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Overview

Tasks is a plugin which gives you possibility to maintain list of daily tasks. It's for those developers who prefer to prepare a todo list in the morning for the whole day and follow it.

Installation

To install a plugin, open your Intellij IDEA 5.1 or 6.0 and go to Plugins page. Goto Available tab and locate Tasks from the plugin list. Right click on it and choose Download and Install.


 
Restart your IDE after that.
You will notice a new Tool Window item on the bottom of IDEA:
 

 
 

Usage

To create a task, open Tasks window and click on the button on the left side - "Add Task":

As you noticed, there is a field: "Select parent task". You may choose any task available, there is however a special one: Root in case you don't want your new task to be a sub task.
Write description, select priority and estimates if you wish. You may change them later if you wish, just double click on a task or select a task and click Properties from a tool bar on the left.

There is another way to create a task. If you have TODO items in your project, you can put cursor on them and use intention, as it show on the following picture:


 
Basic actions are available from the tool bar on the left, but there are some more in the context menu.

There are many ways to organize your tasks, here is just one I used to develop Tasks plugin itself:


 
To track actual time, you have to turn that option in the plugin settings. They are available from IntelliJ IDEA settings.


 
Tasks tree appearance will be changed a bit, to show estimated and actual time. Also when you complete a task you will be asked
to enter actual time. If you turn this feature off, you won't lose actual time data, it will be just hidden.
 

  
 

 Feedback

If you have some questions, suggestions, bug reports or found a mistake in my English drop me a line ideatasks@gmail.com, or just post a comment here. Thanks (big grin)

Developed with pleasure,

Sergiy 

46 Comments

  1. t800t8

    Hi Sergiy,

    I think it will be better if your plug-in can assign a TODO entry to a task (example, right click on a TODO then "Assign as task"). And it should show a notification when a task is expired.

    Regards,

    t800t8 

    1. Sergiy Dubovik

      Hi t800t8,

       Unfortunatelly I don't have access to TODO data, also TODOs are project specific and tasks are not. But I will think about it, may be I will be able to integrate them somehow.

      /Serg

      1. Anonymous

        Actually, it's fairly easy to tell if a comment is a TODO comment according to the project rules.  Here's a snippet, cribbed from MetricsReloaded.

         public static boolean isTodoComment(PsiComment comment) {
                final PsiFile file = comment.getContainingFile();
                final PsiManager psiManager = comment.getManager();
                final PsiSearchHelper searchHelper = psiManager.getSearchHelper();
                final TodoItem[] todoItems = searchHelper.findTodoItems(file);
                for (final TodoItem todoItem : todoItems)

        Unknown macro: {            final TextRange commentTextRange = comment.getTextRange();            final TextRange todoTextRange = todoItem.getTextRange();            if (commentTextRange.contains(todoTextRange)){                 return true;             }

                }
                return false;
            }
        Interesting looking plugin, and very lightweight.  I'll give it a spin

         --Dave Griffith

  2. Sergiy Dubovik

    Thanks a lot for the tip Dave!

    I found a package with TODO searching API but wasn't sure that I will be able to get users settings for that. Now it looks much more clear.

    /Serg

  3. Jay Gindin

    My (first) enhancement request would be to add a spot to enter the actual amount of time spent on the task.

    thanks,

     jay

    1. Sergiy Dubovik

      Thanks for the suggestion Jay. I was planning to add that in next builds.

      /Serg

  4. Siddique Hameed

    Hi Sergiy,

    Won't it be a good idea to store task information in ProjectName.iws file
    instead of storing it in others.xml (user's profile config folder) ?

    In that case, I can create a project specific tasks and whoever checks
    out the project from version control will know the task information. It
    will be very helpful in multi-user environment and also eliminate lot of duplication and redundancy. Or, you can also let the user to create project/user specific tasks, whichever is applicable. And, other thing, please change the typo of the email id specified in description part of this page http://plugins.intellij.net/plugin/?id=1124
    Thanks,

    Siddique

    1. Sergiy Dubovik

      Thanks Siddique, will fix typos in the next build.

