How to create a sub-task before selecting a parent

Question

Hi,

I have a situation where I want to provide the ability for a user to create a sub-task prior to selecting what the parent task will be. This is an alternative to the current method of selecting a parent task and then going to 'Create sub task' in the parent task's action menu.

Currently, creating a new parent task is nice and easy. The user hits the 'CREATE' button at the top of the screen and fills out the details. I need this, plus one dropdown selection for example, for the creation of sub-tasks.

Here's my thinking:

User clicks a new 'CREATE SUBTASK' button

Dialog window opens with a drop down menu at the top.

The dropdown menu contains a list of parent tasks for which the creation of sub-tasks is available

User has to choose one of the parent tasks

User then continues to fill out task details as normal

Sub-task is created.

Does anyone know of a way to do this without too much development effort?

Thanks so much for any help you might be able to give.

Nic Brough -Adaptavist- · Answer

On the Kanban board, you could try a quick-filter - click the button and your 15 parents would jump out (the others being hidden by the filter).  Or a Swimlane, which you'd put at the top of the board so the parents would always be there.

In both cases, you'll need a filter to identify them, but I assume you've already got some rule for that.

Paul Farrell · Answer

Thanks for the answers.

In my case, there will only ever be a handful of parent tasks (perhaps 15) for which sub-tasks can be created. These will be the 'internal' tasks for my company - as opposed to the client, billable tasks.

Ok, in that case I think I might look at a workaround. I am going to look to partition the 'Internal' tasks (for which sub-tasks can be created from) in a seperate table in the Kanban board. That way, general users can see the Internal tasks, click on them and then elect to create a sub-task.

Thanks for the feedback

Nic Brough -Adaptavist- · Answer

You can't do it without code, and you're going to run into an issue:

>The dropdown menu contains a list of parent tasks for which the creation of sub-tasks is available

That could be tens of thousands of issues. This is why you can't currently do anything like that, it is far more sane to select a parent first, and then create the sub-task.  Thinking it through, the user is going to need to know what the parent is supposed to be, no matter what the approach, so they might as well go to "issue view" anyway.

There might be one minor bit of development that could help you a bit though - it shouldn't be hard to add "create subtask" to the menu bar when you're on the issue view, instead of having it buried in the options.