[Private Beta] Tasklist Feedback

[omerbensaadon]

This is a feedback discussion for the Tasklist Private Beta. Rolling out to all GitHub users next year!

See docs: https://docs.github.com/en/issues/tracking-your-work-with-issues/about-tasklists

If you'd like to give your feedback privately, use https://forms.gle/csQ2HnpASkTivJj76

Please upvote features you want to see!

[csadorf]

The task list is currently not rendering code markup correctly. Example: rapidsai/cuml#4960

[omerbensaadon]

yup yup, expect this early next year as well @acjohnso25

[micahgodbolt]

also noticing that links don't show up when used in tasklist [foo](http://example.com)

microsoft/fluentui#26308

[trallard]

Can confirm that markup (links, inline code, etc.) is not being rendered at the moment

Source: nebari-dev/nebari#1478

[omerbensaadon]

hey this shipped, forgot to update you all here

[rock-it-with-asher]

Currently looks like a solution for lack of rendering would be maintaining a single crriage-return between a previous paragraph and the current tasklist block

[JulienHe]

Something that will be great is to be able to change all the task into issues.
When the tasklist is getting bigger and bigger, you have to click a lot of time to change all the task into issues.

[omerbensaadon]

Great feedback, we're working on bulk actions next year so will keep this in mind. If other folks want to see this, please give it an upvote!

[itwasmattgregg]

It would be amazing when a list item was converted into an issue, if that issue automatically had the project assigned if the tasklist issue was in a project.

[omerbensaadon]

@pmcelhaney we hear you! We just don't want to tool Tasklists to fit 1 specific use-case, and we think we have a clever way of supporting everyone. It will just take a while to see that vision through

[pmcelhaney]

I think defaulting to the same project and milestone is the general case, and clearly better than defaulting to empty.

Iteration is not as clear cut. That's why I mentioned it in a separate comment.

Thanks for the response. I look forward (patiently!) to your clever solution. :)

[ggnall]

We have some use cases where this doesn't make sense (like cross listing an issue in a "Team" project to the Product Roadmap project). In these cases, you may be viewing the issue in the context of one project vs. another and the defaults would get confusing.

[omerbensaadon]

^ Aye that's what we figured. Not all Tasklists track all the way down the Hierarchy so we'd just be moving the work from "apply the right meta-data" to "remove the wrong meta-data" which is somehow more annoying.

More on this in the coming weeks. We hear you! Pinky promise.

[Wazbat]

Looking forward to hearing more about this! At the moment it is indeed a bit of a pain having to manually add sub-issues to the board

[iainlane]

You can't edit linkified entries without going to the full editor. It'd be nice if the whitespace to the right of them (if any) let you edit the entry when you click it.

[omerbensaadon]

Oh wait I think you mean allow you to edit the Issues from the front-end; our take on this is either:

• remove the issue and add the correct one from the front-end
• go to edit mode and edit in Markdown

[iainlane]

Maybe this image helps. (I think you understood it correctly though.) The green area (actually the entirety of that line) can be clicked to edit the entry. The red bit can't though. I find it a wee bit jarring to think about the lines differently if they're issue/PR links or just text.

[omerbensaadon]

Oh interesting, so upon clicking that red area you want to be able to edit the Issue link?

To be honest, we probably won't do this. When Issues have meta-data on them (Labels, Assignees) the click area is quite crowded. Perhaps an edit option to reduce # of clicks (from remove -> add to edit) but to be honest it isn't near the top of the list.

Really appreciate your feedback, please keep it coming! Hopefully this isn't discouraging

[iainlane]

It's alright, not a huge deal. Adding an edit option to the "three dots" context menu (alongside Remove) would be better than having to reload the page to edit the markdown, that'd already be a great improvement if it could go somewhere on the backlog!

[lfrancke]

I'm with @iainlane here. In cases like in the screenshot it'd make sense to be able to click in the red bit because it'd be consistent.
If there is stuff there (labels, assignees etc.) then that's fine. I believe Iain is asking for the whitespace to the right of the last bit of content in a row to be clickable everywhere.

