 🤔 — You are receiving this because you commented. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#130 (reply in thread)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AUJXCO5CZJB2ZG7AHIIXVMTTQSSBNANCNFSM45IWWFDQ> .

[schemar]

There was also another idea that additional data could be added in sub-items. E.g.

- [x] recurring task 🔁 every week on Monday
    - Done on:
        - 2021-05-03
        - 2021-05-10
        - 2021-05-17

Those are all good ideas. But right now, I have to keep a very narrow focus and that is currently on the things listed in the issues.

[Masstronaut]

In addition to daily notes, it would be great to have support for the Periodic Notes plugin which adds things like weekly and monthly notes.

[eggtoastie]

I would love to see Tasks be able to differentiate between due Monday (today) and next Monday (next week).

I use Periodic notes and only the Weekly note as a To Do / Done list, with notes added on the fly. Some items are pulled in from elsewhere with Tasks (recurrent monthly tasks that have their own note) or random things I've assigned to (a specific day) in a week. And others are new during the week. If they are done during that week, I check them off and they never see a Task date. While I don't find Daily Notes useful (my tasks tend to go on for a few days before they're done and it's better to see all the notes together), I do break my weekly template into Day of the Week Headers. Tasks puts daily dated tasks into the right header based on something like "due Monday". This gives me both TO Do and Done tasks, which I like. Unfortunately, once Monday is over, it adds NEXT Monday's tasks to that week. I'm using Tasks v 1.13.1 and I've tried adding some of the Boolean language to say this Monday, but not next - and it doesn't work. I tried before, after, next week, etc. I could create separate queries, but that would make the days messy. I can make several versions work on the current week, but never the next. If I look back at old weeks, I see new tasks appear when I don't want them there.

Any suggestions, or will this simply not work with Weekly Periodic Notes?

[claremacrae]

@eggtoastie I have read your post several times, and whilst generally it is useful to have background about a request, I'm sorry to say that there is a lot to take in, and reconstruct manually - and it would really help to know what behaviour you are asking for in Tasks, without requiring someone to install Weekly Periodic Notes and learn how to use it, and then try and translate your descriptions in to Markdown.

Is there any chance that you could add some text here that I could actually use in Tasks, in order to understand what your query is please?

In other words, please give me some Markdown that I can paste in to Obsidian, or open in Obsidian, with clear tasks and comments inside.

Include the names of the markdown files containing the tasks, and an indication of what you would like the Tasks search to show, when run on a particular date or dates (including the day of the week alongside any dates, so I don't have to go to a calendar to work out the intention).

[eggtoastie]

Hey @claremacrae - thanks for your response. I'm sorry for the confusion. Sometimes in trying to provide enough background, I think I muddy things up.

Basically I'm trying to combine Tasks, Periodic Notes and Calendar in a way that lets me have both a schedule of what's to be done AND a record of what was done, by Week.

I created a test vault to better give you an example, but it's behaving entirely differently than in my main vault. I added the Tasks plug in, created test tasks and a template "schedule", then messed with the filtering, then I added Periodic notes, then Calendar. Granted this is probably not the right order to install them, as I believe Periodic notes requires Calendar (I could be wrong). But what I noticed was the tasks were behaving differently as I added each plugin. Now that all three are active, I can only see a done task... I'm going to have to mess with it more before I have something to show. But this is making me question if I need calendar and periodic notes at all.

[claremacrae]

Ok, well thanks for trying!

[claremacrae]

Can someone please tell me whether #1176 is asking for the same behaviour as this one?

[claremacrae]

Can someone please tell me whether #1176 is asking for the same behaviour as this one?

Actually I think that is not possible to answer, as this topic is so wide ranging.

[mvdkwast]

Hello,

There is one thing in this conversation that @tgrosinger said, and that was exactly was I was looking for :

I'm imaging a world where I can have tasks anywhere in my vault (like this plugin) or in a daily note, in which case the scheduled date is inferred from the note date.

I'm using daily notes, and usually end up with more tasks in it than what I can handle during the day. I'm also scheduling tasks ahead by writing them down in future daily notes.

I also have a sticky always open panel that contains some queries that allow me to see the overdue, current, coming and unscheduled tasks. In that panel I would also like to see all tasks from the dailies, using the date from the daily note as a scheduled or due date, so I know what I can quickly see what is unfinished and to come.

I wrote some code as a POC to do just this, and it seems to make my life (a little) easier, since it dispenses me from having to manually add a date to each daily task, and also revealed some forgotten tasks added to dailies a while ago.

Cleaning this up to merge it into obsidian-tasks is not entirely trivial, since it raises questions about user configuration. Currently I expect a daily note to be always named daily/yyyy-mm-dd, but this may not always be the case. I used the scheduled date, but this may suit everyone's need. Should the daily notes plugin be auto-detected, etc... Also this feature should probably be optional.

@schemar seemed enthusiastic about this, but needed some more thinking :) Is anyone else ?

[schemar]

Thank you @mvdkwast ! It’s usually not worth the effort to try and mold Tasks into the workflow you describe.

Instead, you make your life much easier by adding the tasks on the daily note when you create them; and add the proper due date to the task.

See also my comment here:

#1230 (reply in thread)

[claremacrae]

@tgrosinger I would love to see your code though.

I do think that having an option to treat the date in the file name as a due date, or perhaps some other field, would be welcomed by many.

Personally, I create several files a week with actions for a particular event on that day (caring for a relative). There are often 30 to 40 tasks on that day, in that same file, and adding a due date to all of them gets very old really quickly.

So in my case, it's less about where the note goes, as how to remove the need to remember to add the due date to every task in the file.

[claremacrae]

Let's carry on the conversation in #1230, as its topic is more specific.

[claremacrae]

Oops - pinged the wrong person. @mvdkwast please see above two messages

[claremacrae]

I'm doing a bit of house-keeping on old discussions.

And I've read this one several times over the last couple of years and am still unable to figure out exactly what the requested actions are.

Also, since this was written, a lot more feature requests have been made, and many fixed.

So I'm going to close this, and ask that if anyone does spot actual outstanding actions, to please create individual feature requests for them using the appropriate New Issue template. Thanks.