Task manager within Discourse?

(Roland) #1

Not sure where this would go. Is there any sort of task manager type of plugin for staff to keep up on what needs to be done and has been done on the site? How do others communicate with their staff on this?

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(David Taylor) #2

Maybe these could help?

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(Roland) #3

Reading the assigned I dont think this will work for what I need. We have alot of off site stuff that is the main responsibilities and my staff are not good with computers in general.

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(David Taylor) #4

What do you want to achieve, exactly? What kind of thing do you want to see in the user interface?

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(Roland) #5

Like other task managers maybe where you can make a post with a checklist of things that can be added.

Task -People to Contact

  • person 1- notes
  • person 2 - notes
  • person 3 -notes

in a checked off form where a person can staff thats invited to it can check off each as done and have in a central place. Nothings solved, either completed or incomplete.

These arent problems but tasks we need to do. Especially with advertisers, inquiries etc, invites.

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(David Taylor) #6

Well if it’s a checklist you want, give the checklist plugin a try :slight_smile:

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(Jay Pfaffman) #7

If you’re willing for each task to have its own post, then the assign plugin will do it. I’m not sure what about that is not good for off site tasks.

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(Daniela) #8

Discourse Assign and whisper post are technically the right way, but if they are “too technical” for your staff you can:

  • create a To-Do category (visible only for your staff) and create topics for each job to do. When a job is complete you can close the discussion.
  • create a To-Do category (visible only for your staff) and create a single topic with the list of jobs to do. In this case it is useful to use the checklist plugin
  • you can simply use the flag (“something else”) button, to send a notification with a personal message to your staff members
  • send a PM to the staff group

There are many possibilities to choose from, depending on how much and how you want to train your staff (no one is born knowing everything).

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(Roland) #9

Yeah Im thinking the checklist may be the best option but I would have make a general post and have them edit from there. The guys dont understand markdown or how to format, etc. Were not a community for technical people. They’ve all been used to vbulletin and things where the plugin handles that very easily. The training curve has been hard with times and even getting members to learn the format.

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(Jay Pfaffman) #10

I think that the plugin makes it pretty easy even for a non-technical person to assign stuff, either by @mentioning or explicitly assigning (much easier than figuring out the Markdown for a checklist). In fact, this discussion has me considering using the plugin as my own task manager.

My background is in teaching teachers to use computers, and one group I’ve seen use it is fairly non-technical. I think it’s worth a closer look.

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(Roland) #11

lol give a class to my guys :laughing:

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(Jay Pfaffman) #12

It’s what I used to do! I taught education undergrads to use Pine, before they had any real idea what email was.

I was teaching teachers to use computers when most of them believed that if you couldn’t feel the pencil on the paper, you weren’t writing.

Interestingly, the undergrads that I taught just a couple years ago, thought that they were doing some major coding when I taught them Markdown in Discourse. I couldn’t believe how proud they were.

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(Roland) #13

Lmao love this. My guys are all blue collar workers in the day. Great guys but sometimes it’s difficult to get them to download an app and open and account…

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(Jeff Atwood) #14

:rofl: hopefully http://commonmark.org/help/tutorial/ can automate that…

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(Tobias Eigen) #15

Maybe you’d like to explore how I am trying to turn discourse into a ticket system. It’s not perfect but seems to go a long way towards helping keep track of messages and topics that need handling by staff.

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