Skip to content

User Manual

Georg Wild edited this page Jan 31, 2018 · 3 revisions

Basics

The system consists of two phases that repeat in a weekly cycle. The first phase is bidding on tasks, which is open until the auction closing time. The closing time can be set in the "Control Room" settings page and MUST be in a format like "Tue 09:05". Once the auction closes, the second phase starts. In this phase, everyone has time to complete their tasks until another commonly agreed upon deadline, for example a weekly plenum.

All auction tasks can get a status assigned during the second phase which can be one of three:

  • Done: Task was completed - the assignee(s) will have the winning bids amount of points added to their account
  • Not necessary: There was no need or reason for the task. No change in points.
  • Failed: The task was neglected - the assignee(s) will lose the amount of points the task was won for or a minimum of 50 points.

Spontaneous tasks and dinners work a bit differently in that they can be claimed and disclaimed at any point (phase 1 and 2). Usually once they are done, or in the case of dinners, when the cooking plan is made. The points for these tasks are awarded during the "progress to next week" action described in the next paragraph.

After deadline the auction cycle can be completed and progressed to the first phase of the following week, if no controversy about the state and status of current weeks tasks is raised. This action must be manually triggered with the "Progress to next week" button on the Control Room page. This button is only enabled when all the auction tasks have an assigned status.

Using the "Progress to next week" button will:

  • Assign all the points of the auction tasks according to their status.
  • Assign all the points of the spontaneous tasks accodring to the claims.
  • Assign all the points of the dinner tasks according to the claims.
  • Delete all the bids and claims on all tasks.
  • Unset the status of every auction task
  • Move to phase 1 of the following week
  • Update the statistics on the dashboard

These actions are non-reversible (or a pain to reverse) so make sure that everything is correct before proceeding.

Users

Everyone can become/select every user and perform any action. There is no authentication in this version, it is build on trust. The currently active user is displayed in the top right. Clicking on the name will reveal the user panel. There you can

  • switch to another existing user or create a new one
  • create a manual transaction of points for any specified reason (misuse brings bad rapport)
  • review the history of a users transactions. (A transaction is simply any gain or loss of points.)

Quick user switch: Clicking on a user name displayed in the interface will in most cases make you become that user.

Bidding

When a task has not been bid on yet, you can set a starting bid. When it already has a bid, you can specific the lowest possible bid you're willing to make and let the system do the ideal bidding for you.

Spontaneous Tasks

Spontaneous tasks are tasks that do not have to be done and can be done an unlimited number of times. Common examples are "Bake a cake" or "Throw a party". They can be found at the bottom of of the task list on the Auction Tab.

Dinners

Dinners can be found in the Dinners Tab. They have a fixed number of points, can be claimed once per day, and are often collaborated on (in which case each person receives points). Nothing happens if they're not claimed, except for maybe people going hungry.

Moving states

Somebody will have to go to Control Room and click the "Progress to next week" button. This will only be possible if all tasks have been assigned a status, so it's usually a good idea to do this as part of some kind of gathering in which those questions can quickly be resolved.

Administration

Go to the Control Tab and "Enable maintenance mode".

Be careful with this - it's a global setting affecting everyone accessing the app - be sure to disable it once you are done.

Now you can create, modify and delete all tasks on the Auction page. Deleting tasks will just flag them and you can un-delete them at a later time. You can't bid on or change status of tasks while maintenance mode is active.

Please note that at the time of writing this it is not yet possible to administer the Dinner tasks via the UI. The current workaround is to edit them directly in the database. If in doubt you should ask the person that helped you set up the task auction.

Clone this wiki locally