Based on my experience using What’s Next App, I think I have a suggestion on how to implement re-ordering of Next Actions that should be relatively easy to implement. Not sure if this has been suggested before.
As is (v1.5), I believe that Tracks display Next Actions (group by context) in the order of actions with earliest due date are shown first then actions with no due date are shown in the order they were created. Is this the case?
My suggestion is to have two views in the ‘home’ page. One called ‘Normal’ or ‘Sortable’ and the other called ‘Due Date’. All Next Actions (with or without due date) will have an additional field (in the database) to record the ranking (or positioning order). When in ‘Normal/Sortable’ view, all Next Actions (including those with due date) are sortable (within their respective context). So it is up to the user to re-order his Next Actions as he sees fit. To bring focus to actions that are due soon (or in the next few days), show on the right hand side bar ‘Actions due in the next 7 days’. This side bar will be filtered by a drop down combo box to select which context the actions belong to. So if you select ‘office’ as the context, then only the actions with context ‘office’ with due dates within the next 7 days are shown. This way user can sort next actions as he sees fit, and still be able to easily see actions with due dates approaching.
For those who like things the way they are, click on the ‘Due Date’ view and the list will no longer be sortable, and will be displayed as it currently is, actions with nearest due dates before actions with no due dates which are sorted by date of creation. In this view, the list is not sortable, so when going back to the ‘Normal/Sortable’ view, the list will again be shown in the order as it was left before.
For tickler tasks, when they need to be displayed, show them at the bottom of the list (in ‘Normal/Sortable’ view, while in ‘Due Date’ view will be shown depending on due date or creation date).
Moving a task to another context again will cause the task to be shown at the bottom of the list in the new context (in ‘Normal/Sortable’ view), while all other tasks below this task in the original context will be moved up by one.
I hope I made myself clear. But I think this is not too difficult to implement. I can understand your problem with sortable action if you still want to show actions with nearest due date at the top. By having the sidebar view, this is no longer necessary. Of course if for those who like things the way it is, they can always default their view to ‘Due Date’ and never click on the ‘Normal/Sortable’ view. The sidebar view can be shown only in ‘Normal/Sortable’ view or in both views although it won’t be of much use in ‘Due Date’ view as the same information is already displayed in the lists themselves.
Check out What’s Next App (http://www.whatsnextapp.com) for what I meant regarding the side view bar showing actions due in the next 7 days.
