Sunday, July 15, 2012

How do I use it. Recurrence. Part II.

We've just rolled out a new update with some enhancements to the recurrence functionality and some fixes and improvements. As usual, please, backup before updating.

Before I go on with describing the update I want to thank those who sent error reports, wrote us emails on few bugs we'd introduced before. They would have gone un-noticed if not you - thanks a lot! And, big thank you to those who send and write feedback here - for your suggestions on how to improve the app and new cool features to add.


As the result of such feedback, we've added an "All" button to the My Influence page. Now initially all your concerns are shown when this button is selected. By clicking on the Concern or Influence button you can see only concerns or influences. This filtering was suggested by Lennart. Thanks, Lennart :)


Here, I must (I just must, to free up my mind :-D) make a small note, that recurring actions bring tons of additional complexity into the app. That complexity not only comes in the form of technical implementation, but also in the app logic. For example, what do we have to do when we have a goal with a recurring action and we mark this goal as reached, then use "delete reached goals" functionality? Should we delete the action even if it's not marked as done today? Such questions arose during the whole process of implementing, and we're actually not sure everything is smooth in the logic, but we wanted to share the update so much, that we did it today, crossing our fingers :).


Now let me describe the functions. After adding initial recurrences, we (me, particularly) started using it actively. And almost immediately found out that we had missed important type of recurring actions - those to divide the actions into ones I do on weekdays and weekends. We've started working on them and were almost ready to deploy them just few days after first recurrences that we found out some nuances in using such actions. Nuances made up the next part of development and today we deployed following new functionality.

The new recurrence types are:

Every weekday recurring action is an action which is only actual for every weekday out there. That is, for Monday-Friday.

Every weekend day recurring action is active for Saturday and Sunday, only.

Once until done - this is my favourite recurrence. I call it Today action. It is also known as Sliding action. The idea is, as always, quite simple - this type of action is shown for today. Until you check it as done. So it kinda slides from Monday to Tuesday, from Tuesday to Wendsday, etc. Until you check it as done. I think, pretty cool :).

One more problem with recurrence we tried to solve - do the actions have to repeat forever? Is there a way to say it not to continue? One way was to delete the action, but then you wouldn't see them on screen. So, we've added a "Stop" button on the recurrence setup page. If you stop recurrence, it won't repeat anymore, starting from tomorrow. Why not from today? We don't know, just decided to try. If you find it more convenient to stop showing it from today, tell us (and don't forget to tell why you think so, to be more convinsing :)

That seems like all, if I remember anything, will add to this post. And your feedback is warmly welcomed!

11 comments:

  1. Should you add a sound reminder (or notification) for the action?

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    Replies
    1. Hi,
      Added to list, thank you.
      AndTek

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    2. Does the app integrate with Google Calendar? ie. Instead having manually look-in or open-app ... would be fantastically helpful if I could choose which Google Calendar my to-do's come into. Many business owners (& consumers) I meet are already using 'A Calendar' such as Google etc.

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    3. We don't do direct integration. For modern devices (Android 3+), you can add your action to a calendar by pressing button on Action page. The other way doesn't work, though. I.e., you can't import a task from a calendar.

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  2. Hello! You are doing a great job! Very helpful, thank you! but maybe it will be more comfortable if user can choose exactly on what day recurrence happens. For example now i can choose "Once a week", and can choose only one day, not two or three days. But if reccurence happens on mondays, wednesdays, saturdays it didnt work. Of course sub-actions could help too in this situation. One day=one sub-action. :)

    P.S. sorry for my english, not native.

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    Replies
    1. Hi, thanks for the suggestion, we'll add it to feature wish-list. And sorry for late reply!
      Best regards,
      AndTek

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  3. Hey AndTek could you tell us what the Priority (A, B, C, etc) and the Set as Current buttons do?

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  4. Hi AndTek,

    Any plans to make My Effectiveness Habits available on Google Chrome? It would be fabulous if it's also available on Chrome (Windows) as well as the ability to sync across devices/platforms.

    Cheers

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    Replies
    1. Hi there)

      We do plan to make a web app, will describe it a bit later.

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  5. I have used myeffectivness App for over a year [It totally rocks] You guys should be making money on this you have added a lot of value to the world by this apps creation. Anyways reoccurring tasks, I have some but today any I create they appear to start forever ago and go indefinitely into the future, no matter how much I say just 1 week or 2 weeks. Did something change, or did my data somehow get into a bad state. I am running Ver 0.20.8 on android Studio emulator API 26 Android 8.0.

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