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Template lists

angela.randall says:
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
ranbarton Power Poster says:
You're an RTM Jedi.
Posted 16 years ago
angela.randall says:
Thanks :)
Posted 16 years ago
nekodojo says:
That's a great idea, thank you for posting. I suppose you could put a special character in the name of the project to mark it as "on hold" or "inactive" but I'm not sure if there is a listContains type of operator. But your solution is totally workable for <20 "inactive" lists.

I've also thought of having another RTM account for all the inactive crap and then "sharing" or "sending" items to my main account but that seems way too clunky.
Posted 15 years ago
hogan82 says:
I'm sorry, but I'm new to RTM and I'm having trouble understanding how you're using the "templates." Are you just creating a list of tasks and giving it a particular name and tag. How do you produce a fresh set of tasks to work with when you're using the template without overwriting the template?
Posted 14 years ago
hogan82 says:
Another way of implementing templates just occurred to me. Why not use the e-mail feature of RTM described at http://www.rememberthemilk.com/help/answers/sending/importemail.rtm to send a "template" of tasks to a particular list? You can save the template of tasks in a Word file and e-mail them to a list you've set up for the project whenever the project has to be repeated. Granted, this has the obvious disadvantage of not populating any of the task fields other than the task name.
Posted 14 years ago
(closed account) says:
Plus... this probably won't work for things like the iPhone app, or portable uses, but there's a Greasemonkey script out there somewhere that enables list hiding, so you could just hide all these templated lists that you have and just see the ones that you're actually using :-)
Posted 14 years ago
(closed account) says:
wow. you are crafty!

great find!
Posted 14 years ago
raymond.bergmark Power Poster says:
Check out the tip from hogan82 that uses e-mail and smart add syntax to create a bunch of tasks with all the meta info set.

Link: www.rememberthemilk.com/forums/tips/8447/
Posted 14 years ago
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