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Wekan

Wekan is an open-source kanban board (Trello like) which allows a card-based task and to-do management.

Wekan / Feature Request

Wekan children feature

Wekan children feature

Wekan / Feature Request · July 15, 2020 at 10:23pm

Hi,

I’m a new user to Wekan, I read the documentation about children / parent cards and I have a feature request / modification. It makes a while I haven’t used Kanban principles, so maybe my request is out of scope, so feel free to dismiss it if it’s the case :)

The current feature

My understanding is that the way to create a children is through the sub-task feature. It will create a sub board with all the children.

The issue

In terms of UX, you have to :

  • Click on the card, create a sub task, Save It
  • Then, to see the sub card and add details, you have to click on View-It, it will bring you to the Sub board where within the children card in editor mode.
  • To re-order your subtasks, you have to go to the sub board and change the order.
  • You can’t visualize or guess that you have children from the parent board without clicking on each card.
  • When you are in the sub board, you can’t guess what are the parent cards unless clicking on it and looking at the sub title.
  • All the sub-Task from all the parents will be in the same board

Overall, it works, but it makes it difficult to assess the amount of works from one look, which is to my opinion one of the main goals of kanban, and it creates a risk of error.

The proposed feature

I tried to look at what other tools were offering to get inspiration, it’s mostly creativity speaking, feel free to improve the proposition :

  • Within the parent card, the children cards would appear below the title with an indentation, that would visually identify the children
  • To create a child, a little « + » in the bottom right would do the job, we would have the same feature as a parent card to edit it.
  • Any child card would inherit parent label
  • Each child would have its own box, so you can reorder them from within the parent card
  • You would have a lock option on the top of the parent card (like a padlock image) that is open or close. When it’s locked :
    • You can move the children in another list. You can’t move the parent until all the children have moved in a subsequent list. The parent could be only moved if all the children are one of the subsequent lists, to the earliest.
    • If one of the children is moved back to an upstream list of the parent, then the parent follows and the child return within the parent card
    • We should have a way to identify the parents of a child once it’s out of the parent card, maybe a coloured vertical line on the card that will be inherited by all the children card ?
  • When it’s unlocked :
    • All the cards move freely as the user desire.

This would prevent the user to navigate between the board and a sub-board, and the user will be able to get a better visualization of its work in process. The feature would allow the use of the sub board in the case the user prefers it.

The art is difficult, it’s probably fairly complex to implement this, what do you think ?

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July 20, 2020 at 7:03am

Well, that is the correct nick

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    I don't yet know how to implement that lock feature

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      Currently drag permissions depend on user roles, that can be set for each user by BoardAdmin with Click user avatar / Click current permission / Click new permission. Or with API https://github.com/wekan/wekan/wiki/REST-API-Role

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        I don't know is there anyone supporting developing granular roles feature https://github.com/wekan/wekan/issues/3022

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          Implementing that would take a lot of work

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            I also don't yet understand the purpose of your proposed feature. Do you have some specific use case?

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              Or do you mean, that Subtasks should have unlimited SubSubtasks, SubSubSubtasks etc? Directly on card?

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                There are some In-Progress changes to card layout https://github.com/wekan/wekan/issues/1574#issuecomment-609095074

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                  But it still needs some fixes before it could be added to Wekan

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                    For that new card layout, there could be more space for SubSubtasks etc

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                      If that would be useful for some purpose

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                        At mobile phone, mobile web layout does show drag handles. For desktop, drag handles can be added from user settings.

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                          More specifically, Click right top your username / Change Settings / Show desktop drag handles

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                            July 20, 2020 at 5:24pm

                            I also don't yet understand the purpose of your proposed feature. Do you have some specific use case?

                              You have a good point here. In this new card layout, I was wondering how the parent card should behave once all the children are in an other list. So I thought there would have two use case : The first one is the user don't want to see the parent cards in a list that is downstream to all of it's children, because you expect all the children has been moved in a downstream list before moving the parent card.

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                                The second use case would be the one where the user, for some reason (that I did not think yet of :) ) needs to move the parent card regardless of the children list position. In that case, he would click to unlock the card to allow this functionality. I agree it might be an overthinking use case...

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                                  For that new card layout, there could be more space for SubSubtasks etc

                                    I agree. But if you think that the new layout is worth the implementation, I would not consider the SubSubtasks feature as a priority, since it does not exists right now and I don't know if it's widely requested by Wekan users (you probably now a lot more than me about this :) )

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                                      There are some In-Progress changes to card layout https://github.com/wekan/wekan/issues/1574#issuecomment-609095074

                                        I took a look and the last illustration (date of 16 april) is close to what I have in mind. What you call the "minicards" would be the children in my scenario, with the ability to move them out from the parent card to an other list.

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                                          Well, widely requested features are already at Roadmap, link to it is at https://wekan.github.io

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                                            Like Teams/Organizations etc

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                                              I don't remember is SubSubtasks requested yet anywhere

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                                                I do implement those widely requested features (that are mostly already prepaid) first

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                                                  I don't remember is SubSubtasks requested yet anywhere

                                                    yeah I don't see it, I agree it's not the priority. I think my main proposition is regarding the new card layout with some thinking around it to manage it

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                                                      Only thing missing from new card layout is that it's not positioned to full screen correctly yet, and that clicking near edge can accidentally close card

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                                                        I understand that it is the focus now, if you feel that one day the new layout I propose is worth developing on it, feel free to let me know, I probably can do a better mockup :)

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                                                          :)

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