[iainlane]

This is a bit of a niche bug I think, feel free to move/remove

If you have a task list like

### Tasks
- [ ] https://github.com/myorg/myrepo/issues/1234

and then you add the same issue again

### Tasks
- [ ] https://github.com/myorg/myrepo/issues/1234
- [ ] https://github.com/myorg/myrepo/issues/1234

the task list stops being rendered as a task list, it reverts to being a verbatim code block.

[omerbensaadon]

not niche at all! A real bug! I have opened an issue for this :)

[shayfrendt]

I have a silly question @omerbensaadon ...

How does one close out the issue in this list without leaving the task list?

There's this great checklist flow at the end of the week like:

• did that
• did this
• *HAHA I AM THE UNCHECKABLE BOX! GOOD LUCK HOMIE! 📦 *
• next week's task
• future box I'll never check

---

As a sidenote, I love not having to switch into markdown edit mode to add new tasks. Freedom!!!! 🎉

Keep going!!

[omerbensaadon]

Woah it's a wild @shayfrendt!

You can't, we made the decision that it would be far too destructive for folks to be able to close issues from this view (for now).

If you use projects, you can actually click into the child issues with the side panel, quickly close them, and navigate back. Here's a video:

[shayfrendt]

Thanks for the fast feedback. I hear you, and appreciate the clarity!

[turadg]

The Preview pane renders a code block. With this new feature, seeing how it works before saving the issue body would help users experimenting with it. I don't expect any mutating operations to work, but at least seeing inert controls would help.

[omerbensaadon]

Noted. We have an open Issue on our end, I'll be sure to include this as evidence

[omerbensaadon]

this shipped today!

[farmaazon]

Indeed, it works in "normal view", but preview while editing it in one of Github Projects still shows a code block.

[omerbensaadon]

this shipped today!*

* = but we still have a bug in projects 😅

We'll get this fixed!

[lfrancke]

Transferred issues are not unfurled it seems.
I kinda understand why but it'd still be nice if it worked.

[omerbensaadon]

yup this is near the top of our list, thank you for the feedback as always Lars!

[tay1orjones]

I wish "tracked by" on the project board/views could traverse the entire hierarchy and show all sub-items instead of only one level deep.

I know child items deeper than one level aren't technically "tracked" by that issue and within a tasklist, but what I'd like to see in a board/view is every issue relating to a workstream, all the way to the bottom of the hierarchy.

A couple example use cases:

• With an effort field for estimation, I could filter a board view by a single 'tracked by' issue to understand how much work is left for an entire workstream.
• Update stakeholders as to the status of workstreams at a glance by creating a view scoped to a single workstream/'tracked by'

[omerbensaadon]

ACK, we have some features in the work for some of the stuff you're talking about (specifically seeing to the bottom of a hierarchy) in the works for next year.

Thank you for your feedback!

[omerbensaadon]

I assume you mean the "Tracks" field here yeah? not Tracked-by?

[tay1orjones]

@omerbensaadon Yes, sorry for the confusion

[figadore]

specifically seeing to the bottom of a hierarchy

would this include seeing the full task tree from the issue view?

[omerbensaadon]

@figadore some version of that yes, sorry for the delayed reply, lots of feedback to get to here

[tay1orjones]

The truncation applied to issue titles could be improved. This is a ~2/3 wide window on my 13" MBA

[omerbensaadon]

This is near the top of our list to fix! Going to reference this internally as an example of why we need to fix this :)

[omerbensaadon]

Ugh still haven't been able to get to this. It's in our next Polish epic though, sorry to have broken a promise </3

[blaet]

When saving, a lot of whitespace seems to be generated around the task lists. That seems like a bug.

[omerbensaadon]

Also near the top of our list! Expect a fix early in the new year 👍🏼

[omerbensaadon]

Fixed!

[iainlane]

Usernames are not @-completed or linkified either in the inline editor or the rendered task list.

[omerbensaadon]

on the way! 👍🏼 , this is currently in flight

[omerbensaadon]

hey this shipped actually :D

[omerbensaadon]

hope that cat got petted

[lfrancke]

I'm sure I reported this or something similar before in the Alpha but just adding it here again because it's easier to track.

I just edited this issue stackabletech/issues#300 and it deleted some of my content.

