I have a lot of issues using subtasks, they have power, but also limit me in many ways. I’m just throwing an idea out there, not sure if it will be popular or even a good idea.
My biggest beef with the subtask section is how it functions along with the main task panel. For example, in the main task panel, I can scroll down and see my tasks, I can select them all and perform changes to custom fields, etc.
This is where the subtask panel fails.
Couldn’t the system be programmed so the panels shift to the right as you want to drill down into subtask areas? For example: I have the main task list showing, then I click (in a special way, maybe a certain part of the task field) the task that has subtasks and the entire subtask list opens up in the main list, essentially pushing the main list to the left (hidden if you will). Now, I can operate on the subtask list just like I would on the main list, by selecting multiple items, changing custom fields, etc…
From what I have been told is that subtasks aren’t really in the project, and you have to promote them to the project (add to project) which is a huge pain when you have a bunch. I have used advanced searches, etc, and promoted that way, but again big pain. So if this is the case and this part can’t be fixed so the subtask is always part of the project. Then maybe when you drill down into the subtasks and thus they show up where the main panel was, then maybe the system can temporarily promote them to the project, so we can add change custom fields, then when we push them back to the subtask area, they would auto-demote from the project.
As we drill down, each level should provide essentially a breadcrumb trail, like you do in the task info panel, but this probably would need to happen above below the List, Timeline, Calendar, etc. tabs.
If possible, rather than drilling down, it may be better to click level buttons that would show up depending on how many levels of subtasks there are. So say the main task panel is the Primary Level… then if I have 3 nested subtask levels, it would show Level 2, Level 3, Level 4. And when I click on Level 2, it shows me all subtasks at this level, and sectioned by the original task they belong to. This would allow us to work on many subtasks across multiple primary tasks at once, without doing advanced searches.
Another thing that would make this nice is if the tasks would show how many subtasks are under them… some sort of indication like (3/6, 7,20), where the first one indicates the next subtask level how many done out of how many total (or left), and the next set of numbers would be how many total subtasks (no matter how far nested they are) completed and how many total (or left to do)
I’m not sure if this can even be done, but I figured I would share the idea anyway. I attached an example of what I was thinking visually. See how each subtask level replaces the main list.