Newbie with questions
cooneyblue says:
At work I have 7 buildings i need to work in cleaning, repairing blah blah blah. I'm not sure how to go about working around this. I have to do the same work in most of the buildings. I want to be able to go to building one and clean bathroom and vacuum and then click complete. Then building two, click complete. Something happened, emergency so did not get buidling 3-7 done so the next day it should say vacuum and clean bathroom are due or late and should be done. Do i need to make a list for every building? If so how to I copy all the tasks with the properties to all the buildings? Or can i assign buildings to all the tasks, I'm not sure how to go about it! Help!
(closed account) says:
To start out, I would consider a very basic set up while you get your feet wet. Every person ends up with a different answer to your question based on their own needs, so there isn’t one answer.
So, to start I would suggest that the bldg # be part of the task title rather than a tag or list name. This reduces your flexibility in the long run and you might choose to change it as you get more familiar. In my suggestion your task name would look like:
1-bathroom
1-fix faucet bathroom A2
1-vacuum
2-bathroom
2-vacuum
I would make a list containing the cleaning tasks and another for the maintenance tasks. With this set up when you look at either list the items would be sorted first by due date them alphabetically - you’d see each building’s tasks grouped together under each date.
Without the building # as part of the task name, in some task views you’d see a bunch of ‘vacuum’ tasks grouped together requiring a further look to find the building #. For me, that’s a productivity waste.
Tags for maintenance items could be the required supplies - ladder, toolbox, helper...
Every item does not have to have a tag in this scenario (like the cleaning tasks).
So, to start I would suggest that the bldg # be part of the task title rather than a tag or list name. This reduces your flexibility in the long run and you might choose to change it as you get more familiar. In my suggestion your task name would look like:
1-bathroom
1-fix faucet bathroom A2
1-vacuum
2-bathroom
2-vacuum
I would make a list containing the cleaning tasks and another for the maintenance tasks. With this set up when you look at either list the items would be sorted first by due date them alphabetically - you’d see each building’s tasks grouped together under each date.
Without the building # as part of the task name, in some task views you’d see a bunch of ‘vacuum’ tasks grouped together requiring a further look to find the building #. For me, that’s a productivity waste.
Tags for maintenance items could be the required supplies - ladder, toolbox, helper...
Every item does not have to have a tag in this scenario (like the cleaning tasks).
cooneyblue says:
Good ideas, I'll start with that! As you've mentioned yes I am having a bunch of vacuuming tasks together with having to look further to find out what building!! LOL
andrewski (Remember The Milk) says:
Hi cooneyblue,
I like azclaire's suggestion a lot, but just wanted to add some tangential things in case they help.
First, you can duplicate tasks as needed to create a list. That seems like it could be helpful even if you were just renumbering the task names.
Second, if you are always working by building I think ordering the tasks would be best, but if you ever want to group them I think the tags suggestion (or locations) would be especially handy.
For example, you could look at Today to see the tasks due today, but you could also look at the "building1" tag or location to see all the tasks there, or the "cleaning" tag or list to see all the cleaning tasks.
In other words, just using a few of the features at once can give you multiple ways of organizing your tasks.
Hope this helps too, but let us know if we can help with anything else!
I like azclaire's suggestion a lot, but just wanted to add some tangential things in case they help.
First, you can duplicate tasks as needed to create a list. That seems like it could be helpful even if you were just renumbering the task names.
Second, if you are always working by building I think ordering the tasks would be best, but if you ever want to group them I think the tags suggestion (or locations) would be especially handy.
For example, you could look at Today to see the tasks due today, but you could also look at the "building1" tag or location to see all the tasks there, or the "cleaning" tag or list to see all the cleaning tasks.
In other words, just using a few of the features at once can give you multiple ways of organizing your tasks.
Hope this helps too, but let us know if we can help with anything else!
cooneyblue says:
thank you! ;-)
cooneyblue says:
My new dilemma is this, I want to clean the vents in the lobbies of 7 buildings. I want them done by June 12. So I put the due date as june 12 but then this particular task then disappears from view until the week of june 12th. I want to be able to see it and be reminded that it needs be done by june 12th from now until then. I have figured out my own system for the previous request and taken alot of your info to help me through it all ;-)
(closed account) says:
I have a smart list that shows me everything over due and due in the next few weeks:
dueBefore:today OR dueWithin:"2 week of today"
dueBefore:today OR dueWithin:"2 week of today"