add a setting to hide times for users who want to just focus on date
I almost never want a time, but rather just dates. An option to default to "all day" would be good or, as above, just to hide the time that TC adds by default.
As v. 1.3.21, there is a new date/time picker. simply type “s” when choosing date or time for START of day and “e” in the time for END of day. These can be set as defaults in the preferences also, so they’ll only need to be changed if something changes the time. When these times are used, time will be hidden in the task viewer and only date is shown.
This is not a complete solution (see my comments below), but it is a workaround for now.
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AdminAaron Wolf (Admin, Task Coach) commented
Frank,
I thought about this for a while, and I think I have it all figured out…For my own preferences, just having round to minutes available in both the details view of the efforts viewer and in the task viewer would be great. It would help reduce excessive information. I would use this setting.
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But I changed my mind about supporting potential users who would want to hide time but still use time. Forget that.
Either a user wants to use time as a parameter, so it should be shown, like it is currently. Or the user is like this request, they don't want to deal with time at all. We can accommodate both of those users. But a user is going to be one or the other. Either they use time or they ignore time.
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The request here is almost complete already.
A user who wants to ignore time entirely should mark the proposed/preset dates in the preferences to the beginning of the day for start times and for the end of the day for complete times and due times.
Also users can already turn off effort tracking entirely if they want.
Finally, users who want an "all day" feature, but still want other tasks to have times can be instructed to just mark those select all-day tasks with 0:00 or 23:59.
SO to facilitate this, we need to better document this. Furthermore, we could easily add 0:00 and 23:59 as special times that can be included in the time drop-down menu. This could be done immediately. It would be nice if there were a preference to choose whether to include these times in the dropdown. And it would be nice to (optionally?) show them as "beginning of day" and "end of day" instead of the numbers…
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Beyond that, a FULL implementation of this request would require these missing features:
1. A new option for recurring tasks so that we have "last completion date" *without* changing the time
This is a necessity for a time-ignoring user because then all times will stay at the default beginning or end of day.
But this feature could be very useful for other users too! In fact, I strongly support adding recur based on "last completion DATE, but original start and/or due TIMES" I would use this myself!2. some preference setting to "ignore time". This would:
A. make the date preferences automatically set as I describe above
B. hide the time section in the task editor and in the popup editor when clicking an item in the viewer (both for hiding and to make sure users never accidentally change the times away from the default)
It would not be necessary to add a hide time option for the viewer.My suggestion is to go ahead and add #1 — it is good for all users and also makes the current workaround for ignoring time fully functional. We can then leave open this request but change it to specifically emphasize #2 and allow users to vote for it.
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@Aaron, I agree that manually having to set all times to 0:00 is not a good work around, so a better soution for ignoring time is needed. The effort viewer already has rounding, maybe the task viewer should also support rounding (instead of a setting to hide time) so it's all consistent?
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AdminAaron Wolf (Admin, Task Coach) commented
@Frank,
It's nice that times can be completely ignored by entering 0:00; but I could imagine someone wanting to still utilize time as a feature but not to see it in the task view column.
I'd like to tag an extra request here, even though it is somewhat separate:
It could be nice to just hide the seconds while showing the hours and minutes. Lots of people (including me) who use time might just not want that level of detail. -
Robert CABANE commented
A really good idea. I have many tasks which are date-based only, and I would like to import & export my tasks to other environments.
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T.J. Mueller commented
Yup, got it.
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No need for a setting, just use 0:00 or 23:59 as time and the times will not be shown in the task viewer.
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T.J. Mueller commented
Yes, I rarely (never?) use times and wish they would go away. Clearly some people like them. A way to default the start time to the earliest time of day and the end time to the latest time of day would help.