#1694 Start date for tasks with unfinished prereqs appears to be able to set but isn't really

[Marc Schneider]

If a task has an unfinished prerequisite, the actual start is not able to be set. However, it appears to get set but then is just lost when Task Coach restarts. The correct design should somehow indicate the existence of a prereq when one attempts to start a task and should either fully and reliably allow starting anyway or should more clearly not allow starting (perhaps the start option should be greyed out when there are unfinished prereqs). These design decisions need to be figured out.

(note this is edited from a specific support item that the chat here references)

[Aaron Wolf]

Are you getting any error messages when you close Task Coach?

Note that "planned start date in the past" is called "late". Whereas "overdue" is for when "due date" is in the past (a different entry than planned-start).

Are you reproducing the problem with new tasks?

[Marc Schneider]

You are correct, I meant "late" tasks. There are no error messages when closing Task Coach.
In a large file (350 task items) I found some where the error occurs. With new tasks I could not reproduce it until now. I found the problem with top level tasks having subtasks as well as subtasks. All tasks with that problem have either several note or time spend records. I considered to just recreate the tasks, but did not want to retype all notes or time spend records.

[Aaron Wolf]

You could try copying and pasting the tasks to see if they keep having the problem. Also, you can export select tasks to a new file to test that way. If you want to anonymize (under Help menu), you could share a file here for me to test.

I'm not otherwise sure how to debug this so far

[Marc Schneider]

Ok, copy and paste works - the new copy keeps the start time, which is a pretty good workaround. However, exporting some tasks (including a "problem" task) into a new file did not work, the problem persists.
I attached a anonymized copy of the exported part (which has one task with four subtasks, one of them loosing the start time with every save).

[Aaron Wolf]

I'm able to reproduce. It has something to do with the prerequisite. When I removed the prerequisite, the start date stuck. I suspect marking the prerequisite complete will do the same. I think the assumption (though it's not behaving transparently) is that start dates for items with unfinished prerequisites aren't being saved. That almost makes sense if the experience were clearer about what is happening.

Anyway, aside from more significant updates to the software, that should be enough for you to know how to work with it as is.

I didn't check about copy/paste, that's interesting because it should copy and paste the prereqs, but I'm not sure if that happens (I'm not doing a complete thorough investigation here, I'm juggling other tasks personally)

[Marc Schneider]

Perfect solution. I did not notice that a prerequisite has been set at the beginning when due to some project changes the second task could start without the first being completed.

Obviously copy/paste does not transfer the prereqs, I checked again. Good to know.

Thanks for your quick support.

[Aaron Wolf]

Edited the description here. We won't likely fix the design issues any time soon, but I hope it can happen some day.