Push notification services and their formats integration in Task Board plugin

[tu2-atmanand]

Hello Everyone!

I am the developer of Task Board plugin. And through this discussion topic I would like to showcase the workflow, I am currently working on for Obsidian users, to get push notifications for their tasks (and also notes).

Now, the main reason for creating this discussion topic is to understand the formats Obsidian users use to apply reminders to their tasks. Since Tasks plugin has the biggest user base, hence creating this discussion here.

Right now, Task Board supports only one service integration for scheduling reminders, which is the Reminder plugin. So, through the Edit task modal of Task Board, users can easily add reminder to their tasks using a single checkbox click and the reminder plugin will pick up the same as per its format. But I wasnt aware of the issues reminder plugin had with few of the Tasks plugin functionalities. Which I learnt from here : https://publish.obsidian.md/tasks/Advanced/Notifications
(Will try to see whatever I can do to fix this issue)

But coming to Mobile users, reminder plugin cannot send push notification like it does on Desktop. Based on my research I have found following three helper apps which scans your vaults to look out for reminders (please note, the idea here is complete anonymity, so I want be discussing about the cloud services to schedule reminders, like TickTick, Tick etc., but you all are free to share your thoughts and services which you know or are using right now) :

• Obsi : https://forum.obsidian.md/t/obsi-app-to-manage-obsidian-tasks-on-mobile/97625?u=tu2_atmanand
• Notifian : https://github.com/pericles-tpt/notifian
• TaskForge : https://taskforge.md/

All these apps have their own way of adding reminder property to the tasks. Hence to account for this different formats, I have decided to support all the formats, while adding a reminder property through the Task Board modal : tu2-atmanand/Task-Board#289

Furthermore, I have been working with the Notifian developer to improve its reminder scanning feature by using Task Board as the bridge : pericles-tpt/notifian#14 (comment)

So, in this discussion I would like to know your thoughts and suggestions to implement this functionality the best way. And most importantly what is your workflow or the tool you use to get push notification for the tasks you add in your notes and do you think this integration will be worth to switch to.

[claremacrae]

Hi @tu2-atmanand, thanks for asking.

Your message

https://publish.obsidian.md/tasks/Advanced/Notifications

Actually the situation is somewhat better now than it was when that was written - there is a draft PR that offers to improve the docs, IIRC. I wasn't happy enough with its accuracy to merge it.

• Remove warning about Reminders not working for recurring tasks, as the Reminders issue was resolved #2689

So, in this discussion I would like to know your thoughts and suggestions to implement this functionality the best way.
And most importantly what is your workflow or the tool you use to get push notification for the tasks you add in your notes

I don't - I use my calendar for time-critical things - of which there are not many in my life.

and do you think this integration will be worth to switch to.

I am sure that a lot of people will find it useful.

I don't yet understand what, if anything, you have in mind for Tasks in this area.

Prior attempts to add Reminder format support to Tasks

There have been two previous attempts at adding Reminders format support to the Tasks plugin:

• feat: Add Reminders fields and Notifications  #1925
• feat: Add Reminder Field Support #2750

Unfortunately both were done as single big PRs, rather than breaking the projects down.

Neither was robust enough to be merged.

[tu2-atmanand]

Thanks @claremacrae for sharing your thoughts and the resources!

These integrations and finally reaching to a stable workflow will take time. And it will be definitely gonna get improved over time. For now, just wanted to understand the view points of different users in this discussion, so a better solution can be achieved instead of simply working on something which might not be useful at all. And to avoid re-inventing something which is alreay available and which I am not aware of.

Nice to learn about these things from the past so many years of discussions.

[claremacrae]

I have in mind to enable Tasks to support times on date fields.
And to make the parsing code more flexible.

At my current time availability, that won't be happening very soon though.

