Tracks

Right way to unhide an orphan hidden action?

2008-12-30T15:53:50+00:00

I created an action in a hidden project. Then I realized that the action no longer belonged in that project. Then I cleared its project field, and strange stuff started happening.

The item does not show up under its context on the main page. Searching for the item brings it up, but there is no edit button. It was fortunate that I had added a tag to it. When I clicked on the tag in the search result, it showed up that item again, and this time with an edit button. It comes under “Hidden actions tagged with <tagname>.“ So then, I cumulatively did the following actions.

1. I edited the item’s “Show From” and “Due” fields to today, but it’s still hidden in other views.
2. I put it under a visible Project, but it’s still hidden from the context view and the main page, and the project’s # actions counter doesn’t go up.
3. I put it under a new temporary project (its # actions counter didn’t go up). But then, I made the project hidden, and is # actions counter DID go up. Then, I made the Project visible, and the action also became visible.

So, is there a better way to do this? Here are a couple of suggestions for improvements.

1. It seems that visibility is a per-action property, but it’s settable only per project. I would probably just make it a per-project property.
2. Search results should have an edit icon.

Chaining Actions

2008-10-11T13:04:32+00:00

Hi, I’m new user of Tracks and I’m really happy with it.

Here it is my suggestion of improvement:

I find very useful the option “Show from“ for an action, in order to defer an action to an specific date. But, could be possible to specify in “Show from“ form something like “defer up to another action completion“ ?
My reasoning: Sometimes an action precedes some other. So the second action should not be shown visible up to the previous one has been toggled as completed, and not at an predefined date.

I think this could be helpful if added, and in this way actions could be chained. In this way actions deferred after others won’t be shown before the action established as a prerequisite has been completed.

Masters, I will be waiting your feedback.

Thanks for so wonderful GTD application.

Tracks and iphone

2008-04-27T15:56:07+00:00

Hello

I am new to Tracks. After using RTM from some time, i recently decided to install tracks on my site and switch to it.
The mobile version is nice but i wonder if someone plan to develop an iphone interface.

Thanks

Submit Tasks to your Tracks through Email

2008-12-02T01:47:42+00:00

I posted a reply in a lower thread that was buried, so I’ll re-post the script here. I’ve taken some ideas from the work previously mentioned here and refactored it a LOT to reduce the size and complexity of the code involved, and leveraged the use of upstream modules to do the heavy lifting for me.

Here is a simple script that allows you to email your Tasks to your tracks install, creating new entries and contexts and due dates at the same time (and yes, my code really IS shorter than my comments):

#!/usr/bin/perl
#        _._   
#       /_ _`.      (c) 2008, David A. Desrosiers
#       (.(.)|                   setuid@gmail.com
#       |_/'|   
#       )____`     Email-to-Tracks interface
#      //_V _  
#     ((  |  `(_)   If you find this useful, please drop me 
#    / > '   /    an email, or send me bug reports if you find
#      .__./  /   problems with it. I accept PayPal too! =-)
#     `-'    `-' 
#
##############################################################################
# 
# License
#
##############################################################################
#
# This script is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
# under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free
# Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option)
# any later version.
#
# The copyright notice must remain intact to remain in compliance with use.
# 
# This script is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT
# ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or
# FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the GNU General Public License for
# more details.
#
##############################################################################
#
# You'll need to set this up as an alias in your MTA configuration (typically
# /etc/aliases), as follows:
#
# tracks@your-site.tld: "|/path/to/gtd-tracks-mail.pl"
#
# Don't forget to run newaliases(1) after you've modified this so it can
# update the aliases table with the new entry.
#
# Email format can be any of the following:
#
#       Subject: The main description of the Task
#
#       @Context
#       01/02/2003
#       This is my note text
#
# or:
# 
#       Subject: Default Task description
#
#       c: @context
#       d: 2008/12/31
#       n: The note text to insert
#
# Most valid date formats are accepted, and this will do its best to
# "correct" and normalize them. You can also prefix your lines with the
# modifiers above, or read the regexes below for more. For example: 
# c:, context:, cxt:, con:, ct: are all valid prefixes for "context"
# n: and note: are all valid prefixes for "notes", and so on.
#
##############################################################################
use strict;
use warnings;
use XML::Simple;
use LWP::UserAgent;
use URI::Escape;
use Email::Abstract;
use Date::Manip;
use Date::Parse;

my $url                 = "http://your-site.tld/todos.xml";
my $contextUrl          = "http://your-site.tld/contexts.xml";

