Recurring tasks always remain unchecked in notes

[Brooksking70 2]

I was very excited for the RECURRING task functionality.  I am satisfied with how it works in TASK VIEW, but I think the functionality is lacking when viewing a recurring task in an individual note.  The immediate use for recurring tasks that I hoped for was to make a "Daily Routine" note for personal items and a "Daily Routine" note for work items with a constant list of recurring tasks that I checked through each morning.  (e.g.  Check email, check calendar, send time sheet, etc.)  The problem with the functionality is that as soon you check the TASK as complete it immediately unchecks and shows the next due date.  This is fine for the Task View where you can filter by due date, but within a specific note it would be very nice to see each item remain "checked" off for the day so that you can quickly see if you have completed your list.  It would be nice if you could set the amount of time a RECURRING TASK shows as completed (with strikethrough text) before it resets to the next due date.   A list of Recurring daily tasks doesn't look completed (at a glance) if you have to re-read the due dates behind each task to see if you have completed them.

 

Am I missing some functionality that already solves this?  Does anyone have a good work around?

[agsteele 2,997]

This has been discussed in the past. I don't recall there being a workaround. As you've discovered checking a recurring task, in effect, creates a new task for the next occurrence.

You could feedback to the Tasks Devs. It may even be something that they have in mind.

[Brooksking70 2]

The only work-around I have thought of would be to make a Daily Routine note TEMPLATE with a list of tasks made with CHECK BOXES rather than TASKS.  Each day I can make a new note (which I was hoping to avoid) and then check off the CHECK BOXES rather than Tasks.  The down side of this is making a new note each day and you don't get the TASK VIEW functionality that I still would like to use on occasion.

I'm going to feedback to the Tasks Devs. as agsteele has suggested, but I'm still open to other thoughts or work arounds. 

[Scott T. 662]

@Brooksking70, as @agsteele noted, this has been discussed before. Our team talked about it as we were developing recurring tasks and we had opinions both ways on whether to reset immediately or at the end of the day (i.e. midnight). I think users would likely have differing opinions as well. Nonetheless, I will pass this on to our Product Manager to consider whether there is more we can do, such as offering a setting to choose. But the delayed reset may have technical complications based on the current implementation.

[Brooksking70 2]

Ooof!  I thought I was getting the update I was hoping for today.  When I opened evernote, today, it showed me this new Release Note:  

New 🌟

- You can now set a recurring task to be due a specific length of time after you last marked it as completed. That way, if you're running a little behind on something that needs to be done "every 30 days" (for example), the whole series will automatically update.

I had to try it out to understand the functionality, but this just shifts the next due date on recurring tasks relative to whenever you actually click the task.  Even this additional functionality doesn't solve the need to have some amount of time where the recurring task "shows as completed"  Ticking the task as completed shows as completed for about 1 second and then reverts to unchecked with a new date.  You can never look at a look at list of tasks as completed.  You still will always see new tasks with new dates. It just doesn't serve the task list purpose.  It just a perpetual due date updater.

Still hoping.

[Brooksking70 2]

New 🌟

 

- You can now set a recurring task to be due a specific length of time after you last marked it as completed. That way, if you're running a little behind on something that needs to be done "every 30 days" (for example), the whole series will automatically update.

On 2/2/2023 at 12:12 PM, Scott T. said:

@Brooksking70, as @agsteele noted, this has been discussed before. Our team talked about it as we were developing recurring tasks and we had opinions both ways on whether to reset immediately or at the end of the day (i.e. midnight). I think users would likely have differing opinions as well. Nonetheless, I will pass this on to our Product Manager to consider whether there is more we can do, such as offering a setting to choose. But the delayed reset may have technical complications based on the current implementation.

Scott,

I had one more thought to offer based on your reply.    You mentioned that there is/was some debate on the reset time of immediately vs. end-of-day.  I think the current functionality of the tool presents the obvious answer.  If the minimum increment of recurrence is one day then it seams like the midnight option might be the obvious default.  Unless hourly recurrence options are added, you would have to assume that people are only going to schedule these as "once daily" tasks which they would revisit each day, so in any given day they would want to see the tasks as completed or not completed within the confines of that day and then resetting on the next calendar day (midnight).

Thanks for hearing my thoughts.

[Michael Done 0]

On 2/3/2023 at 1:12 AM, Scott T. said:

@Brooksking70, as @agsteele noted, this has been discussed before. Our team talked about it as we were developing recurring tasks and we had opinions both ways on whether to reset immediately or at the end of the day (i.e. midnight). I think users would likely have differing opinions as well. Nonetheless, I will pass this on to our Product Manager to consider whether there is more we can do, such as offering a setting to choose. But the delayed reset may have technical complications based on the current implementation.

Thanks, Scott T.   

My suggestion is that your team develop the facility to show completed individual instances of a repeating task in the 'completed tasks' view.  It seems clear to me that a recurring task is treated by Evernote as a single object/entity.  Effectively, Evernote forgets about all past occurrences of a recurrent task.  It simply updates the due date of the recurring task, then shows it (of course) as incomplete.  This approach gives me no useful history of completed work. 

Please ask your developers to look into capturing, saving and reporting completed instances of recurring tasks.  This would turn repeating tasks into a gorgeous feature.  At the moment I'm having to set up recurring tasks as a set of manual non-recurring tasks, so that I can see an accurate story of what work has been done. This is disappointing and frustrating for me, and a sad waste of the potential of recurring tasks.

Thanks a lot ... Michael.

[Michael Done 0]

Further to my reply to Scott T ... A fairly straightforward design adjustment to accommodate my needs would be that when a recurring task is marked as complete, Evernote doesn't immediately update the due date on the repeating task, but instead proceeds in two stages:

1. It clones the recurring task, setting the clone as a non-recurring task with its due date set to the current date of the recurring task (i.e. the as yet un-updated due date) and with a status of completed.

Note: If the user ever comes back and marks this completed task as incomplete, then (provided no later occurrences have since been completed), the recurring task due date is set to the due date of the clone, and the clone task is deleted.    

2. It updates the due date of the recurring task to the next due date.