In the edit history (I can't find a way to link to an entry in there) you can see that the tasklist should contain an entry like this:
- [ ]~~Spark on K8s operator fixed or confirmed working~~ [Spark is not affected](https://github.com/stackabletech/spark-k8s-operator/blob/main/rust/operator-binary/src/spark_k8s_controller.rs#L280); the Operator does not use Roles/RoleGroups

I understand that there is a space missing (maybe?) and the syntax might be invalid but I believe silently deleting invalid entries is definitely the wrong thing to do.

[omerbensaadon]

Ah I think this is related to the fact that we don't yet support "advanced" Markdown capabilities like links and crossed out text are coming next year but aren't yet available.

As for silently deleting invalid entries, we've got a refactor in the works which should preserve Markdown

[joepeding]

In the editor it seems like you'd be able to add text to the task list block for something like a short description of that block:

General description
```[tasklist]
It really seems like you could write stuff here, but that gets silently ignored.
### Tasks
Or here, and that is ignored too.
- [ ] Task 1
- [ ] Task 2
``` . <- dot is here to make the backticks render for this comment

This renders as:

And if I refresh and go back to the editor, that extra text is also just gone.
I'm not exactly sure how (or whether) I expected that text to be rendered, but not that it would disappear from the 'raw' input.

[joepeding]

Also, if I do:

General description
```[tasklist]
### Supertasks
- [ ] Task 1
- [ ] Task 2
``` . <- dot is here to make the backticks render for this comment

It nicely renders the list with the header 'Supertasks'. Now, I edit again and add the extra lines I had above around that and save, it just shows 'Tasks' again. And looking at the 'input', my old header is just gone and replaced by a regular ### tasks

[omerbensaadon]

you mean adding new lines before ### Supertasks clears out your original title?

[omerbensaadon]

Also, Tasklist block descriptions are very interesting... thanks for the insight

[joepeding]

you mean adding new lines before ### Supertasks clears out your original title?

Adding text on the line before and/or after ### Supertasks clears out the original title in addition to clearing out the extra added text.

[omerbensaadon]

aye, that's a "oh no we found incorrect formatting! Ah! Make sure this renders correctly!" thing on our end.

We expect these will get more resilient overtime

[AndreasWalthesVolue]

When checkbox items have a longer text that would require a line break, they are simply cut off when the first line is full.

[omerbensaadon]

Those should actually be wrapping... You may have had this before we made the change, can you edit and re-save?

[AndreasWalthesVolue]

Works now, thanks a lot!

[potsky]

Hi ! I cannot find this issue before. We cannot check items.

When checking an item, the page reloads and the item is unchecked.

[omerbensaadon]

this is... weird. Can you show me this same tasklist in edit? i.e. can I see the actual Markdown?

[potsky]

here it is:

    ## Major changes in this PR
    
    - ...
    
    ## How to functionally review this PR
    
    - ...
    
    ## Checklist
    
    ```[tasklist]
    ### During development
    ```
    
    ```[tasklist]
    ### To make the PR ready to review
    - [ ] Merged the `main` branch
    - [ ] Add at least one person as reviewer from this list: _xxx_, _yyy_
    ```
    
    ```[tasklist]
    ### To do as soon as code is in production
    ```

[omerbensaadon]

oh I see, you're using this in PRs that's the issue here I think.

These are currently only supported in Issues, they sort of work in PRs as a happy accident but we haven't built out full support yet

[Khyme]

I had blips like that in an issue when checking an item.

[strohel]

In new GitHub Projects, the no:tracks filter also filters out the issues that are "tracked by", which looks like a bug. (there's a separate filter for tracked by - no:"tracked by" - which works as expected)

[omerbensaadon]

Added this to our existing issue internally! Thank you :)

[strohel]

Thank you @omerbensaadon!

[mircubed]

Would love to be able to add a description under the task list name. In many cases, we create issues that have multiple task lists in them, so it would be great to be able to add a detailed description under the task title.

[huw]

I really enjoy the ability to use task nesting in ordinary issues. I think it would be really valuable for tasklists, too.

If I may anticipate potential schematic concerns, I don’t really care if the nesting affects the functionality of the tasklist. I am happy for the nesting to be purely visual. But it helps me organise my brain a bit better when I can split things up and nest them under other tasks.

