We had some discussions in slack regarding this functionality, worth it to bring it here…

Here are the links:
https://moodo.slack.com/archives/C99DA3L66/p1617261653041700

And for easier follow up here is the contents of the discussion:
_ @Jorge Apr 1st at 1:20 AM
In the date dialog ther is no way to enter a task length of more than a day.
Given a task that takes 3 days to execute, you can enter the start date and the end date, but Moo.do is interpreting that as a recurring daily event that starts on the start date and end on the end date. But this is not the same thing. A recurring daily task that starts and ends is not the same thing as a task that starts and takes 3 days to execute.
For example, a recurring task that starts on Jan 10 and ends on Jan 15 would have to be marked as complete 5 times before being finally fully complete. a task that starts on Jan 10 and ends on Jan 15 would need to be completed only once.
We should be able to represent plans in which a main task can have a duration of days, weeks or months, and would have subtasks that individually break down the main task into sub parts that each have shorter duration.
Example:

Build a House 3 months from Jan 1st to Apr 1st
a. Build Foundation 1 week
b. Build Walls 1 week
i. Build north wall 1 day
ii. Build south wall 1 day
c. Build ceiling 1 week
d. Put up windows and doors 2 weeks

Once I am done with the sub tasks I should be able to jut complete the main task with one click, but the current way that moo.do operates I would have to press complete that main task 90 times, which doesn’t make sense.
Moo.do should be able to manage these two separate types of tasks: recurring tasks and single tasks that take more than a day. (edited)
2 replies

@Jerud 6 months ago
I agree that multi-day events are needed.
However the example above sounds like a better fit for Gantt chart style project-management software than a simple calendar app. That’s because it really needs dependencies to fully model, which there is no way to implement in Moo. Some of use use links as a kind of workaround but that’s limited and simplistic. If your “Build north wall” task hits a 2 week delay, there’s no way to have every task that depends on it automatically push out 2 weeks. You’d have to manually make that adjustment.
In my fantasy Moo one day gains “Gantt Panes” which would be mind blowingly awesome…but that’s a long long ways off if it ever happens, I’m sure. Meanwhile I’d love to see an integration between Moo and one of the various Gantt apps. I used TeamGantt recently, which syncs to Gcal. There was no bilateral integration so I still had to use the TeamGantt interface to work within the project – but I could at least see the project plan from inside Moo and use it to schedule specific personal tasks within that framework.

@Jorge 6 months ago
I agree that adding Gantt rendering functionality would be awesome and probably a major under taking.
But I think it should be approached in stages :

Allow multi day tasks (this is necessary even without the whole task / sub task dependencies. Just allow a task to span multiple days. This should go along other time recurring related issues we ’ve reported in they past which to me are very annoying and just incomplete behavior when compared to other task managers. Most users migrating from other task managers will likely find them equally annoying not to be able to do this in moo.

Implement relationships between tasks. Links are extremely useful, and because the lack of the concept of relationships we are using them as workarounds for relationships. The only relationships that moo inherently models is parent /child and sequence (just by visually using order in a list as implied sequence when you put numbers in the list) But there are other relationships that should be able to be modeled : Dependencies.

        a. Currently the links allow us to model custom relationships by inserting a child item with text that describes the relationship type and then the link  e.g.  "Depends on [Link]"
        b. Dependencies however should be able to model some enforcement behavior that would be useful.  We could further categorize links in link types (dependency or general).   I described the dependency type before, but it has fallen out of slack already, so here they go again.

        i. Finish to Start relationships (FS):   The parent of the link cannot start until the linked task is complete.
        ii. Finish to Finish relationships (FF):  The parent of the link cannot be completed until the linked task is complete.
        iii. Start ot Start relationships (SS): The parent of the link cannot start until the linked task has started.
        iv. Start to Finish relationships (SF): The parent of the link cannot finish until the linked task has started.  This is probably an edge cas... I have never had the need for such relationship, but the other 3 are essential in my projects.

Increment status to handle [In Progress]. Currently moo only has complete or pending status. It would be nice to have an in Progress status where a task had been started but is yet to be completed. Of course the depenency types (i III, and Iv) don’t make sense until moodo is able to handle in progress status, so without this only dependcy type ii could be implemented.
Later on be able to export an outline into a true project manager. Most mind mapping software are able to model dependency relationships between tasks and then export the whole outline to a project manager software respecting the relationships properly.
Even later, implement summarization of dates based on children. A parent task finish date should be the latest of all the finish dates of all its children. This is probably a partial functionality of implementing aggregation calculations throughout moo (but that is a differnet story).
Gant rendering and two dimensional rendering of the outline are nice to have and something for someday priority.
(edited)_