Task Manager

carino

Member
Greetings,

I run a user discussion forum for a Home Owner Association and am in the process of setting up a category with access restricted to specific users (HOA Board Members).

I want to have a forum in that category for implementing a simple task manager format. For example, I would like each thread in the forum to have
something like this ...
  • Task description (this could just be the title of the thread)
  • Assigned to person
  • Dates
    • Date created
    • Date due
  • Priority
    • High
    • Medium
    • Low
  • Radio buttons with:
    • Not started
    • Started
    • Completed
Has anyone implemented something like this? I see that there is an add-in for project manager, but that may be overkill. Maybe this is something that can be done with custom fields in the basic XenForo application. Looking to hear any comments from others who may have deployed something like this.

Thanks,

Steve
 
Hey,

I am not sure if I understand you correctly.

So you basically want to offer a form and let people fill out? Nothing beats this addon:


It depends on who will use it as you could also go with custom thread fields without needing an addon.

I just don't understand what you want the user to do here.
 
Hey,

I am not sure if I understand you correctly.

So you basically want to offer a form and let people fill out? Nothing beats this addon:


It depends on who will use it as you could also go with custom thread fields without needing an addon.

I just don't understand what you want the user to do here.
That resource, Advanced Forms, may be just what I am looking for.

Here is kind of what I am looking to do:
1614384965958.webp

Once in the Forum, then look something like this ...

1614385041579.webp

From there I can create various custom fields like who the task is assigned to, dates, etc. I can use thread prefix to monitor the status of tasks.

So was playing around a bit and came up with this idea for this forum ...

1614386598231.webp

Doesn't look too bad and would serve my purpose.

Once a new thread is posted, it then would appear like this ...

1614386702158.webp

1614386778880.webp
But ideally, would like in the the forum view, to see the custom fields as well. One can see the custom fields by clicking on the thread ...

and of course, more detail if in edit mode ...
1614386858388.webp

Summarizing ... I think I might be able to do what I want using the basic options in XF ... but that forms add-in looks much more feature rich and especially like the idea of being able to send the form to specific email addresses.
 
Very nice presentation and that is how I also understood it, but the key element is not answered.

The question is who do you expect to fill out those fields? Because only thread owner (or a moderator with permission) can edit those fields.

So say you created that thread as a task and expect User B to come to the thread and configure/enter the fields, it will not work. That is what I couldn't understand from your wish.

But the way you display it, each user will create his own task as a thread and fill the fields. Yep, custom thread fields is sufficient as I said and you already realized yourself. And if you needed extra things the custom thread fields system can't do (like conditional questions), you can go with the forms addon if you want to have more precise control over the things. The advantage of custom thread fields are that one can edit them afterwards and change the choices. The forms addon submits a thread and the post content are the things people entered into the form. Of course later the post can be edited, but it is just text, not fields. It all depends on your exact usecase.
 
Very nice presentation and that is how I also understood it, but the key element is not answered.

The question is who do you expect to fill out those fields? Because only thread owner (or a moderator with permission) can edit those fields.

So say you created that thread as a task and expect User B to come to the thread and configure/enter the fields, it will not work. That is what I couldn't understand from your wish.

But the way you display it, each user will create his own task as a thread and fill the fields. Yep, custom thread fields is sufficient as I said and you already realized yourself. And if you needed extra things the custom thread fields system can't do (like conditional questions), you can go with the forms addon if you want to have more precise control over the things. The advantage of custom thread fields are that one can edit them afterwards and change the choices. The forms addon submits a thread and the post content are the things people entered into the form. Of course later the post can be edited, but it is just text, not fields. It all depends on your exact usecase.
Yes. Any user other than the author would have to have moderator type authorization to edit the original post. That is a bit of drawback, but maybe workable. I will have to think a bit more. Thank you for your insights.

Steve
 
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Sadly, custom thread fields are not developed well enough, for example there are no logs inside the post to revert back to old values. So, if anyone can edit the original post, it can get messy and you would never know what the previous entries were.

But if each user creates his own thread, then everyone can enter for his own thread the choices he wants.

Another way would be you could create the threads for them and use an addon to change the thread owner to the person you want to own the thread, so he can edit the fields.
 
Sadly, custom thread fields are not developed well enough, for example there are no logs inside the post to revert back to old values. So, if anyone can edit the original post, it can get messy and you would never know what the previous entries were.

But if each user creates his own thread, then everyone can enter for his own thread the choices he wants.

Another way would be you could create the threads for them and use an addon to change the thread owner to the person you want to own the thread, so he can edit the fields.
So far, I am going to stick with what I have and not go down the route of the advanced forms. This "action items list" only needs to be very simple and by setting authorization to the moderator class user, it seems to work for my purposes. I appreciate your assistance.

Regards,

Steve
 
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