Forums / Tips & Tricks

angela.randall

When I first joined RTM the most important feature I couldn't see available was a template list. (see http://www.rememberthemilk.com/forums/ideas/2642/ and http://www.rememberthemilk.com/forums/ideas/2875/)

My reasoning for wanting to set up to-do list templates:

This is really useful in the world of events and project management, because each event has very similar tasks that need to be done. For instance, when my project is "Quiz night 22nd Sept - Cancer Fundraiser" I have a billion tasks such as "booking venue", "Confirm MC", "Print Flyers" etc etc. that have to be done for any event. When I later want to start a project along the lines of "Local Bands for MS fundraiser - Dec 15th" I'll need very similar tasks set up. It'd be awesome to quickly populate that project with the template tasks for an event.

I noticed another suggestion for templates (here http://www.rememberthemilk.com/forums/ideas/2584/) and I thought I'd share with you all how I've managed to create template lists. It's a little geeky, but it works perfectly.

The solution came about because I wanted an easier way to hide tasks that fit the "(dueAfter:"1 week of today" and (isRepeating:true or tag:zzz))" criteria which is so very useful and explained better here: http://www.rememberthemilk.com/forums/ideas/2177/

I realised that RTM now allows you to create smartlists based on other smartlists. Not sure how long this has been possible, but it means you can do AWESOME things with smartlists.

So, I made a list called #zzz with the criteria (dueAfter:"1 week of today" and (isRepeating:true or tag:zzz))

This means I can make an @home smartlist as follows:
(tag:home OR location:@Home) NOT list:"#zzz"

That's a lot easier than typing in that big long search string for each smartlist I want to create.

But, I took it a step further and created a #Templates list of my groceries and events (I'm an event manager) templates:
list:"Event Template" OR list:"Groceries Template"

And a list called "#Projects On Hold" for projects that I'm not currently working on:
tag:Project_A OR tag:Project_B

Then I create a general #hide list searching for:
list:"#Projects On Hold" or list:"#Templates" or list:"#zzz"

Now my @Computer list can be as simple as:
tag:computer NOT list:"#hide"

It filters out all my templates, all my repeated tasks and any project I've temporarily put on hold.

I LOVE RTM for enabling me to do this. :)

Ange.

Posted at 5:15am on February 26, 2008