Open Dental Forum

I am trying to use tasklist to organize the work within the office. I like most of it. But I have the following suggestions that may make it even better. Thanks.

1. Security and ownership
All the lists and tasks exist in the "main" tab. There is no ownership or security for them at all. For example, admin may create lists and tasks for people in the office. Anyone can come in to delete/modify all of them. People can check/uncheck/delete/modify each other's tasks and lists. It is all because this is essentially a big pool of items without any security or ownership. Here is what I would like to see.

a. List and task will have ownership: You cannot delete/modify or vevn view things you didn't create. When you "send" a task to someone, that task will show on his inbox as it does today. That someone will be able to check/uncheck, but he cannot delete/modify that task. With today's architecture, I have no record that I have sent a task to anyone and that the content is not altered since anyone can delete/modify any list/task.
b. "Main" tab is only visible to administrator. Since "main" tab is the ultimiate depository, there is no need to let everyone see. If a list or task needs to be shared, list/task can be subscribed ot sent. Only admin can have the overall view of all the tasks and lists.

2. Deletion of tasks and lists: As time goes by, we may want to delete completed tasks or lists. There is no easy way to do that today. We have to delete tasks one by one, then their lists if needed. We can have a function to delete completed tasks before a certain date.


3. Repeating tasks
I would like to see my tasks on a single page. I don't want to flip tabs just to see repeating day/week/month tasks. I don't think those date tabs are useful. I would not want to click on them one by one everyday to see if there is anything I need to do of repeating nature. Repeating tasks should work the same way as other tasks. They can go to any list.

4. Printing
Sometime, I would like to have a hard copy of the tasks. It would be very help if we can do that.

Before we can do security and ownership, we need to allow multiple comments on a single task. In other words, move the text of the task out into a separate table. This is similar to how we currently do procedure notes in the chart. It permanently preserves all history without blocking the user from changing or adding. So that's my main push right now. And since we use tasks very heavily, I expect this improvement to come fairly soon.

As for the repeating tasks, yes, I know they are a set up wrong. But we don't use those, so the improvements are on the back burner.

Deletion: Just mark them complete, and you won't see them anymore. We try to avoid deleting things.

Thanks for your quick response again. The biggest concern for me now is security and ownership. Without that, I really cannot use tasklist for serious job assignments and tracking. The thought that anyone can modify/delete any task and list make me feel that I cannot keep track on anything among a group of people at all. Thanks.

Because you don't trust them to be honest? Or because you don't trust them to be competent? I have not found either of these to be a problem. Sure, an occasional task gets misplaced. But that happens in oral communication as well. Even if it's not perfect, it's still very useful. Just like oral communication is useful in spite of its imperfections.

We have been having staff problems. If I had a group of stable people I can trust, tasklist would work pefectly. Based on the current tasklist archtiecture, I think the following changes will help me greatly. Maybe other people will benefit from that, too.

1. Security: OD already has the concept of ownership (the "from" field). we can limit the delete/modify to the owner. Other people can only append to the description just like you have planned. Pople can also mark it as done/viewed.
2. trackability: There are only two places we have to track. One is the description in the task. Since people can only append to the description, we can simply put the user name at the beginning of the appended description. The other is the checkbox for "done". A readonly textbox (or label) right next to it showing who did it would be perfect.
3. Privacy: I would like to use the tasklist to keep track of items that I don't want other people to see. I think we can add a checkbox to the task to make it private to the owner.
4. admin right: We can add an "admin" right in the "security setting" for users. People having that right will be able to see all the tasks and delete/modify any of them.
5. printing: It would be a nice feature, but not absolutely needed.

I have be designing and coding software for corporates. Security is always a top requirement since csutomers cannot count on people always follow the rules. I pay a lot of attention to security when using a piece of software. That is why you saw my comments on "audit trail" and client-server acchitecture of OD.

OD has the "security" function for user rights and "audit trail" for tracking activities. I think adding the above would be a nice addition to this fine piece of software. It makes it more complete. I think the above changes will be backward compatible to what poeple have. Thanks.

Regarding #4, please see
http://70.90.133.65/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1267
There's already a "setup" permission that could serve this function without having to give "admin" permission. Or we can add a new permission.

I went through that post. I could not figure out how "setup" permission works. Is there any other place that talks about it? If that is a userid/password prompt when you try to delete/modify a task, then it may not work in this case. Sometimes, you want to see all the tasks and do some management work. In that case, you want to start with admin right from the beginning. I think it is better to set up a separate permission for that.

How about the overall suggestions about tasks? Do you think they are doable? Thanks.

The "setup" permission is the very first one in the screenshot at:
http://www.open-dent.com/manual/security.html
In your requests, the setup permission should be the one that we use for management work, not the admin permission. The admin permission should be limited to security administration and possibly some other very critical functions. The admin permission should not be a permission we adapt to ordinary management functions. The reason is that you might want a number of people in the office to have setup permission, but only one person should have admin permission.

The suggestions are all doable of course, but there are a lot of suggestions. Each individual suggestion needs to be submitted as a feature request. So I would recommend picking your favorites and those most likely to be implemented soon. Only add those for now.