[Private Beta] Tasklist Feedback

[omerbensaadon]

This is a feedback discussion for the Tasklist Private Beta. Rolling out to all GitHub users this year! See docs: https://docs.github.com/en/issues/tracking-your-work-with-issues/about-tasklists

If you include a screencap or video of errors/feedback, it would be a massive help to the team

PS: Omer is on vacation until July 10th, but will respond to everyone when once he's back

[csadorf]

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

[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

[sharwell]

It would be nice if it was possible to collapse this comment as resolved/fixed. Perhaps a task list at the top?

[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.

EDIT 05/24: we've punted on bulk updates in favor of other changes, we're also wary of people polluting repos with low quality issues so we want a tiny bit of friction there

[glitteringkatie]

Having bulk labeling would be super useful--maybe bulk project adding too? That way bulk issue creation has friction but once issues are created, there's less friction to set them all to the same state.

[benjaminmillhouse]

@omerbensaadon - For what it is worth, because I cannot Convert a Task to an Issue in any repo - only the one the list is in - I find myself frequently creating it using the command in the Task List anyways, but then transferring it to a new repo. I do this because it's just easier to create the Issue / Edit right there in the Task List view when I'm setting up cross-repo tasks... Given that "polluting repos" is a concern - maybe that would give more reason to prioritize allowing users to pick which repo an issue should be created in when converting a Task?

[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.

[colespencer1453]

@omerbensaadon For the tasks in the task lists is it difficult to simply add an option in the menu popover in addition to the options that exist that is "Convert to issue in project"? This issue is almost enough for me to consider leaving projects because of the amount of friction here compared to ADO with sub tasks

The options would be

• Remove
• Convert to Issue
• Convert to Issue in project

[omerbensaadon]

We hear you! We just finished a BUNCH of technical improvements and we'll be focused on solving this problem in the near future.

I promise this is annoying us at GitHub as well, we will fix the current annoyance, you have my word.

[michael-hawker]

It'd also be nice if the description had an italicized statement linking back to the parent task kind of like how creating an issue from a comment does.

[CalvinWilkinson]

@TeeThais Knock it off. This isn't the place for this crap. Please stop.

[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.

[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 :)

[big-andy-coates]

Is there a valid reason for having the same task in the list twice? Maybe the list should auto de-dup...?

[omerbensaadon]

Now this breaks in a fun new way where the tasklist just silently fails operations, we're going to get this fixed fixed sometime in the next few weeks.

We don't plan on supporting duplicate issues in a tasklist

[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:

Screen.Recording.2022-12-16.at.3.01.07.PM.mov

[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.

[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!

[bebosudo]

Still seeing the tasklist as a code block in the preview unfortunately 😢

[omerbensaadon]

@bebosudo I think this fixed now!

[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'

[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

[ElijahLynn]

This is going to be key in really nailing the problem of "observing all the work". Until then, I still need to track issues in a google doc with sub-bullets and links to the issues. Really looking forward to you solving that!

[ElijahLynn]

Hi @omerbensaadon - I'm sure your team has thought a lot about this. And I'm wondering if you have any updates to share?

[tay1orjones]

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

[omerbensaadon]

I... think this is fixed now? We made some improvements to truncation

[turbolent]

Now the labels are truncated, but it is not indicated there are more labels. Maybe add an indicator.

[omerbensaadon]

@turbolent hmmm that should show up on refresh, especially if you made those edits from the Tasklist itself.

[BillChirico]

@tay1orjones How did you add labels to the task list like that?

[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

[ElijahLynn]

I think links are working now, I just used one the other day.

[omerbensaadon]

yup this works now :)

[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!

[Pk13055]

Feature Request

Similar to how "fixes", "wip", or any other keyword links the commit to the issue/pr, a similar way to close a task would be amazing. Although, I'm assuming this would require assigning IDs to each task in a list; consequently making it difficult for a issue embedded task since there needs to be two IDs that need to be closed depending on the defaults set up.

Implementation

Attaching a commit message like "chore: <XYZ feature> fixed (fixes #<issue no>/<task no>)" would be great!

[wwahammy]

It's very frustrating to not be able to set labels, assignees, or project for multiple items in a tasklist at once. I often want to do that.

[timoyates]

One option would be to add your tasklist items to a project, group them by tracked by (the issue tracking them being the tracked by value) and then use the various bulk edit options in Projects to make those changes. You can alternatively also bulk edit those three metadata types from a repo's issues index. I think either of those would be faster then what you're probably doing now

[thomasbnt]

Hello,
Possibility to link a classic line with a new PR. We can only rename the line and put the direct link of the PR concerned.

[yueyuecompany23]

Possibility to link a classic line with a new PR. We can only rename the line and put the direct link of the PR concerned.

[thomasbnt]

Possibility to link a classic line with a new PR. We can only rename the line and put the direct link of the PR concerned.

@yueyuecompany23 you are a bot??

[kittykat]

It looks like if an issue is moved to a different repo, the list item breaks. It would be great if it would update or redirect and continue to show the issue title

[kariem]

It would be great to have simple task list management features:

• Move completed tasks to the top of list
• Order task list by title (alphabetically)
• Order task list by assignee

[nora-promaton]

I would love to be able to reorganize the order of the tasks (according to importance, urgency, etc.). I have the tasks made into issues.
When in viewing mode, I cannot do the re-organizing (I cannot even add a task in the front, or in between other tasks). When in edit mode, I could move around things, but there I only see the issue number, not the title, which makes it kind of cumbersome to reorganize (know which issue is what).
It would be nice to either see the issue title next to the number in edit mode, or just have a drag and drop functionality for the task ordering.