# The default contextid where you want the Task added
# SELECT id,name FROM contexts;
my $contextid           = "8";

my $user                = "yourname";
my $password            = "yourpass";

# Leave these tokens alone.  They are valid as of Tracks 1.5 RESTful API.
my %todo = map { +($_ => "todo[$_]") } qw(notes context_id description due);

# Get the context legend in order to match by name
my $ua                  = new LWP::UserAgent;
my $req                 = new HTTP::Request 'GET',$contextUrl;
$req->authorization_basic($user,$password);
my $res                 = $ua->request($req);
my $contexts            = XMLin($res->content);

# Split apart the email into Subject and Body
my $message             = do { local $/; <STDIN> };
my $email               = Email::Abstract->new($message);
my $subject             = $email->get_header("Subject");
my $body                = $email->get_body;

# These can probably be cleaned up a bit
my ($context_line)      = $body =~ /^(?:c:|ct:|cxt:|con:|context:|@)s*(.+)$/mi;
my ($date_line)         = $body =~ /^(?:d:|date:)s*(d.*)$/m;
$date_line              = UnixDate(ParseDate("today"), "%g") if (length($date_line) == 0);
my $time                = str2time($date_line);
my $due_date            = UnixDate(scalar gmtime($time), "%m/%d/%Y");
my ($note_line)         = $body =~ /^(?:n:|note:)s*(.*?)$/mi; 

# Concatenate the data here before we send POST to the Tracks server
my $post_data = 
        $todo{'context_id'} . "=" . $contextid . "&" . 
        $todo{'description'}. "=" . uri_escape($subject) . "&" . 
        $todo{'notes'} . "=" . uri_escape($note_line) . "&" . 
        $todo{'due'} . "=" . uri_escape($due_date);

# Use LWP to do the posting ($ua was created earlier)
$req = new HTTP::Request 'POST',$url;
$req->content_type('application/x-www-form-urlencoded');
$req->content($post_data);
$req->authorization_basic($user,$password);
$res = $ua->request($req); 

Looking for a few alpha testers to play with an email friendly version of tracks

2008-10-07T22:22:25+00:00

Hello Fellow Tracks Users,

Our modification to the tracks code to add the ability to add todos with attachments via emails is coming along. I have been using it personally for a few weeks. I would like to find a few folks who could help me test it by signing up for an account on my server and using it.

Either reply to this post, or send me a PM if you are interested in helping. As soon as we get this stable, we are going to post the code back to tracks. Its really made the app even more useful for me, and I hope that a few folks out there can help me work the rest of the kinks out.

Thanks
Matt

Create Tasks in Tracks via Email using the RESTFul API

2008-03-29T12:27:33+00:00

First off, I have to confess that unless you already know what you’re doing, this is a pretty technical trick.

I have rigged my hosted Tracks installation to be able to receive emails into an Inbox context I can sort through later.

This allows me to go through my email (gmail, or otherwise) and forward emails to “mygtd@mydomain.com” and have it automatically create a to-do with the subject of the email as the description and the body of the email as a note.

Again, this is somewhat tricky, but if you have the background to do it, I am including source code. In this case, all we have used is a perl script.

I can provide very little support, so hopefully you can get it working. This is something I badly wanted, and found a way to do… I didn’t think I should hoarde the benefits to myself, but neither can I be as much assistance as I would like.

Requirements:

I. You have to run your own email server capable of receiving emails and piping it to a script. If you don’t know what this means, you may not be able to do it.

II. You probably have to be running Tracks in a hosted environment. I have not tried it with anything other than on a linux host.

Once you have created the email address, modify the following script per the comments, and pipe it to the script. It works wonderfully.