[tu2-atmanand]

Formats used by the respective plugins/services

Reminder plugin formats :

• Default format with only date : (@2021-09-15)
• Defaut format with date-time : (@2021-09-15 20:40)

I will not support the below formats until Tasks plugin supports them in its Auto-suggestion menu :

• Tasks plugin format using emoji with only date : ⏰ 2021-09-16
• Tasks plugin format using emoji with date-time : ⏰ 2021-09-16 10:00

Obsi App formats

• Only single format : (@HH:mm).

Only supports HH:mm and cumpulsorily requires either scheduled-date property or due-date property to fetch the date.

Notifian App formats

• Scans the date and time associated with the date.
• While scanning for multiple dates, the following preference is given for the dates and the first match is extracted as the reminder date. And time associated with the respective date is extracted as the reminder time :

1. Start Date
2. Scheduled Date
3. Due Date

[claremacrae]

Thanks @tu2-atmanand! When you have time, I'd really appreciate it if you could edit the above and put in links to the various plugins or systems that you are referring to - I've not seen all of them.

[tu2-atmanand]

After going through this comment from the PR #1854 . I got a better idea and I think this would be a more efficient in terms of UI/UX :

• Every date field (Start date, Scheduled date and Due date) will have a small icon ⏲️ besides it.
• Once user clicks on this icon, it will populate a new time field just below this date input filed and it will ask user to select the time value.
• User can select the time.
• This combination of date-time will be used as the value for the reminder and the respective service can use this value.
• Also, when this one date has been selected as the reminder date, the ⏲️ icon from the other two date fields should disappear.
• Again, when user will remove the reminder time from the earlier selected date. The ⏲️ button will re-appear on all the three dates again for user to select them again.

[claremacrae]

I am not totally confident that I understand this.

But it would be good to explore the usability of that idea - perhaps by working through how many user steps are required to add or remove times.

I was rather assuming that the current date-picker in Tasks would be replaced by a date-and-time-picker, making it easy to switch between date or date-and-time.

[tu2-atmanand]

I was rather assuming that the current date-picker in Tasks would be replaced by a date-and-time-picker, making it easy to switch between date or date-and-time.

Although I can see the numerous extra features this can bring. But personally, I dont think I'll be using this feature for the following reasons :

• Now the user will be required to select date as well as the time while entering the values for the various dates. If user has not selected the time specifically in this selector, then selector should not populate the default time. I personally find it annoying to have some default time. If this selector can do that then it will be great.
• Say, this functionality exists in Tasks plugin or Task Board. And user can select any one of the date-time value as the reminder value. But what about the case where user wants to get notified, say, 30min before the Scheduled date-time value. User has no way to change this through the modal.
• I personally would probably going to keep the default date value rather than date-time value for the different kinds of dates. So what in this case. How user will set the reminder value in this case. Or are you saying that all the dates formats will be changed to date-time value compulsorily?

While thinking all this things, I found few flaws in my original approach above. Ill probably test it but for now to start with, I guess Ill keep a new date-time input field to enter the reminder date-time value. Later it can be enhanced however possible. Because here the main problem of optimizations is UI vs QOL. On one side there shouldn't be too many input fields to get confused. But on other side it should be good enough UI/UX to enter the data what user really wants to enter and configure. That's what the main goal of this input elements is supposed to be, to make the entering and updating of the properties easier.

[claremacrae]

I’m on mobile at the moment, which isn’t the best place to review the detail of your comments.

But, @tu2-atmanand, on reflection I don’t think Show&Tell is the main topic of this - we are more discussing how these features can be implemented.

So I am inclined to change the to the Development Discussion category/type.

[tu2-atmanand]

I understand that this is not the finished feature I am showcasing. So your point is valid that this topic doesnt fit into the "Show & Tell" category.

But I have created this discussion for normal users of Obsidian and Tasks plugin to view and join in. And moving it inside the Development category might bring some friction in their engagement.

Can we move it to the General category?

[claremacrae]

That’s a great idea. It’s now in General.