Help & Tips

Welcome to 'So much to do' web site!
The tool that helps getting things done

Main features:

Visual reminders:

		Every once in a while you'll be reminded about the to do tasks that you keep at the bottom of the stack (procrastinated).


		Urgent to do tasks that should be followed up ASAP.

Arrange to do tasks in a tree and postpone a branch of tasks simultaneously.

Red-Amber-Green-White indicators:

You are ignoring it! Follow up now! Not urgent. Finished.

Postpone reminders to a related date with just one click!

Many useful task states:

	Not started No work has been done for the task.			On hold The task is temporarily on hold (including the levels below).
	In progress The task is started but not finished.			Done The work required for the task is finished.
	Waiting for someone else Someone else has to take the next step (you'll be reminded to follow up).			Cancelled The task is not needed anymore.

Filter automatically the to do tasks you want to see according to their urgency:

Mode				Procrastinated		Urgent		Not urgent		Finished
		Summary


		Pending


		All

Unlimited comments per task with an easy to use WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get) editor:

Handling your tree of to do tasks

Adding to do tasks

The creation of new to do tasks is a simple operation: just click on the "Add Sub-task" button found in the task that is going to contain the new one.

Viewing and editing task details Edit details

To edit the task details you need to click on the "Edit task details" button found on the right of each task. Each one of the to do tasks can include the following information:

Description: This is the text that appears for each one of the to do tasks in the list.
References: Optional text that can be used to store codes, names, etc. related to the task.

Task State: It is important to differentiate the state in which a task is at a specific moment in time. You can modify it by clicking on the "Effective state" button and selecting the new one from the popup. The available options are the following:

	Not started No work has been done for the task.			On hold The task is temporarily on hold (including the levels below).
	In progress The task is started but not finished.			Done The work required for the task is finished.
	Waiting for someone else Someone else has to take the next step (you'll be reminded to follow up).			Cancelled The task is not needed anymore.

Effective State: The task state shown in the checklist is the effective task state. In some cases, this state could be received from the to do tasks at the higher or lower levels and it is shown greyed. This happens in the following cases:
- The parent folder is on hold, in which case the effective state is inherited from it.
- The task is a folder and is not on hold, in which case the effective state is taken from the most relevant of the sub-tasks.
Reminder: This is the date when the task will be shown to the user as urgent. This is important as it indicates that something must be done about the task. The button grid is very useful in order to postpone this reminder to a related date with as little user interaction as possible. To specify an exact date you can use the calendar or just type it in.
Due Date: Optionally you can specify the ultimate date when the task must be actioned. Usually the reminder is enough to know about the urgency of a task and it also gives more flexibility. If the due date is set, postponing the reminder won't be effective if it happens after the due date.
Comments: This is an optional rich text including a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) formatting editor to store any type of information related to the task, including images, colors, etc. Click on the "Edit Comments" button in order to modify this information.

Deleting to do tasks

Deleting a branch of to do tasks is also a simple operation: just click on the "Delete task branch" button. nbsp;After confirming the operation, the task and all the tasks contained in the levels below will be removed from the checklist. ATTENTION: This operation will cause these tasks to be deleted permanently. You can achieve the same result by changing the state to "Cancelled" and this way you keep the history, comments, etc.
Folders

The concept of folder means something like a container of sub-tasks. When you create the first sub-task for an existing task, it becomes a folder and when you delete all the sub-tasks for a folder task, it becomes a leaf automatically.

Moving and prioritizing to do tasks

In this application, we tried to simplify the handling of to do tasks and the priority of a task is effectively the order among the sub-tasks below the same folder. As the list of tasks is actually a tree and the folders also have priorities, you can always be sure that the priority is unique per task among the full tree. The ways to achieve this are the following:
- Default priority
  
  When a task is added, it will be created as the last task among the ones belonging to the same folder, that is, it will be created with the lowest priority for that folder.
- Changing priorities and moving to do tasks around
  
  To increase or reduce the priority or move a task or branch to a different folder you only need to drag it on top of the one that has less priority as you can see in the following picture:

Understanding Task States

It is always very interesting to know the task status in order to clearly differentiate what type of interaction you need to perform with it.

Stored state: This is the state saved along with the task but it is not always the effective one. The possible states a task can store are the following

		Not started * No work has been done for the task. This is the default state and it is used to indicate that nothing has been done related to this task. You must keep the task in this state until you start doing anything. Then you will usually change it to "In Progress".
		In progress * The task is started but not finished. When you start doing some work related to a task, you set this state and usually you will keep it like that until the task is "Done". During this state, the procrastination detection is not applied as you are supposed to be progressing with your work.
		Waiting for someone else * Someone else has to take the next step (you'll be reminded to follow up). When you perform an operation and the next step must be taken by another person or entity, you must change the task to this state. This means you do not need to do anything but if the other person or entity does not take the next step in due time, you must call them or tell them to do it. This application will still remind you in the date specified in the reminder.
		On hold The task is temporarily on hold (including the levels below). This state is useful to stop temporarily receiving reminders about a task or folder including all the sub-tasks. Just changing the state of a folder to "On hold" will effectively change the state of all the sub-tasks, however, the actual state is kept in the task in case the folder is set back to normal.
		Done * The work required for the task is finished. You can use this state in order to keep track of your completed to do tasks. Another option, you can remove the task permanently but then you will loose track of comments, references, etc.
		Cancelled * The task is not needed anymore. This state is not used very often but it is useful to keep track of cancelled to do tasks. You can substitute this option by the permanent removal but the comments, etc. are removed along with the task.
*This state is not effective if the task is a folder but if you delete all its sub-tasks it will become effective.

Filtering your to do tasks

You will be able to filter your to do tasks according to your needs. When a filter is selected from the menu on the left of the main page, the tasks will be shown as indicated in the following table:

Filter				Procrastinated		Urgent		Not urgent		Finished
		Summary


		Pending


		All

By default, when you browse to the web site, the filter used is "Summary" so you are aware of the to do tasks that you must do today. The status of these tasks that need to be done today is shown in amber indicating the urgency.

Procrastinated to do tasks: When a task is in any of the states "Not started", "Waiting" or "On hold" for more than 50 days, the application considers it is being ignored or kept at the bottom of the pile continuously. In this case, the task will keep the urgent status even if the reminder is extended. This way you will never forget anything and you will not be able to set a task aside for too long. The status of these tasks is shown in red indicating the high urgency.

If you still want to view the to do tasks that are pending but not for today, you need to select the "Pending" filter from the menu on the left of the page. The status of these tasks is shown in green indicating that they are not urgent.

The to do tasks with status of "Done" or "Cancelled" are kept in your list as reference if you want to review the dates or the comments in the future. The status of these tasks is shown in white indicating that they are not pending anymore.

However if you delete the task, it will be permanently removed and you will not be able to get it back.