Hello,
snowcrash, one of the thousand ( :p ) of users of the WordPress Task Manager plugin ask for email notifications.
I agree with him, it is important for a task manager to notify user. A task can be given to them, a comment add, …
Should email be send after a comment ? And to who ? all the user ? the creator and the active user of the task ?
For the creation, it is easy : I send an email to the active user, if it is not the creator.
After an edition, I send a email to the creator, the old active user and the new one if there is a change.
After a delete, the creator and the active user will get an email.
After someone let a comment : the creator and the active user.
Please let me know if you want something different.
In any case, this can be changed in the option.
Hello Thomas
The workflow you’ve indicated makes sense. The principal of notifications (for both task and comment) works best on the assumption that users won’t always login in to check on updates, therefore email notifications are very useful when updates occur.
Though as you’ve probably realised it can get quite involved.
Probably the simplest and efficient example I’ve seen is with the WebCollab app http://webcollab.sourceforge.net/ which has a demo.
It uses the notion of workgroup (where users may belong to a group), and notifications (for a task or its comments) can be sent to the whole group, and/or can be sent to the owner of the task. And these are options.
The other thing you may want to think about is about displaying the status of tasks in terms of who (or what group) a task is assigned to and if it assigned to anyone, urgent tasks, summary etc. Some kind of display filtering would be useful, (maybe similar to how WP posts can be listed in the admin area where you can select how to view the different status of the post).
hope this helps
Hello,
Thanks a lot for your comment. It is great to see that my plugin interest you so much !
I agree that email notification allow people to not go inside wordpress to see if something change. This function is a necessity.
The notion of workgroup is ok, but I don’t want to create it. This plugin is for small team. If you need to create team, you need a real management tools. But on the othr hand, to create it inside wordpress could be great !.
So, for the moment, I’m going to keep the plug in simple, with few options. When I think that all the basic function are here, I’m going to create an other plugin : WordPress Advance Task Manager. This one will be more complicated, with group, priority, … as a real task manager.
Or I can create an advance mode.
I appreciate that it’s sensible to focus on the core aspects of the plugin as you suggest. And then develop more advanced options.
I look forward to tracking the development of this really useful plugin, especially as WP is being used increasingly by admin teams.