Support for Microsoft To-Do / Outlook tasks

timo

Originally posted here

The tasks could be shown in the timeline - similarly to the calendar events currently

tobiaswi

Hi. Im really excited for this feature. It would make my life a lot easier.
I have invested a lot of energy and thought in setting up the Getting Things Done Method with ToDo. Right now, I must replicate my work-related Tasks into workinghours.
Im using my Office 365 work account as a central hub/ID to gather all Tasks.
My main Interface to Tasks is Teams or the windows ToDo app.

The feature would cut a ton of redundant work for me.

Marlon

Olá, tem previsão das tarefas do Microsoft TODO serem usadas no programa?

Bruno

Hi, is this feature still planned ?
As stated above by others, it will be very (very!) beneficial for me, as well !
That's the only missing feature to meet all requirements
Cheers

timo

There was a bug in the Microsoft ToDo API that prevented me to implement this feature and have it work properly. I will check if that bug is still present once I find time.
It would be nice to have some input from you to hear about how you would want to use this feature. How should it work? How should it look like etc?

Bruno

Hi Timo,
Thanks for your feedback!
Personnaly, I'm using both ToDo and Planner ToDo has a Planner integration
Here would be my workflow:

Sync them as you're doing with emails from Outlook, or events from Calendars (they are great!)
I think the authorization is the same as with Outlook Calendar, as ToDos are called tasks here :
Outlook REST API
Sync only the tasks not completed (see below with status)
Work on the task(s) in WorkingHours (Start / pause / Stop)
Complete when job is finished
Done.

Tasks share similar attributes in ToDo and Planner :

Title (sync with name )
Description (details in your app)
Tags (you may create them if they don't exist) / don't care about colors
Status (more on that below)
Dates (may be tricky to decide how start date and due date should work)

Status:
When I start a task in WorkingHours, I would like the status in Planner to change to "in progress"
I would like to mark a task as completed, which should :

Complete the task in Planner
Hide the task in WorkingHours (maybe delete, but may differ in some cases for other people)

The "Complete Action" could be done through :

a checkbox in the Task details view
an entry in the context menu when you right click on a task (Duplicate / Delete / Add tag ...)

timo

Thanks a lot for the feedback @Bruno!

Bruno Work on the task(s) in WorkingHours (Start / pause / Stop)

So a "start/pause/stop" button in the ToDo list item and clicking it would start work on that todo? And when clicking "stop" the task would be marked "completed" or should that happen manually? If it should happen automatically, there's a few difficulties with that approach that I would need to overcome.
As the WorkingHours database schema doesn't know about ToDos (or calendar items for that matter), there would be no relation between the WorkingHours "work unit" and the Microsoft To Do item. WorkingHours would have to create a new work unit (using the title/description/date of the ToDo) and start that just as a regular work unit. As your requirement/suggestion would be to "finish" the ToDo after the timer on it has stopped (correct?), WorkingHours wouldn't know what ToDo to finish. WorkingHours could:

write the ToDo id into the work unit details or field and once that work unit is being stopped, WorkingHours searched for a related todo item and calls the "complete" API (and removes that to do item from the WorkingHours list).
search for a related ToDo item based on the previously copied title/date/description information and finish that

Both ways have the potential problem that when finishing the work unit, WorkingHours perhaps hasn't loaded yet the ToDos from the Microsoft Graph API and therefore doesn't know if there is a related ToDo to call "complete" on. The running work unit could also be stopped on a different device connected with the WorkingHours Cloud Sync that does not have the WorkingHours ToDo integration enabled and therefore couldn't call the finish API at all.
Considering all that, it might be better to only call the "complete" API when doing so manually (using a context menu option on the ToDo).

I am skeptical if I should use the tags from todos, at least in a first implementation. It would create more complexity and might be something that I could add to the integration at a later stage.

I don't know about Microsoft Planner and haven't used this before. This might also be something that I might add to the integration later on.

What are your thoughts on this?
Also, from what time frame should WorkingHours display the ToDos? The last 7 days only, like with the calendar integration?
Also, what date should be used for retrieving and sorting ToDos in WorkingHours, there seems to be a bunch of them and not all of them are required fields:

Bruno

Hi Tim!
Many thanks for your time in investigations ! 😇
Yes, I like the button in the context menu 👍️
The idea is to save some time not to input twice the data and have it updated in my Todo list.
Maybe you can only show it only if you got a ToDo id, does it make sense ? 🤔
Forget about planner integration at the moment, if it's too complex, as told before, there is a planner integration in Todo, Planner tasks may be displayed in ToDo, there came with a category 'Assigned to me'
In my case, I work with ToDo on a daily basis, so 7 days are fine for me
I usually add them to my today's tasks, but I don't know if it's a reminder date
Maybe a safer option could be to use Last modified date, as it will be always filled in.

Bruno

Hi Timo,
Any update ?
Regards

timo

I'll comment in this thread once I have any updates. Right now I am busy with other things.

NicolasRocha

Hi Timo,
Any update ?
Regards

Dultus

Bump, I don't want to track my tasks in two different platforms.

svenfulen

This would be a useful feature even without Microsoft To-Do integration. It would be great to have a checklist and be able to track the amount of time spent on checklist items.

CRS

It would be great if WorkingHours had an API so that extensions could be made easier. I'm a bit disappointed that the initial spirits seems to got lost here a bit. (Even though that I can understand that, as it surely is a tough business without paid updates or a subscription.)

In the meantime I have moved away from MS TO-DO to Notion. Now I would like to see integration for Notion.

Robert-F

I agree with the needs of the fellows above, it doesn't make sense to create tasks in WorkingHours separately. Please allow to import the MS To-Do tasks and Notion tasks to WorkingHours.

moleng09

In fact, you can now drag the to-do to the calendar in the "My Day" in the upper right corner of Outlook, and then time it after the calendar is scheduled.