Questions about new Advanced Checklists feature Edited

[Chris Marts]

Congrats to the Trello team on the Advanced Checklists feature graduating from beta!

I've noticed the following behaviors:

• The web app allows a due date to be set but not a time. I was assuming this was just by design but...
• ...the mobile app (2020.6.13883-candidate) does allow a due date and time to be set. Only the date in displayed in the checklist itself, but in the editing pop-up, there is a time input field and it does persist the data.
• And, the due time does, in fact, seem to be stored with the card data (e.g. exporting the JSON for a card shows the time is stored with the date).
• While the web app does not allow a due time to be set (there is no UI for it in the date pop-up), if a time has been set, e.g. from the mobile app, the web app does adjust the color (like card due dates) where red = past, yellow = today/soon, and gray = future. So, while you can't see the time, there is at least some visual presentation support for checklist item due times in the web app.
• The REST API does accept a due date for checklist items, though not documented. I haven't had a chance to see if would accept a time and persist it, but I'm guessing it would?

Is anyone on the Trello team able to provide any additional information at this point on any of these? Will the web app be getting the ability to set the due time on checklist items?

Thanks!

[jessbarnett · Accepted solution]

Hey Chris, thanks for the thoughtful question! 

At this time we don't officially support time on checklist items. We're striving to keep checklist assignment as simple as possible because it's a small UI and generally a quick interaction. In the beta, time assignment wasn't something very many users were looking for. 

The API and mobile apps are currently storing a date and time (as a single date field, the same as how the due date for a card works). We took this approach now to keep the possibility open for the future. 

Most important question which I couldn't ascertain from your message, how important is it to you to see time in these items? 

If you haven't already, please fill out a feedback form about Advanced Checklists available in-app. You'll see it in the assignment menus and within Your Items. 

Thanks for your thoughts, keep 'em coming! 🙌 

[Chris Marts]

Hi Jess -

Thanks for the detailed answer.

It's great that the "time" is there under the hood and I completely get the idea of keeping this feature simple, especially to start. If your team finds more folks are looking for time to be included, and/or that consistency with the card due date takes priority over keeping that interaction on the checklist item lightweight, at least the lift is limited to "just" a UI update. 😉

I've seen the feedback form and have sent feedback (maybe even more than once, don't @ me 😂). I can see where folks will want this to go with reminders, notifications, etc... but I actually like how it is now (not notifying people of assignment to checklist items, no reminders on the due dates). Keep it simple, right? Our practice is that if you are assigning somebody to a checklist item and it's critical for them to be aware of it, they should be assigned to the card.

To directly answer your question about how important including time on these checklist item due dates is, I guess if I could pick, I'd love to see it included at some point. The issue we tend to have with due dates without times is whoever sets the due date usually means "that morning" (or certainly "before noon") and whoever is doing the work typically assumes it means "EOD." 😬 A default to noon like the card due dates seems to split the difference nicely. Don't think about it, you get a prudent default. Need to adjust, have at it.

But, we can easily work around this by including times in the text of the checklist item when clarity around that is critical.

Related, we are building a couple of integrations where we are planning to set the date via the REST API. Any possibility you can confirm for me that the API support for the date will remain available? I'm assuming it's just not documented yet?

[jessbarnett]

Wow, truly an incredibly thoughtful comment! Thank you so much! It's given us lots to think about. 

Thank you also for highlighting that the API docs weren't updated yet. We started working on this today and expect they'll be updated shortly. 

We also have no intention to remove time from this field via the API. 

Cheers!