Milestone and Task Numbering

[cguyer]

My manager always brings up the failure of all these other opensource project to give milestone and tasks a number system
like

1.0 Milestones
--1.1 Task 1
----1.11 Subtask 1
----1.12 Subtask 2
--1.2 Task 2
2.0 Another Milestone

You get the picture, problem with putting it in the name, any time dates change, order of tasks changes you have to manually go back and later every task above and so on. So a Milestone/Task numbering would be a great feature to add.

[Karl]

Yes, this would be a great feature.

Thanks

[conrado]

This would have to be configurable, as not everyone would like to have the numbers.

Also, is ordering milestones and tasks by due date not enough?

[cguyer]

configurable, yes i would agree, and by due dates is enough for me but my bosses like the number when referring to large projects, you may want to talk with a client about 3.0 milestones or whatever, looks more organized and I feature I know my organization would desire.

[conrado]

I am talking about PM process here, not app:

I agree numbering milestones is many times a good idea (just like we number opengoo versions  )

But numbering tasks seems -usually- too much.

Not saying that this is something that we couldn't do as a custom development at Feng Office (and that it could be release on OpenGoo as well). It's just that I don't see it necessary for most cases.

[raboof]

This form is actually standardized under the name WBS, see

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work_breakdown_structure

But numbering tasks seems -usually- too much.

I think this largely depends on the user, and the granularity of tasks they store.

Thanks for the excellent work with OpenGoo.

[conrado]

Thanks for the interesting link Raboof.

I agree: numbering depends on the user (or rather, the use case, as the same user can be involved in different kinds of projects). We have come across this need a few times at Feng Office, and seen it a few times at customers. The comment is just about absolute numbers from my empirical observations 

Most use cases I see do not need numbering. In fact, they could use a simplified version of the tasks module (which I would like to have).

[cguyer]

one thing i run across is how do you order tasks if you dont have start or end dates? you have when you created, start or due date but aside from that there is no simple way of ordering task without filling in that information.

[cguyer]

i see an order number in custom reports, is this set behind the scenes or is that editable?

[ignacio]

I definitely want tasks to be ordered too. I don't see as necessary the task numbering, but could be there if configurable.

About your questions: the 'order' field was used on the old tasks interface (around version 0.8 and older) when tasks could be ordered. I don't know why that was dropped.
To order tasks now you have to use either the start date as you suggested or due date or name. The problem with any of these is that to change the order you may have to change several tasks. E.g. If you use the start date to order 10 tasks and give them consecutive dates, then to make the 10th task become the 5th one you have to change the dates of tasks 5 to 10. You can take some precautions to avoid this, like leaving several days in the middle so that you can then move a task to any place., but this is just a workaround and not a real solution to the problem. The real solution would be to implement task ordering and let the application handle the details.

[cguyer]

bring back ordering then, its already included in the custom reporting...in fact down the road a quick way to reorder would be so freakin rad.