[Feature Request] Rework priority handling

[Torenga]

RFC 5545 specifies 1-4 as High, 5 as Medium and 6-9 as high with 0 as "Undefined/No priority".

Most task managers, including all I've been able to sync with NC Tasks uses a four-level system; No Priority-Low-Medium-High instead of the full 10 levels defined in RFC 5545. This corresponds with NC Tasks own four colour scheme - Grey (No priority), Blue (Low priority), Yellow (Medium priority) and Red (High priority). The 10-level slider in Tasks is confusing when compared to it's own colour scheme and other task managers.

I request that the priorities slider is either changed to the defacto standard, RFC 5545-compliant four-levels; No priority Grey=0, High priority Red=1, Medium priority Yellow=5 and Low priority Blue=9 - Or have the option to toggle this feature akin to Calendars "Simplified Editor".

Thank you for your consideration and providing a great NC feature!

[raimund-schluessler]

I think it doesn't hurt to support all 10 priority levels specified by RFC 5545, but I don't have a too strong opinion on that. We only use four colors, since more would be hard to memorize and are not very meaningful. One still might like to have a finer priority setting than four. But if the majority of @nextcloud/designers likes to only have four levels I am fine with that.

[Torenga]

I think it doesn't hurt to support all 10 priority levels specified by RFC 5545

Part of my argument is that it's confusing and de facto unstandard, which I consider bad for the user experience if NC Tasks is synced with practically any other task manager.

There's also the possibility for both 4 and 10 levels with a "Simplified Editor" toggle. Looking forward to hear what other designers say. :)

[freayd]

It might help if the colour of the star next to the number would change when the slider is moved. As I move the slider, it'd be nice to know if the result is going to red, yellow or blue. Otherwise, it's kind of a guessing game.

[raimund-schluessler]

There was also another idea to change the priority handling in #1166. See my answer in #1166 (comment). Let's please use this issue here for discussing how to proceed with priority settings (since the ideas in #1128 and #1166 are a bit contradictory).

[Torenga]

Thank you @raimund-schluessler for recognizing that these two topics are related and bringing the discussion together.

Simplifying use

In #1166 @raimund-schluessler said he think the issues are contradictory - to me they're both about simplifying the priorities interaction both when setting or checking priority levels. I see that I misinterpreted "Easily distinguish between priorities within the same color" as "Easily distinguish priorities", but first suggestions would fit nicely in with my proposal (thus the thumbs up) and the second doesn't interfere.

@bgravato's #1166:

It would be great if there was instead a '+' and a '-' signs (or up/down arrows) in order to increase/decrease priority of the tasks without having to click/open the task and use the slider.

I interpret this as "Simplifying setting priority level". My suggestion for 4 levels is partly to avoid the trouble of hitting "5" when dragging the slider or even using keyboard arrows when you want medium, so to me it's a different approach to the same issue.

A '+' and '-' system for a 4 level system (10 levels means too many clicks) would simplify this even more so thumbs up for that (at the cost of design and layout, which I didn't consider. Is there a visual design specification or manifest for NextCloud I could check out?).

But I understand the general principle behind keeping it clean and why it's not an option.

It would also be great to have the priority number written over the star, so one could easily distinguish between the different priorities that have the same colour (eg. 1-4 and 6-9).

I though it meant that priorities would correspond with the colours, landing on a 4 level system. Don't ask how I ended up with that, my bad.

Still, it's about simplifying how to accurately check priorities - So a 4 level system that corresponds to the star color would "fix" this problem unless one actually needs all 10 level. I'm under the impression that the vast majority of CalDAV-task users only uses 4 levels when considering the de facto standard in most other task managers.

@raimund-schluessler's reply in #1166, where he mentions an alternative to the slider:

And instead of the showing plus/minus buttons, we could simply show a button for each priority value (this would be possible with 9 priority values already, but would lead to many buttons).

What a great idea for both a 4 and a 10 level system!

10-level Star-based priority selector

In the details pane I'd happily use 10 stars over the slider - so that's an improvement.

