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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 ?


July 16, 2020 at 12:41pm

Do you have links to screenshots or videos how this works in other kanban?

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    Or can you make screenshot mockup how it should work?

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      Hi, I don't have a screenshots or videos, I only read about it and looked for some inspiration on google images with the keywords kanban children. I'll try to do a basic mockup in google slides, it'll allow you to comment, unless you have a more appropriate tool to suggest ? thanks !

      Edit : Work in progress here : https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1SbcthRudoB5vmrOGEsQuUT895mZ0OjTRTdp02aPMX0Y/edit?usp=sharing

        Edited
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        July 16, 2020 at 2:52pm

        Here is a rough mockup. You can comment it as you want, but I think it gives a good idea : https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1SbcthRudoB5vmrOGEsQuUT895mZ0OjTRTdp02aPMX0Y/edit?usp=sharing

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          July 20, 2020 at 7:03am

          @nickmtl Are you thinking of move lock button, because checklists items don't yet have drag handles?

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            oops I mean @nickmtl

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              Hmm

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                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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