Add context menu on Recurrence field - 🔁 - for easy skipping and postponing of occurences

[lebigot]

⚠️ 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

Being able to easily postpone a task while respecting its occurence rule (e.g. postponing to the next working day) would be generally useful, as argued in #2674.

✔️ Solution

A context menu on the Recurrence emoji 🔁 would allow users to select a new option for skipping occurrences (as done by using the Postpone emoji ⏩). For example, we could have the following options:

1. Postpone to next day.
2. Postpone to next occurence.

Thus, when clicking on ⏩, the selected postponing behavior would be applied.

As discussed in #2674, this is an acceptable solution.

❓ Alternatives

The current alternative involves manually scanning the context menu on Postpone for a valid date (e.g., for a work day recurrence, next Monday instead of Saturday).

📝 Additional Context

See #2674 for more discussion.

[claremacrae]

Great - thank you.

I've tried to edit the summary to make it a bit more directly related to (my understanding of) the request - is it correct?

[claremacrae]

I've just edited it again, to capture both postpone and skip...

[lebigot]

This looks good, thanks!

[ilandikov]

@lebigot @claremacrae I'd like to propose an alternative solution - recurrence emoji to act as postpone emoji but for occurrences

User action	Postpone	Recurrence
Left click	postpone by 1 day	skip this occurrence
Right click	menu with postpones (+2...6 days & +1...4 weeks)	menu with skips (2...5 occrurrencies)

Example of the skip menu for a task recurring every week and scheduled on today, Sep 9 2024:

Skip this occurrence, scheduled on Mon 16 Sep
---
Skip 2 occurrencies, scheduled on Mon 23 Sep
Skip 3 occurrencies, scheduled on Mon 30 Sep
...
---
Remove recurrence

Menu:

• For tasks having more than one happens date (starts, due, scheduled), the menu shall display due if present, otherwise scheduled, if present, otherwise start date (This is the same as in postpone)
• I'm not attached to particular wording, feel free to propose changes

Skipping method:

• modify the task by setting dates to the next occurrence
• all happens dates (starts, due, scheduled) shall advance if present

[ilandikov]

Added Remove recurrence in the menu

[claremacrae]

Hi @ilandikov, there is a lot to parse in your suggestions - and I don't have the capacity to respond in detail right now. But I do want to share a general comment.

Left-clicking on action buttons

When left-clicking on Postpone, it is fine for it to make a change, as it is an action button.

Left-clicking on Task Fields

However, I would not support left-clicking of fields/emojis/values making a change, like skipping an occurrence.

For left-clicking on Date values, I have been working on making that pop up a calendar widget for easy editing of the date.

So if left-clicking on Recurrence is to do anything, I would like it to pop up some kind of nicer editing widget.... to make it easy to switch between common recurrence patterns - and add or remove when done.

That could then be used to improve the editing experience in the Edit Task modal.

[ilandikov]

Ok, so where do you think is the best place to skip an occurrence? This is feature I would definitely need =)

[claremacrae]

Ok, so where do you think is the best place to skip an occurrence? This is feature I would definitely need =)

• Initially, in the right-click context menu on Recurrence...
• Later on, perhaps via left-click popping up a modal with options...

[ilandikov]

nice solution! thanks!