[colespencer1453]

Hello, when converting tasks in task lists to issues it defaults to adding them to the same repo as the parent issue, but DOESNT add them to the project you are working in. It is VERY tedious to have to add each item back to the project after converting them. Pretty sure this should be default behavior

[damen-dotcms]

Need to make the @-menu work inside of tasks.

It doesn't work inside of a task list view.

But it works inside of the Markdown view.

[omerbensaadon]

huh, yeah that is annoying, I'll open an issue on my end thank you!

[Wazbat]

I would very much like to be able to select the repository when creating a task, for for this to somehow be an easier process

When creating tickets, some sub-tasks need to be performed in other repositories, like a new feature needing to be added to a backend and frontend repo for example

At the moment I either have to create the issues manually, then paste the link in the tasklist, or create the issue via the tasklist, then open the issue, then move it to the other repo

It's a difficult process to explain to our product guys, as we're currently in the process of migrating to GH project boards

[Wazbat]

Perhaps a second dropdown option? Not quite sure how to word it while allowing it to fit

[omerbensaadon]

So we haven't picked this up yet (we're currently doing a BUNCH of refactoring) but this is one of the very next things we'll pick up once that is through.

We know that folks working in multi-repo ways (so like, lots of people) want this feature. It's near the top of the list

[dlxclem]

I'm not sure if's been requested already but it'd be awesome to be able to add the count of tracked issues within the table view:

[itwasmattgregg]

Sometimes I just can't add items at all. I try and nothing happens

[dlxclem]

it takes 1 min or so sometimes
if it doesn't work, a refresh of the issue page sometimes show the item I just tried to add - sometimes I have to add it again though :)

[ciriousjoker]

With regular lists, indenting is possible to create "sub tasks". Checking the box on the top level task should automatically mark all subtasks as done, but it doesn't. This is something tasklists could improve on.

Example:

• groceries
  • milk
  • eggs
• feed dog

This isn't possible in tasks at the moment.

[damen-dotcms]

Hey, I don't really understand the point of indenting. Shouldn't each indent just be a separate issue? I could cross off "Groceries" by itself, or it auto-crosses off when I cross the children?

I think if would work better if you just made a new ticket instead of an indent and that way when all the children were done your parent level would show as done.

BUT... I would very much like to see the task count when I link in issues into a tasklist... I don't think that's shown at present.

[ciriousjoker]

@damen-dotcms Creating separate issues is often overkill for small tasks. Often I'll write up some sort of "implementation todo list" like "set up project", add component A, add component B, ...

The todos by themselves are relatively short and the whole thing should be done in a single issue inside the branch it autocreates. This way I sometimes end up with lists of 20 tasks that are all closely related and should generally be done in order. Tracking order of execution across issues is painful even with automations that add "blocking" labels and this is completely overkill for a small startup.

[ciriousjoker]

Feature request: reorder tasks via drag & drop. Indenting, similar to Google Keep should also be possible via drag & drop.

[strohel]

Feature request: reorder tasks via drag & drop.

This works for me already (it is a bit slow though).

[damen-dotcms]

This is there... it's just odd to have it on the left side. Instinctively I tried to re-order from the right (where my cursor goes I guess) and it didn't work but then a co-worker showed me the drag buttons on the left.

[ralphm]

This works for me for single lists, but when you have multiple task lists, moving from one list to the other seems to work visually including the final drop. However, the item then jumps back to the previous list.

[jyc]

Adding an empty line in the tasklist breaks formatting:

### OK
- [ ] one
- [ ] two

### Broken
- [ ] one

- [ ] two

[c4milo]

This feature looks great and super useful! Thank you!

This morning I noticed converting tasks to issues is no longer working, just letting you all know!

[Khyme]

It's been a while. It failed for me quite a bit monday already.
Or worse, it would create an issue on another item of the list than the one I cliked 😐

[lcameron05]

When adding items to a task list in a Projects board, it would be nice if there was a convenient way to add from the existing issues in that project board (e.g. auto-suggestion from the issue ID or title across all items in the Projects board).

[oalhait]

Would love to see

in the card view for an issue, allowing for keeping track of tasklist completion within an issue from a birds-eye (project) view