Option to copy children in recurring tasks

[chmac]

⚠️ Please check that this feature request hasn't been suggested before.

• [X] I searched previous Ideas in Discussions didn't find any similar feature requests.
• [X] I searched previous Issues didn't find any similar feature requests.
• [X] I am only requesting a single feature. Multiple changes should be split into individual requests, with links between them.
• [X] I believe my requested feature will be generally applicable to other users, not just me: it is not uniquely tied to my personal workflow.

🔖 Feature description

When completing a recurring task, I would like any children it has to be duplicated in the newly created task.

One way to achieve this would be to add a new setting to "Recurring task settings" which would say something like "Copy child tasks when creating new recurring tasks"

✔️ Solution

Given the following task:

[ ] A task with children that repeats daily 🔁 every day 🛫 2023-12-18
    - [ ] Step 1
    - [x] Another step ✅ 2023-12-19
    - [ ] More steps

When I check the first task I would like to see this:

- [ ] A task with children that repeats daily 🔁 every day 🛫 2023-12-19
    - [ ] Step 1
    - [ ] Another step
    - [ ] More steps
- [x] A task with children that repeats daily 🔁 every day 🛫 2023-12-18 ✅ 2023-12-19
    - [ ] Step 1
    - [x] Another step ✅ 2023-12-19
    - [ ] More steps

The children have been copied and "reset".

❓ Alternatives

My research hasn't produced any alternative solutions to this issue. However, I'm new to obsidian and tasks, so if you can suggest an alternative approach, I'd be delighted to hear about it. 🧡

📝 Additional Context

I have tasks around quarterly accounting. Conceptually I think of the whole thing as one task with several discrete steps. I want the entire list of steps to repeat / recur, rather than having each step as a separate recurring task. Here's an example of what I mean:

- [ ] Quarterly accounting 🔁 every 3 months 🛫 2024-01-01 📅 2024-02-07
  - [ ] Download bank statements
  - [ ] Import bank statements into accounting software
  - [ ] Upload invoices
  - [ ] Request missing invoices
  - [ ] Reconcile accounts
  - [ ] Submit VAT return

Rather than these being 6 recurring tasks, I'd like them to be a single task which recurs, and then has 6 steps.

[claremacrae]

Yes, this is a good idea.

I've added labels that enable searching for related requests.

To set expectations: Because tasks does not currently store sub-tasks, that would need to be implemented before this could be done. And that is in itself a massive amount of work.

As such, this request is unlikely to be implemented in the foreseeable future, but I will leave it open.

[chmac]

Thanks. Doubly so for setting expectations, that’s super helpful. I’ll find a workaround for the meantime…

[claremacrae]

This idea is actually coincidentally relevant to something I did yesterday...

• I had about 50 or 60 recurring tasks on one file. (Christmas Tasks.md).
• It had a load of completed recurring tasks that were done in 2022.
• I had started doing the 2023 tasks, and so some 2024 tasks were now mixed in as well.
• And it was a huge mess.

I ended up:

• Moving the 2022 ones out to Christmas Tasks 2022.md
• Deleting the 2024 ones
• Removing the recurrence from Christmas Tasks.md
• And making a note for 2024 to create a new copy of the completed tasks in Christmas Tasks.md

What you suggest here, of grouping related tasks together in to sub-tasks of one parent task, is a way nicer idea - and a really good motivation for this ticket.

[chmac]

Awesome! I’m thinking the same, to use templates and have one recurring task that reminds me to create a new list from the template.

[therden]

Hello @chmac!

I was going to suggest using either Obsidian's built-in Template capability -- or (if, for example, you want or need to get fancy calculating Due dates or the calendar quarter with each new instance of these Tasks is associated) the Templater plug-in.

Since you got there yourself, I'll just affirm that, in my experience, templates are definitely the best solution for the problem you've outlined.

Note: you'll likely want to use Tasks' recently added "Global Query capability in the Settings, adding a "path does not include" filter to exclude the directory in which your templates are saved.

Hope this helps!

[chmac]

@therden Thanks for the global query exclude, that's a great suggestion.

[claremacrae]

In view of this size of the backlog for this project, and the demotivating effect of a very long backlog on volunteer energy levels, I'm going through a slow process of reviewing tasks for things that are one or more of the following:

• unlikely to be realistically achievable, from the design of the current code, and the planned future refactorings
• not sufficiently high priority to a broad community of users, based on the feedback I receive from a variety of sources
• do not fit the core purpose of the Tasks plugin
• are better covered by a different plugin - to share the development and maintenance effort

So I'm marking this one as 'not planned'. This doesn't mean 'won't fix' - it means not likely to be done in the foreseeable future.

[chmac]

@claremacrae Thanks for the very nice message explaining why this is being closed, I really appreciate it. 🧡