Getting a alarm on due date would make this app a "todo app killer"
Today i have to use my iPhone calendar when I need a task with a reminder.
Given that Google Tasks do not support due time, only due date, would you be satisfied with a reminder that pops at 8am on days with task in them?
Hm… see your point.
Would it be possible to set time locally in GeeTask only and ignoring time and send only date when syncing to Google? It's not perfect, but allot better than spreading tasks to many different apps.
By the way, I'm using TaskWrapper (Adobe Air app) to get my Google tasks on the destop on both my pc and Mac :-)
That's technically possible. However, there are couple of seams that would stick out in this approach:
1. there is no true background sync in GeeTasks (Apple doesn't allow that, it's a long story), so if you add a task with due date on Google's site the alarm on the iPhone will not be set until you launch GeeTasks.
2. what should happen to the alarm if due date is changed using Google's web site? Should the due time change or stay the same?
My problem with such bumps in user experience is that while they help some people, they confuse many others. I am trying to focus on things that blend seamlessly between google's site and my app as to cause the least amount of questions.
So, I'm keeping this option in mind, but I don't think it will be the first thing I will do next.
Yep, I clearly see the kinks in user experience this features can generate. The option could be to make it only a local feature, but then some of the point of using Google tasks is lost all together.
I will probably have to find a more dedicated todo-app for these things…
Best regards
Christoffer
I think if you start looking for "due time" you're really looking for a calendaring app, not a to-do app. That's because time is a scarce resource, and you will have to make sure you don't schedule a to-do "pickup laundry" in the middle of a business meeting. In other words you need to see all your time commitments before you can assign a due time to a task, and moreover, from all your calendars. iPhone has a reasonable calendaring system, which is what I use myself.
The workflow that I think makes the most sense given these constraints is to go over my tasks every morning and place each task into the calendar where free space is present. Thus any task that needs to be done at a particular time will get done in the same way that meetings are attended, and all the tasks that aren't tied to particular time get done in the scheduled "get some work done" time slot.
I'd be a lot more open to implementing this sort of thing in GeeTasks (e.g. help in creating an appointment from a given task instead of the tedious copy-paste effort), as it doesn't introduce any kind of UX quirks into the system and seems to make more sense to me in general. How about you?
By the way, I would like to thank you for your thoughtful opposition. It helps me quite a bit to bounce ideas off someone with deep interest in the subject.
Then there should be a easy way to convert a task in GoogleTasks to an calendar event in GoogleCalendar (where you also have the opportunity to set date *and time* with a reminder!)
I now start to imagine GeeTasks with two main tabs, a 'task tab' and a 'calendar tab' that list events pulled out of the calendar and then sorted by date and time and an alarm function.
Is the Google Calendar SDK easy to work with?? ;)
I think it would work better with Apple Calendar API - iPhone can pull calendars from all kinds of places, including the Google Calendar, and I can access them all with a single API. But I got your idea.
This will come in stages.
I would love to see GeeTasks integrate tasks and calendar items the way Christoffer is suggesting. While I use Apple's calendar on my iPod Touch (which is synced to my Google calendar), I would much prefer to have access to all my calendar appointments as well as my to-do items in one place like GeeTasks.
I would also love to see the kind of functionality Christoffer is describing. And I'm gonna link to this thread in Google Group for Tasks, I'm sure the Google devs would be interested in such conversations.
On a more pragmatic note, if I'm setting an alarm for a task on my phone, I would really only expect to be alarmed via my phone. For this reason, I don't think the lack of support for syncing back to the cloud should really be much of an impediment. And like you already mentioned, the easiest and most natural way to implement this functionality would be to pass the task name, due date, and note to Calendar.app as a new event. This respects the calendaring system already set up, which could of course include syncing to Google Calendar.