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Ability to check if subtasks are complete.

tismey says:
It'd be really useful for the hasSubtasks search property to be able to distinguish between Complete and Incomplete tasks. For example:

In my GTD setup, I use tasks/subtasks as Project/Next Actions. To help with my weekly review is like to have a way of finding anything tagged as a project that doesn't have an associated action. I thought this would be as simple as "tag:project AND hasSubtasks:false", but this doesn't capture projects where all the subtasks are completed.

Being able to tell if a task has Incomplete subtasks seems like a sensible addition to the syntax, to me.

Posted at 1:34pm on April 30, 2016
muckpond says:
PLEASE! A MILLION TIMES YES!

This was also brought up in a (now closed) thread: https://www.rememberthemilk.com/forums/help/20576/

Please give us a way to filter/search based on tasks that are complete/incomplete.

In pseudocode, I need a way to say "Find all tasks with no incomplete subtasks"

This is, of course, a GTD kind of thing.

Thanks!
Posted 8 years ago
tismey says:
This functionaliity must exist behind the scenes, because all tasks with subtasks have a label that shows the number of _incomplete_ subtasks associated with it.
Posted 8 years ago
muckpond says:
I don't suppose there's been any. Overeat on this?
Posted 8 years ago
muckpond says:
.... Uh, "any movement" that should say.
Posted 8 years ago
nickmcg says:
Good suggestion
Posted 8 years ago
cavanaughmm says:
I find subtasks during my weekly review that are not complete using a SmartList:

status:incomplete AND hasSubtask=false AND (listContains:..PRJ OR tag:..prj)

I start all main projects with the phrase "..PRJ" so that it's easy to identify them. Right now I am also adding the tag "..prj" to see whether the "list" method or tagging works better for identifying/managing projects (tasks) and subtasks.

Unless the subtask has a subtask, this seems to find them for me. Pretty new to RTM so maybe I'm missing something?
Posted 7 years ago
davidfarquhar says:
I think the proposal is a great idea and would second this. Having a filter called "HasIncompleteSubtasks" would be the ultimate idea.

@cavanaughmm - your idea works well, but it means adding another list here. One of the nice things about the proposal is it makes your main work list much more dynamic, and means you can apply subtasks to any task really quickly without having to mark it as a project.

So if I have a smart list containing tasks a,b,c and I suddenly decide that its easier to break task b down into b1,b2,b3 to make it easier to complete, I'd like to just go into task b and add those subtasks.

If I've set the smart list to ignore parent tasks then instantly my list now contains a,b1,b2,b3,c. Great, now I have a much simpler view of my life, I can tick off each task as I do it, works really well. But when b1,b2,b3 are all done I won't see b in the list. I have to go to a separate list containing parents/projects to check it.

I'd much prefer it if the smartlist ignored parents with incomplete subtasks, then the moment b1,b2 & b3 are complete you would see a,b,c again, and be able to tick off b to say I've done that. You're working within a single list all the time which is much easier to do
Posted 7 years ago
(closed account) says:
Not having to be able to distinguish situation where tasks has any uncompleted subtasks is a problem for me too. E.g. I wanted to make a simple query to display all uncompleted tasks without subtasks (as part of my workflow). Seems to be a simple like logical condition as:

(isSubtask:false AND hasSubtasks:false) OR (isSubtask:true AND hasSubtasks:false)

but if tasks has any completed subtasks it won't show in above result set. Strange to see lack of such query parameter.
Posted 6 years ago
rtfletch says:
I'd love to have this as well. I mark projects with a "project" tag and then I have a smart filter to find projects without subtasks to make sure everything has a next action, but because it includes completed it's harder to filter for projects that need sub-tasks or can be marked completed. I don't like it, but the only option I can think of is to delete the completed tasks.
Posted 6 years ago
daniel.walters says:
Yes, I would love this as well. Currently it requires two samrt lists: one to weed out any completed subtasks (next actions) of projects so they can be deleted, then another to see if any projects have no next actions.
Posted 6 years ago
wsmak says:
I would vote for this feature too, either treat parent task with no incomplete subtasks as no subtask or create a category where you can filter parent task with no incomplete subtask.
Posted 5 years ago
operso says:
Please add the operator "hasIncompleteSubtasks:" and "hasCompletedSubtasks:"
Posted 5 years ago
zenistar says:
I'm slowly becoming disillusioned with RTM when I see great suggestions and ideas, that a lot of people could use and ask for - yet the ideas are years old without movement....

Please please please add the operator to find items that have no incomplete sub tasks.

I would typically use this on my GTD Project lists with:

(list:"Projects Private" OR list:"Projects Work") AND hasNoIncompleteSubtasks:True

To find all of my projects with no defined next actions.
Posted 5 years ago
calvin.spealman says:
I've been using RTM for many, many years and I finally upgraded to pro today almost exclusively for subtasks. This was the *first* feature I went to try and use with them, very much expecting to be able to do so. All of the +1 on this feature request, please let my smart lists get a little smarter! :-)
Posted 5 years ago
davidscottsmith says:
I just wrote to Tech Support about this.

It's discouraging to see that the first posting of this idea is 3 years old! Please make this happen asap!

Here's what I wrote
Hi Bob and RTM Team,

I have recently discovered that the "hasSubtasks" syntax returns a "true" even if the subtasks are complete...

I'm really hoping to have a command that is perhaps "hasIncompleteSubtasks" that would return "false" if all subtasks were complete.

I would like to be able to create a list that shows all tasks that have no incomplete subtasks, as that might indicate a project is stalled.

Please let me know if you would consider this feature request. It would help me a lot.

Thanks,
David
Posted 5 years ago
zenistar says:
Well, a nearly a year on from my last post on this and three years on from the original post and no movement :(

@David - did you get a response from Tech support?
Posted 4 years ago
wsmak says:
It is all good to have a suggestion forum, but what actually gets included in their next release, nobody knows...
Posted 4 years ago
treygec says:
yeah this is going to be a make or break feature for me when it comes time to renew. Really hope this gets implemented.
Posted 4 years ago
leo.pereffect says:
Yes! This allows us to create smartlists with active projects.
Posted 4 years ago
treygec says:
Well it's renewal time. Still need this functionality so it looks like I'll be finding another platform.
Posted 4 years ago
(closed account) says:
While not the perfect solution to this, you can see all tasks that have subtasks by using...

hasSubtasks:true

... and then look for results that don't have the subtask indicator (the little number showing the number of incomplete subtasks). This would show you the tasks with no incomplete subtasks.
Posted 3 years ago
jamesr404 says:
Upvoted, as I could also use this function...
Posted 1 year ago
tsuioku says:
Upvoted, I have the same need as OP.
Posted 1 year ago
dgoldstein says:
I was about to propose the same thing, I would totally use such a feature.
Posted 11 months ago
breninldn says:
Please add this functionality, this will potentially allow creating tasks dependencies utilising subtasks. Which is the most popular idea on the forum at the moment. See: https://www.rememberthemilk.com/forums/ideas/1691/

For example, you could filter out a task with incomplete subtasks in a smart list, allowing subtasks to be displayed, but not the parent task. Making task dependent on the parent task
Posted 6 weeks ago
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