Task Management using Atomic Notes and Dataview

[DryIce1]

Hello @blacksmithgu and @sheeley , and thank you for your amazing plugin - all that I know about programming is from tinkering with Dataview, and specifically in relation to recently setting up a Project/Task Management system for myself.

In contrast to #391, I am using atomic notes as tasks, with tags and in-line fields, and generating powerful Tables with Priority/Due/Project/other fields as columns. The only problem is that marking tasks as "done" is cumbersome - I must open the note, and type data into the "Done" field for it to clear my Incomplete Tasks lists.

The ideal solution is having a clickable Task Box. This Task box is probably not going to be a standard markdown Task, but rather a special/unique Dataview Field, perhaps defined as dvTask:: or dvChecklist::. It would be possible to render this field in its own column as a clickable Task Box (insert complex programming artistry, with many, many thanks), or as a normal field (for displaying date completed).

I hope the above screenshots demonstrate my basic thinking, and the greater versatility of using atomic notes as task management (in contrast to task management from lists of tasks within a document).

I regret that am not familiar with manipulating DataviewJS, so please forgive my ignorance if this is impossible, and I only wanted to politely introduce an idea I would consider very useful, and ask whether an artist could create such a vision!!!

Best,
Tom

[DryIce1]

For completeness, projects are links/notes with the property of being a #project, thus above, it should read Project:: Home as Project:: [[Home]].

And as an extension of Task Management into Project Management, the change would be as simple as exchanging the Task tag (in my example above #🕒) with the Project Tag (e.g. #project).

[sheeley]

Cool setup! It's a might bit early here and I'm not caffeinated, but it looks to me like this should be possible. #448 is focused on annotating an inline task by adding completedDate or ✅, but I'm suspicious that it won't be terribly difficult to support a field as well. I'll add this to the task project and take a look at implementing.

[blacksmithgu]

This can potentially be solved more generally by finally adding the ability to update fields via Dataview API calls (adding dv.edit(), for example), though a faster fix to "trial" the behavior may be possible.

[DryIce1]

Hi @sheeley and @blacksmithgu,

As an update, I'm still using this method note-based dataview task management system. I started with a brief post here, but it became too lengthy and broader than just this dataview feature request, so I shared it over at the Obsidian Forum.

I haven't played around with your new and improved in-line task handling improvements, because I want to be able to put extra info into the task notes themselves, and not just one-liner tasks, but I am sure the inline tasks are working well... And the rapid-entry of creating a task would generally make my system less attractive! So thanks again for your ongoing development!

1. In regards to this feature, I am still very much looking to having a Clickable Box in Preview mode that would insert a Timestamp into its Associated Field.
2. The other feature that would make this note-based task management system much easier to handle would be Field Modification in the dataview table itself, so that one doesn't have to enter the note in order to modify its fields.

note-based dataview task management system

• templates and code on the obsidian forum

[blacksmithgu]

I think @sheeley has toyed around with adding checkboxes to Dataviews that allow you to mutate things; for changing fields, we are slowly working towards full support for this but there are a lot of details to iron out :)

[sheeley]

I thought I'd made something work, but it doesn't appear to yet. I'll keep plugging away, but a bit slowly.

[crazymedguy]

Curious, but any progress on this since? :p