      You are not the only one who pointed to project specific task feature, it's in my to do.

      -serg

  5. Nick

    Thanks for this. Great idea.

    I suggest adding a "Root" button directly below the dropdown for "Select parent task".

    Currently the dropdown assumes you will be entering a new sub task for the currently hilighted task, however this is not always the case. I can scroll to the top and choose Root, however middle-mouse support is not 100% with Intellij's Java UI (middle mouse scrolling can be non-operative, is better with JDK6), and popping up/grabbing the scrollbar/scrolling to the top adds a bit of extra effort that could be short-cutted with a "Root" button.

    Sound ok?

    Nick

    1. Sergiy Dubovik

      I agree, sometimes it's annoying.

      Thanks for the button idea.

      -serg

  6. Anonymous

    hi,

     It would be great if links could be added in the task. that way i could add links to bugs in bugzilla or other related documents

     Florian Hehlen

    1. Sergiy Dubovik

      (thumbs up)

    2. Anonymous

      how about linking to change list or items in todo?

      1. Sergiy Dubovik

        You can create changelist based on task, but it's not a link. I need to think about this. Thanks.

  7. Anonymous

    It seems that keyboard settings are changed when this plugin is installed.

    After I installed the plugin, I performed a Ctrl+Z action and a select all (Ctrl+A) was executed.
    I'm using an azerty keyboard but apparently it was switched to qwerty, only in IntellJ. In other applications my keyboard was still recognized as an azerty keyboard.

    I uninstalled the plugin again and the issue was resolved.

    Can you please fix this bug because I really like the plugin!

    Glenn 

    1. Sergiy Dubovik

      I really doubt that a Tasks plugin does that. It has no associated shortcuts. It registers only actions for popup and toolbar buttons. That's really not much. If I understand what "azerty" keyboard is (frankly, never heard about it before), it's quite similar to what we have for russian language, based on that experience may be you forgot to switch from "qwerty" mode to "azerty"? Windows does that change per application not per change.

      In short, can you reproduce the problem you have?

      -sergiy 

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  9. Anonymous

    Hi Sergiy!

    I think that it will be very usabe to add support for task drag-n-drop moving before different subtasks.

    Also it will be very nice to add menu items Start and Stop with automatic calculation of used actual time.

    Best regards,

    R. Khmelyuk 

    1. Anonymous

      Yes Start-Stop feature would be nice.

      1. Sergiy Dubovik

        I thought 1.7 version is the last one, but it looks like I can't just stop developing it (smile)

        Will try to add this.

        -sergiy

    2. Anonymous

      I second drag and drop feature, also need a cleaner way to select parent/root when creating new task.

      1. Sergiy Dubovik

        Drag and drop is not that easy (sad)

        I spent a lot of time trying to get it working. I'm not that good in Swing, so I didn't manage to fully implement it (basically I was missing dnd icons).

        1. Sergiy Dubovik

          I might try it one more time with 1.6 jdk, which made dnd much simplier.

  10. Anonymous

    3 things:

    1) Have you thought about talking to who ever has made the Gant plugin, I can se some benefits in integrating the two plugins.

    2) It could be nice to be able to update % completed on a task.

    3) How about some way to import from other project/task managers i.e. MS-Projects. It could be a API for writing/updating task file.

     Best regrads

    J. Lindhardt

  11. Yiding He

    I want to add a code pointer (see IDETalk) to the task, so when I click it, it will bring me to the code related to the task. I think this feature is very useful.

  12. Anonymous

    What file are the tasks stored in on my hard drive?  I need to copy a task list over from a previous installation.

    thanks

    Si'mon

    1. Sergiy Dubovik

      Tasks store in other.xml in <userhome>\.IntelliJIDEA70\config\options\other.xml
      You need to find:

      and copy paste it to new location.