#!/usr/bin/perl
# Quick and dirty hack to add tasks via an email.
# Install by adding an alias in /etc/aliases or /etc/valiases depending
# on yor system:
#
# mygtdaddress@mydomain.com: "|/home/directory/inboxgtd.pl"
#


use strict;
use WWW::Curl::Easy;
open (STDOUT, ">/dev/null");    # Redirect CURL output to null.  Some mail servers will bounce
open (STDERR, ">/dev/null");    # messages if there is any return.


# Replace with todos.xml url of your GTD installation
# my $url = "http://yourgtd.yourdomain.com/todos.xml";

my $url = "http://yourgtd.yourdomain.com/todos.xml";

# The contextid where you want the todo added.  Usually an inbox.
my $contextid = "1";

my $curl = WWW::Curl::Easy->new();
my $description = "";
my $note = "";

# Your authorization credentials in the format
# my $auth = "username:password";
#
my $auth = "username:password";

# Leave these tokens alone.  They are valid as of Tracks 1.5 RESTful API.
my $notetag = "todo[notes]";
my $contexttag = "todo[context_id]";
my $descriptiontag = "todo[description]";

# Dirty hack.  First blank line begins body text.
my $passedempty = 0;

my @mail = <STDIN>;  # Read in the piped email
my $line = "";

foreach $line (@mail)
{
    if ( ($line =~ m/Subject: (.*)/) )       # If it's the subject line...
    {
     $description = $1;                                        # ... use it for the todo description
    }

    if ( $line =~ m/^$/ )                                    # Checking for that blank line
    {
     $passedempty = 1;
    }

    if ($passedempty)                                            # Once we see it ...
    {
     $note = $note . $line;                                # Copy every blank line into the todo note.
    }
}

# Here we munge the data together to post.

my $post_data = $contexttag . "=" . $contextid . "&" . $descriptiontag . "=" . $description . "&" . $notetag . "=" . $note;

# We execute curl to do the posting.

$curl->setopt(CURLOPT_URL, $url);
$curl->setopt(CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $post_data);
$curl->setopt(CURLOPT_USERPWD, $auth);
$curl->perform();

close STDOUT;
close STDERR; 

Google Gears

2007-06-12T18:13:39+00:00

Any thought on leveraging Google Gears to create an offline / online capability? I believe there was talk to have the offline capability - but was wondering if this could shortcut the development time for it. Not sure if Google Gears is Windows only, but would have to look into it a little bit more.

Just a thought.

Cheers,
Henry

an excessive usage story and some feature ideas

2008-11-10T12:02:47+00:00

Hi!

First of all I have a confession to make. after a half year of using tracks, i thought it’s time for a change. so i reviewed about 15 GTD applications in the last days. in the end it turned out, that no other solution covers that much of my needs (and i’m quite greedy, when it comes to that ^^).
So I decided to stay loyal and ask you (forum readers and especially the development team), what you think about my way of handling Tracks.

Here is how I use Tracks in everyday life:
When I start a new project, i first collect all actions that may occur even if some of them are intersecting some others. e.g. When planning a Halloween party, i add “find dj”, “get drinks”, get band”, ...
Later it turns out, that all good bands are already booked up for that date.

And here comes a little dilemma. I don’t want to delete the action “get band”, because, if I plan a hw-party next year, i will review that project and i really don’t want to forget about a band.
On the other hand I don’t want to mark it as “done”, since this distorts my statistics
Currently I add a tag “dropped” to that action and check it as complete.
Therefore: What do you think about a native “dropped” state for actions? Maybe with an own section similar to the “Completed Actions” and related statistics.

Back to my usage story:
I’m really looking forward to the gCal integration in the upcoming version. Currently I have to add an appointment manually for each action with a due date. This easily gets inconsistent, as you can guess.
Am I right, that using this feed will add actions with a due date as an “all day” event to the calendar?
Or (may I dream) will it also be possible to set a due time and duration in the “New Action” form?

After a hard week of GTDing I review my achievements in several ways. I write a blog which documents my personal impressions and I also collect some sort of “checklists” in a wiki. So I know what is necessary and what is a waste of time, when doing a similar project.
Up to now it’s mainly copy&paste;of the completed actions. It would be great to automate this via a feed. I’ve already found some helpful parameters in the feed links, but none to show only “done” actions.
Also I didn’t find a way to build a feed for a specific tag.
Since there will be a “starred actions” feed in the upcoming version, will there also be a way to build your own feed url for a given task?