[qodfathr]

Maybe I'm not understanding the scenario correctly, but in "view mode" if you hover over an item, a grip appears on the left-hand side of the item and you can use that to drag the item in the list.

[jaybuidl]

Found a bug: some tasks show a duplicate labels, such as "Package: Web" below.

kleros/kleros-v2#1313

[iandunn]

It'd be nice to be be able to paste in a multiline string, and have it create individual items for each line. Trello supports that and I use it often.

[korthout]

Found a bug: Clicking the options on a task (e.g. to convert task to issue) scrolls my view to the top of the page. This was using Brave Browser, this bug doesn't surface on Safari.

https://www.loom.com/share/acbe914765a64324a8468da7d26ca207?sid=49241332-05b5-41c8-b31e-fb7ec6e9e55b

EDIT: video deleted because the feature will be discontinued

[Julian-Dumitrascu]

Hasn't happened to me on Chromium, FireFox.

[mtcA6]

this is really annoying in Chrome.

[udinoked]

I'm having the same issue with Chrome, really annoying when having long lists...

[azenMatt]

Hi Everyone,

Thank you all for the great feedback you've shared with us so far on tasklists.

To give you an update on where we are with this beta. We have taken the tough decision to stop work here and approach the problem from a different direction. Based on all the feedback we have been collecting both here and in other conversations, what we've built isn't quite resonating with everyone and as you can see from a lot of comments in this thread trying to integrate it with our markdown process has created too many edge-cases and reliability issues at scale.

What does this mean for you all?

• First off, we are going to keep access to tasklists for you all until we have a replacement. But we will not be adding any new users to the beta.
• For most cases, other than P0 problems, we will not be releasing further updates to the current version.
• We will commit to making sure you have a smooth migration process when v2 is ready
• Once we get further along, we will share more with you on what the next iteration looks like and the timelines you can expect.

Thanks again for your understanding with this and for being so willing to engage with us with your thoughts and feedback!

[borekb]

For reference, this is the Issue Types roadmap item: github/roadmap#837

[qodfathr]

Thanks, @azenMatt, for the update! Looking forward to v2 and also Issue Types.

If I could only give one piece of feedback it would be this: roll out the GraphQL API at the same pace of innovation. Ultimately, those of us who desire this level of project management care about what the data tells us as much as the value of managing the data. Being able to make data-driven decisions based upon our own metrics is critical. While burn up/down charts are nice, they hardly tell the story and being able to easily analyze and react to the data is critical.

[ifeltsweet]

@azenMatt @j0siepy I would love to test the Issue Types because this is exactly what is missing for us coming from Jira. Is there any way to get access to the beta? Many thanks, so much looking forward to this!

[simonhyll]

I really like the current version, I don't really see why people would have issues with it. As long as access is maintained until a replacement is made, fine, stop working on it, but I'm telling you it's great and I've started using it quite a lot and would absolutely hate to see it removed.

[dkozma]

Thanks for the update @azenMatt, the transparency is appreciated. Given this news, it may be a good idea to either take down or put a bigger disclaimer on the related GitHub documentation. This resource was something I originally tried to follow (getting to this page from Google didn't yield any disclaimer about this being invite-only), and I was confused as to why it wasn't in the UI, then disappointed when I realized I didn't have access to it.

[hno-addiva]

There is an update problem when adding items.

Added a second task list, changed the title and then added an existing issue by # and the other issue number. The completion suggestions showed up as expected and selected the right issue. But then nothing was shown.
Trying to add the issue again to the task list showed no suggestions, and saving gave a render error of the task list.
Edited (source mode) the list and there was two tasks. One with URL to the task, one with just # issuenumber.
Removed the # issuenumber line. Then nothing was shown again, but no render error.
Reload of the page and the task is shown.

[Lukasz-BH]

On the roadmap view, I have a breakdown by Tracked by. I use slice by "Tracked by" to see completed items.
For task, it shows correct (2 of 2 closed)
For issues the completed is 0/10 although 3 are closed:

[Memorablea]

What repository will open internal testing? I didn't see it in my repository.

[TWiStErRob]

Multiline list items were giving me an error, it took a while to figure out what's wrong.

Example:

### Some ideas on what scenarios we should test
- [x] task1  
      More details 1
- [ ] task2
- [x] task3
- [x] task4  
      More details 4
- [ ] task5  
      More details 5

(mind the two spaces after task1/task4/task5)

which renders fine in normal markdown check-list:

• task1
  More details 1
• task2
• task3
• task4
  More details 4
• task5
  More details 5

[lindhe]

It's unclear to me what the difference is between a regular checklist and a tasklist. When should I use one or the other?

[TWiStErRob]

I think of it as Checklist being a formatting tool, i.e. a markdown feature. And Tasklist being a GitHub issue management tool. But I might be wrong.

[lindhe]

I agree that the checklist is a feature of Markdown and that Takslists is an extension by GitHub to the Markdown they use. But it's not clear to my why I should use GitHub's home baked variant – does it do something that the checklists does not? Like for example, does it integrate with project boards in a way that checklists does not and cannot? Unclear to me. Perhaps that'll be clarified once Tasklists reach GA.