      Sergiy

      1. Vitaliy P

        Maybe add the option to create the project list for your project? It would be very convenient to store the task and their current status, along with the code version control...

  13. Anonymous

    If a task is associated with a TODO it would be

    nice if the TODO would be removed when the

    task is completed

     nice plugin (smile) Claus

    1. Sergiy Dubovik

      Thanks Claus,

       Unfortunately it's not possible. I need to track TODOs somehow. What if you copy&paste it somewhere? Or rename?

      -sergiy

  14. WarnerJan Veldhuis

    Hey Sergiy,

    I love your work. I am using it with plesaure (smile)

    Just one question: I am not really sure what the "new changelist" feature does. (IntelliJ 5.12, Taskplugin 1.7) Can you clarify a bit?

    Keep up the good work..

    WJ

    1. Sergiy Dubovik

      Hello,

      Thanks for the feedback!

      "New Changlist" should open a dialog to create new changelist based on task. It just prefills task title to changelist name. I'm not quite sure if change lists have been implemented already in version 5. If not, that feature might not work (sad)

      Do you get stacktrace or something like that?

  15. Anonymous

    Hi Sergiy. Great job with the tasks. I really love it. Just few things:

    1) I tend to add some description to task to remmeber what exactly to do, or what ideas I have about how the task should be solved - this makes the tasks a bit longer and the dialog for adding tasks get also longer because of the combobox containing tasks, so I recommend you cut the task names to some predefined length in the dialog if they are too long

    2) adding some description field would be nice

    3) as other already said: code pointer would be nice too

    Thanks again, great plugin

    1. Sergiy Dubovik

      Hi, thanks!

      1), 2) in a todo for next version.

      3) will think how to do. but most probably will do some sort of code pointers.

      -sergiy 

  16. Nathan Brown

    Hi Sergiy,

    Great plugin, I use it every day and it is most useful.

    One bug annoys me though - when I right-click on a node to create a child task via the popup menu, the right-clicked node is not highlighted, meaning the task will accidentally be created under the root.  This happens quite often, and along with lack of DnD support, is quite hard to rectify.

    So if you could fix this little bug that would be great.  And DnD support would also be great too (wink)

    Cheers for the work so far,

    N.

    1. Sergiy Dubovik

      Hello Nathan,

      Thanks a lot for the feedback. I made a roadmap for the next version few days ago and item selection is in my task list already. DND is pretty hard for me. I'm stuck with it. I planned it for previous release but didn't manage to make it. Now it's possible to assign different parents to an item just by dragging it, but I can't make it move item to a specific position. But anyway will try again.

       thanks.

      Sergiy

  17. Anonymous

    i like to be able to move a task into other parents, example: I have several unfinished tasks for the day, then I create a new task under root labelled as 'Tomorrow', then I like to move all those tasks over so that the task for today can be marked as completed.

    Another thing, what's the use of change list? can't find any doc about this. 

    1. Anonymous

      I found a way to move task to be under another one, just reassign the parent task, problem now is, difficult to locate the parent task as it seems sorted according to chronological order, any easy way to re-arrange it? say alphabetically sorted?
       Thanks, 

  18. Anonymous

    Please add this feature: show date when task was created and allow to customize the amount of time (for example 90 days) when the task becomes critical, if not completed until them.

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  23. Anonymous

    Useful features:

    - Link to a file -or file:line-, pointing the job you have to do. And so, a contextual menu showing tasks related to file.

    - Add notes to task (now you need to add a subtask to simulate important comments on task (which is not what you are trying to do) A comment line (show as a toolTip over the task would be appreciated).

    - A dead line on task (date and time)

    - A sorting option (by time avaliable, by date, by priority, and mix of anything of them)

     Good job. This is a must-have for IntelliJ

  24. Anonymous

    how about support track time automaticly?

    thanks.

  25. WarnerJan Veldhuis

    For those of you interested, this project had been brought back to life. See https://github.com/NLSurfMan/tasks/wiki/Roadmap. I'll release an updated version soon!