I hope you don’t get me wrong. I’m not asking you to implement these ideas. I’m mainly interested in your opinion about them.

best regards,
Amarillo

Idea for UI for dependencies and subprojects

2008-10-28T23:04:44+00:00

Sometimes it becomes clear that a Next Action is premature. In Tracks I’ve been dealing with this by sending them into the future, to be handled in the same context but in the tickler. That’s not quite right, and it doesn’t capture the dependency that makes them premature.

Ticket #373 suggests promoting actions to subprojects. Viewing a project and its subprojects makes sense in a top-down way. From a project’s page, Deferred Actions could list what an action depends on instead of the time-to-defer. And the Active Projects list on the right-hand side could have subprojects listed in an indented tree.

But I do my work from the main page / contexts lists, and subprojects (as described) don’t fit in to contexts.

The most common answer for this is to hide the dependencies in the Tickler, as with the date-deferred actions. I have an additional idea I think might be useful.

“Context” means a state in which you can address particular Todos. For canonical GTD, the list of items in a context should all be next actions. I’m opposed to the idea of displaying nested tasks in the context interface- followup actions aren’t valid in the current context.

What’s the proper context for the followup action? I think it has two required contexts: the standard context, and also the action that must be completed first. Each of these provide valuable perspectives on my work. Imagine treating actions as contexts- starting from the question “Once I’ve completed this action, what is possible?“ This gets at an additional layer of the project that is otherwise only implicitly addressed in GTD.

David Allen describes making “vertical sweeps” over a project, and “horizontal sweeps” over contexts. Project-specific contexts seem to get at the innards of a project in a different sort of horizontal sweep.

In the same vein, subprojects seem valid candidates for contexts. “Once the project is at this stage, what is possible?“

Tying these together: I think there doesn’t have to be a difference between a subproject and an action depending on a prior action. One is explicitly created from the Project View, and the other is implicitly promoted from a Next Action. Both can be completed, both add structure to the project, and both expose a new context for future actions.

User Interface:

The “Show from” field becomes “Starting:“ and is allowed to contain either a date or a precondition Next Action. Typing in the field will auto-fill with the names of current actions in the project.

The list of projects on the right-hand side will have nested subprojects (either always visible, or only for the currently active project; possibly the current project would be listed in a “Current Project” section above “Active Projects”). Viewing a subproject brings up a context list page, displaying the next actions in the subproject. Because subprojects can be completed, they have a checkbox next to their title at the top. The master list of projects on the right-hand side could change the colour of the subproject depending on whether it is complete.

The subproject appears in the Project Page and its Context with an icon to show the count of dependent items (possibly like the red count of actions on the upper-left corner of any page).

When a subproject is incomplete, its Next Actions are listed on the project page as Deferred with their precondition instead of the days-to-defer.

Completing a subproject exposes all of its Next Actions in the appropriate context and on the Project’s list of actions. The subproject moves to the Completed Actions. It is still listed in the subprojects list on the right-hand side, and it can still be linked as a context.

Sharing projects between users?

2006-07-20T15:48:03+00:00

Sorry if this is the wrong place to post this - I couldn’t find a “feature request” forum.

I’m mainly interested in Tracks because of its multi-user features, but reading the documentation it seems as if each user install is completely separate from the other. What I would like to see, however, is the ability to share individual projects between users. So, for instance, if I create a new project which involves a group, each person I invite would see that project in their list as well. Anyone invited to the project could make any changes they want to that project.

The only problem I see with this is that each person might have different “contexts” set up. So here’s my suggestion - don’t share the contexts. The contexts for a shared project show up by default as a context called “shared” for all users, but they have the option to assign contexts that are meaningful to them if they like. Presumably, people would only need to do this for next actions which they are responsible for. So, if there is a project to “make a movie” and I am the producer - than I could add the “call Hollywood studio” next action to my “phone calls” context - but leave the “Hire Actors” and “find Location” actions under the “Shared” context.

It would also be nice to see options to invite new members if they are not already signed up.

Tracks looks great - I even installed Ruby on my iBook just to give it a try. Now I’m going to look into running it on my host.