One of the things that sets OurTaskLists apart is the ability to share and collaborate with a team of people on a set of tasks (hence the “our” in OurTaskLists). Until documentation on task list sharing finds a more permanent home on the site, I wanted do so a little write up here on the blog.

There are many different reasons to share a task list. Projects are always easier to tackle when they’re tackled by a team. In order to be efficient, the team needs to be well organized and have open communication. In the Christmas Wish List example, the “team” was your extended family needing to be organized about what to get your child for Christmas. Other examples of teams might be your co-workers, employees, a group of volunteers, or the parents of your child’s youth sports team.

There are two different methods of sharing a task list in OurTaskLists: a public link and sharing ownership. An explanation of each follows:

Public Link

You can send anyone to your list to reserve tasks. This scenario is optimal when you have a large group of people that will be reserving tasks for themselves. The public link can be obtained by clicking the “Public link to this list” link on the list administration screen and pasting the link into an email to whoever you want to share the list with. Public list users have a more simplified view of the list. They can just reserve items for themselves, as well as complete items that they have previously reserved. You can also build up the contact list for your organization by adding these public list users to your contact list. After someone who you’ve sent the link to visits the list, they show up as a “List Visitor” on the right-hand side of your list administration screen. If their name has a green plus sign next to it, that means that they are not in your list of contacts. Click on the green plus, and they’ll immediately be added, giving you the ability to assign tasks to them or share list ownership with them from then on.

Sharing Ownership

You can share ownership of a list on the right hand side of the list administration screen with the “Share ownership with…” link. Clicking that will drop down the list of your contacts, if you have any. A list owner an administrative view of the list. Instead of a “Reserve” link, a list owner would see an “Assign to…” link which would give him the ability to assign the task to any of their contacts. List owners also have the ability to edit, delete, set due dates, and complete/uncomplete an item at any stage.

In both forms of sharing, any user can add a note to a task item. Any list owner has the ability to delete a note if they desire.

For those of you who figured this out without any documentation, congratulations! For the rest of you, I hope that this is a help.