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Avoiding Hidden Subtasks in Smartlists

jamezzz says:
I really like RTM's subtask features. I use Parent tasks as projects and child tasks as project tasks. This generally works great, but I have some SmartLists design to give me a Hotlist of things due in the next few days or tagged as @tw (ThisWeek) or marked In Progress, etc.. Sometimes I would have project tasks (subtasks) with due dates, but they would remain hidden in my Hotlist because its parent task (the project) also appeared in the Hotlist. In the case where both parent and child of that parent show up in the same SmartList, RTM always shows the parent ONLY.

So in order to avoid these hidden subtasks I simply modified my SmartList to end with "AND NOT hasSubtasks:true". This results in my Hotlist always showing non-project tasks or parent tasks which could hide a child task that has a Due date or is tagged in a way intended to make it show up in my Hotlist.

I have a separate SmartList showing me all of my projects sorted and grouped by List (which I use for Focus Areas like Home, Work, Family, etc). This has saved me alot of headaches of missing that important project meeting or task that's due soon. I hope this helps you, too!
Posted at 12:10am on January 28, 2017
jamezzz says:
Oooops! "This results..." should say: This results in my Hotlist always showing project tasks (children) or tasks without subtasks removing the possibility of subtasks being hidden.

Wish we could edit our posts!
Posted 7 years ago
raymond.bergmark Power Poster says:
Clever, having (sub)tasks not showing up must be scary. The project itself is just a container, no need to show that in the task lists.
Posted 7 years ago
xtoq says:
@jamezzz Great idea! Thanks for the detailed writeup (and the 2nd post with the edit). I agree I wish we could edit our posts...
Posted 6 years ago
davidfarquhar says:
I've finally started doing this with subtasks as well - I modified my work list yesterday to have the same criteria (hassubtasks:false). So now if I add a subtask to a task of any kind it appears in my list.

I love the idea of a Projects List grouped by List - not tried grouping but it sounds like a great plan. I presume you use hassubtasks:true in there?

I did wonder this morning about the idea of a criteria called "Has Incomplete Subtasks". Do you think that would be useful? Reasoning behind this is that I might create 3 subtasks for a task, and they will appear and be ticked off when done in my main work list. But when I finish all 3 I'd like the original task/project to appear in that list so I can assess if I'm finished. But I have to go to my separate projects task to do this.

But if you could use that criteria then your subtasks would appear, but when they are all marked as complete then the project task would instantly appear in your main list rather than having to appear in a separate list
Posted 6 years ago
pallianos says:
Exactly what I needed. Thank you!
Posted 1 year ago
pallianos says:
Just found out that already finished subtasks count as "hasSubtask:true" although it's not visibly and I'm looking for a workaround for "hasUnfinishedSubtask:false"
Posted 1 year ago
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