As was promised a new interface for list administration is available for you to preview! Please, check out the new dashboard at http://ourtasklists.com/dashboard. Because it’s just a preview, there is no way to get to that screen from within OurTaskLists. So, just click on that link and check it out. If you have any feedback, please leave a comment, or click on the Support/Contact Us link at the top of OurTaskLists.

It’s been really quiet here lately. Don’t fear, though; I’m almost done with a new list administration design which will make things a whole lot easier. Stay tuned for a preview soon!

Multiple reminders can now be set for any task that you can access. You do not need to be a list owner or be assigned to the task in order to set a reminder on the task. To get to the reminders screen for a task, expand the task by clicking on it, and then click the “Reminders” link. There are a couple different ways which a reminder can be set: absolute time and relative time.

Absolute time

Absolute time is the only option for tasks which don’t have a due date. When entering an absolute time, select the date and time when you want the reminder sent to you. If you’d rather type than select a date from the calendar, you’re free to type something like “12/31/2007 @ 11:45pm”, “1/3/2008 at 10:05am” or just “1/10/2008” if you don’t care when in the day the reminder gets sent to you (it’ll default to 9:00am). Click the “Add reminder” button. You’ve now added a single reminder for the task. You can repeat the process if you’d like to add another reminder for the same task.

Relative time

Any task which has a due date (or due date and time) can have a relative reminder assigned to it. If you’d rather like to assign an absolute time, you can click the “Set absolute time” link and then set the exact time for the reminder. To set a relative time, simply select the duration in which you’d like to be reminded before the due date (or due time) for the task. Again, multiple reminders can be added for a single task, if you’d like (e.g., remind me 1 day and 10 minutes in advance).

Currently, all reminders are sent via email to your registered email address. If there’s enough interest, this might be changed in the future to allow for reminder notifications over SMS to your cell phone, or instant messenger to your computer (or wireless internet capable device).

Recently, you might have noticed a cleaned up view of tasks in a list. Something you might not have noticed is the ability to add a time to your item’s due date. You’ve also been given the ability to specify your time zone. This is all in preparation for a future improvement to the reminder system. Currently, reminders can only go out once per day, but in the future, you’ll be able to send yourself a reminder at any time during the day.

Keep your eyes peeled for improved reminders! (of course, I’ll actually blog about it to make sure you’re aware when they’re released)

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.

The new features for Our TaskLists keep rolling in. Just in is the ability to assign a due date to a list as a whole as well as individual items.

The due date for a list can be set both when you are creating a new list and when you edit a list. This due date will show up on the main list screen as well as on your “My Lists” screen.

An item’s due date can be set after creating the item. If the date for an item has never been set, there will be a “never” link on the right-hand side of the item in your list. Click this link and set the desired due date. You can always change the due date by clicking on the date link on the right.

To go along with setting due dates comes the ability to only show the items that you’re interested in seeing. At the top of the list on your list administration screen you’ll see several links labeled “Show items:”. Click the desired link to only show those items. For example, only uncompleted items, or items due tomorrow, etc.

If there are new features that you’d like to see added, please, let us know!

This wasn’t anywhere on my priority list of features, but while testing I got tired of confirming the “Are you sure?” message every time I wanted to delete an item. If you’re deleting several items, this is particularly annoying. So now, instead of confirming that you want to delete an item before the delete happens, you’re given the opportunity to undo the delete after you delete the item.

Next time your itchy delete finger accidentally deletes the wrong item, click the “Undo?” link at the top right of the screen before doing anything else. If the “Undo?” link is no longer there because you’ve moved on and done something else, it’s too late; it’s gone, for good.

I guess there’s no escaping the simplicity of paper and pencil. OurTaskLists.com now supports a nice print-out view of your lists so that you can take them with you when you’re forced to be in a low-tech environment! To print out your task list, use the normal print function of your browser (usually File > Print…). Thanks for the suggestion Barry!