Subtasks are still missing a lot of power they should have. I know there’s a debate going on right now about the subtask inheriting its parent’s custom fields. But the issue with subtasks goes further than that.
I’m not sure why the subtask rollout (clicking the black arrow near the complete button) only works in NONE sorted mode. That’s kind of an annoyance.
Having to add subtasks to the project in order to see them on the timeline, board, calendar is also kind of annoying. Plus, it clutters up the list mode. It would be nice to have this as some kind of preference where you can select where the subtask shows. Like, maybe I don’t want to see it on the list mode unless i’m using the primary task rollout button. But maybe I want to see it on the timeline and calendar. And not on the board.
Also, if the subtask isn’t in the project, it won’t show the project name. This is just crazy! Looking at a bunch of subtaks in “my tasks” makes them have almost no context because they aren’t in a project, yet they are subtasks of a parent that is in the project. NOt sure why it can’t say Subtask <Parent <Project or continue to use the “project bubble” that normally shows up at the end of the line.
Personally, I would love to see the timeline show the parent task, and then have a similar rollout display like the task list where it could show the underlying subtasks. It would be awesome if you could do this on a per parent task basis, or even rollout all subtasks for all parents on in the project.
(BTW, I’m using the term rollout, if that’s not making sense, let me know, I’m not sure what you all officially call that function)
Subtask progress bar and/or completion percentage and/or number of tasks complete vs total indication on parent tasks. So in other words, if I have a parent task that has 10 subtasks, and I’ve completed 3 of them, I should see some indication of that on the parent task, so I can see at a glance the progress of that parent task.
Adding a little more power to that, would be giving us the ability to estimate how long each task/subtask will take, so if I had that same parent task with 10 subtask, and the 3 tasks I completed account for 75% of the estimated time, it could show that I’m 75% done, even though I have 7 more tasks to do. This gives the tasks/subtasks way more contest, and this could be used to greatly enhance the Portfolios.
The rollout to show subtasks in none sort mode, only works for the first level. It would be awesome if this worked for multiple levels. I made a suggestion awhile ago about using some kind of level interface, where you could shift the task list view from one level to the next, thus every level maintains the same functionality as the first level.
And I’m a big fan of optional/preference. So many of these things I’m talking about, should be an option that each user can set they way they want. Especially with the concept of showing not showing subtasks in list mode, timeline, boards, calendar, etc.