4-level Star-based priority selector

Same goes for a 4 star system, but it would nice instead of somewhat crowded!

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Quick Access

Speaking of quickly setting priority in what is now a more general thread, I suggest changing what happens when one clicks the star in overview - Do away with the rather useless High/No priority toggle, a better function would be if it could open the details pane with the priority selector in focus.

Even removing the functionality completely or creating an in-frame popup for properly setting priority is better in my opinion, currently it only adds a half-way functionality that is confusing and draws away attention from the details pane.

But what about combining two of the suggestions we've discussed so far, quick access priority settings with stars?

4-level Star-based quick access priority selector

Doesn't look messy and crowded, even though it looks more crowded than the current design. What was the criteria for moving UI elements to sub-menus previously?

[bgravato]

Between 4 and 10 levels I think I prefer 10, but I can live with 4.

My suggestion was to try to waste less time setting or adjusting priority levels.

Two situations where this come into play on my usual workflow:

1. When I'm creating sub-tasks, after pressing enter focus is on a new sub-task creation, so I usually enter a few in a row, to minimize mouse use. After creating all sub-tasks I set the priority for them.
2. Sometimes I like to look at the list of all (sub-)tasks and change priorities for some of them (usually moving up or down just 1 or 2 levels)

On both situations, clicking on a (sub-)task, dragging a slider, etc... and repeating for all tasks is a bit time consuming. It would be great to be able to change the priority directly from the task list, without having to open each task one by one.

I too agree that clicking on the star in the task list to toggle between priority 1 or no-priority is a bit useless indeed... I suggested +/- buttons but a popping menu (or something else that allows to set any priority instead of just 1 or nothing) when clicking the star would be much more useful and time-saving.

As for visual information on the task list, I agree it should be as simple as possible, but it would be nice to be able to tell the (exact) priority of a task just by looking at the task list. Currently it's impossible to distinguish from 1,2, 3 or 4, for example. Showing a number over the star would not occupy more space and would be more informative in my opinion (though it might be less appealing from a design POV). This is valid only if using a 10-level scale, if switching to a 4-level scale it doesn't make any sense, of course.

I'd love to help with the coding, but my javascript skills are quite limited, sorry.

[bgravato]

Forgot to say... I love the idea of replacing the slider with a star-based selector.

[clobrano]

I often use tasks with both sidebars opened and in a 14''/13'' display, so the view is much shorter than what shown above.
I think 10 level priorities without a color difference for each one is a bit misleading, and also agree that 10 colors would be too much. I'd really appreciate then the change to 4 levels only and in place of showing all the 4 stars, I'd suggest a popup to choose, so that only the currently selected star is visible.

[freayd]

@Torenga Adding numbers will probably help the user under the 9-star view. Here's an example.

[jancborchardt]

From a user perspective, 10 levels are absolutely too much. Just like @Torenga said:

Most task managers, including all I've been able to sync with NC Tasks uses a four-level system; No Priority-Low-Medium-High

Sure the RFC is one thing, but we need to remember that RFCs are written by engineers and not by user researchers. While we can follow the RFC in the backend, we don’t need to implement all its nuances in the frontend. Especially not if basically all popular tasks app use way less complicated means – which makes those the de-facto standard, and any app following the RFC just plain confusing and/or complicated. :)

References for priority systems in other task apps (short story: none gets more complicated than 4 levels, so we should neither):

• Apple Reminders uses: none, low, medium, high
• Todoist uses: none, low, medium, high
• Microsoft To-Do has only an "important" marker, so binary
• Google Tasks does not have any sort of prioritization. They only offer reordering

[th23x]

As a new user switching from another task managing app, I would strongly support the request to simplify overall and the suggestion "4 Start" and "Quick Access" as described by @Torenga above

If not showing 4 stars in the "Quick Access" option on the list, maybe a toggle trough the stages (high, medium, low, none) upon click could be an alternative!?

[meichthys]

Another alternative to the slider would be to implement the drop-down selector like we already have implemented for task status. This would allow us to color code the options and add descriptions to the different priorities. We could even use color coded star icons (although i think that would be disadvantageous to accessibility).