Repeating Task Woes

problem Resolved
#1

I’m not sure if the “Repeating tasks now show next event date more reliably” fix as part of the 1.0.6.16 release was intended to fix the problems I’ve had in the past with reliable repeating tasks, but I’m still having problems with tasks the repeat on weekends.

As a test, I created three tasks to repeat every other week.

  • The first to repeat every other Friday starting on 5/8. So my expectation is new tasks would spawn on 5/8, 5/22, 6/2, 6/19, etc.

  • The second to repeat every other Saturday starting on 5/9. So my expectation is new tasks would spawn on 5/9, 5/23, 6/6, 6/20, etc.

  • The third to repeat every other Sunday starting on 5/10. So my expectation is new tasks would spawn on 5/10, 5/24, 6/7, 6/21, etc.

After one week of testing, here’s what I see:

  • For the first, things appeared as expected. A new task was spawned on 5/8 and the next task is scheduled for 5/22.

  • For the second, things did NOT go as expected. A new task was spawned on 5/9, but the next task is scheduled for 5/30 instead of 5/23. That’s three weeks later not two.

  • For the third, things did NOT go as expected. A new task was spawned on 5/10, but the next task is scheduled for 5/17 instead of 5/24. That’s one week later not two.

Unless I’m totally mis-understanding something, this still seems broken.

#2

Hi

I seem to be struggling with this same issue. I know i should have a bi weekly recurring task for today but it’s showing as being in two weeks time.

I’ll do some checks today and see if i can confirm the behaviour I’m seeing.

Rob

#3

Hi @pmd and @Rob_Griff

Today in build 6.20 we released a new version of GTDNext that has a totally new recurring scheduling engine.

Could you please try some new recurring tasks as a test? We hope we’ve fixed all the issues with this release.

Thanks!

#4

Thanks

Will do so and report back,

Rob

#5

Excellent! I just scheduled a bunch of tasks. I’ll let you know how things go.

#6

The good news…

I creates several tasks to repeat every week, every two weeks, and every three weeks to repeat on Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays, or Mondays. As of Sunday, all these spawned tasks as expected and the next scheduled event is identified correctly. So it seems the specific problem described earlier has been fixed.

The bad news…

I also created several tasks to repeat every two weeks on various combinations of Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays, and Mondays, all starting on Friday. On Friday tasks were spawned. (More on this later.) But on Saturday somehow all these tasks switched from blue “Scheduled” to green “Active”. I cannot explain how this happened, but obviously nothing spawned on Saturday or later days.

I have all of these scheduled tasks bundled under a single “folder”. The only thing I can think I may have done is change the folder itself from “Scheduled” (with no repeat) to “Active”. But even if I did, I would not expect this change to propagate to the tasks within the “folder”.

But before this change happened, on Friday when these tasks did spawn, I saw a couple oddities. Unfortunately, since these didn’t spawn on later days, it’s difficult to conclude what is happening.

One task I created was to repeat every two weeks on Friday and Sunday. On Friday (7/10) a task was spawned as expected. But the next event was scheduled for 7/24 (a Friday) which doesn’t seem correct. It it two weeks from the first spawned event, but when will the event on Sunday be spawned? I would have expected the next event to be scheduled for either 7/12 (the next Sunday) or 7/19 (the Sunday two weeks later), depending on whether the “week” starts on Sunday, Monday, or the “Start Date”.

A second task I created was to repeat every two weeks on Friday, Sunday, and Monday. On Friday (7/10) a task was spawned as expected. But the next event was scheduled for 7/20 (Monday) which doesn’t seem correct. Like the task above, it seems to have skipped over Sunday.

I may try to recreate these and see what happens next week.

But in the meantime I did schedule a few more tasks to start on Sunday plus one other day of the week (e.g., Sunday and Monday). Assuming Sunday is treated as the last day of the week, the actions appear to be correct. A new task was spawned on Sunday (7/12) and the next event was scheduled for the the other day a week later, e.g., for the Sunday-Monday task, the next event was scheduled for Monday 7/20.

Granted, I’m having to difficult time envisioning a case in which I’d need to use something like this. But if I ever do, something doesn’t seem quite right. Or perhaps this is an indication of other lurking problems.

Finally, if it’s any help, I noticed that scheduled tasks spawn at different times. Based on the “log” associated with the spawned tasks, sometimes they are created at 00:01, sometimes at 01:01, and sometimes at 02:01. Not sure what would trigger the differences.

(For future reference, this was tested using version 1.0.6.20.)

#7

Thanks for the great testing! We are finding a few issues as well and are in the process of fixing. Replies to your comments are below. Thanks again!

Can you try this again? I’m wondering if somehow it accidently got switched to active from scheduled somewhere during the test. We haven’t seen this happen in our tests

This has been fixed in 6.21 that launched today. Sunday tasks are fixed. No more taking Sunday off! :slight_smile:

Yes that does seem odd. We are looking into this as well. Thanks for the report.

#8

Hmm… another problem appeared today (Tuesday). Every task that was scheduled to spawn today, didn’t. The “source” task has a “new” label associated with it, but it didn’t convert into a folder containing a spawned task. And the next event for the “source” tasks is still scheduled to spawn today, rather than 1, 2, 3, etc. weeks later.

(I tried to upload a couple pictures but an error prevented them from being uploaded.)

#9

Update: Looks like the Tuesday tasks finally spawned (along with the Wednesday tasks). However, the “history” indicates the Tuesday tasks were spawned on Wednesday. Strange…

#10

Thanks Peter. We think this is related to the issue mentioned already where tasks show they are spawned at odd times. We are looking into it. Thanks again for your help!

#11

After more testing over the weekend, I’m happy to say that I did not experience any of the problems described earlier for repeating tasks!

Then Tuesday came. The scheduled tasks on Tuesday did not spawn. But they did on Wednesday along with the tasks scheduled to spawn on Wednesday.

And here’s the weird thing. All the tasks spawned at 08:24. And to make things more weird is that last week all the Tuesday tasks also didn’t spawn until Wednesday, and again at a unexpected time (01:01).

So before, I never had work to do on Sundays. Now I never have work to do on Tuesdays, but I have to make it up on Wednesdays. :smile:

#12

We are getting there! The build yesterday addressed a few more recurring issues. Hopefully we have gotten all remaining issues fixed. Thanks again for your help!

#13

hi @pmd - the latest build seems to be working well. All my recurring tasks are spawning at 00:01 now, as I would expect. Are you finding this as well? (for newly created recurring tasks)

#14

Hi

Apologies for late response, I’ve been on the road for a few weeks.

Will check it through the week but had a quick test and it seems to be working

Regards

Rob

#15

Thank! - We have done several updates on this and think we fixed all the issues. Let us know if you find something amiss.

#16

FYI, I created a bunch of new repeating tasks, and I’m happy to say I haven’t seen any of the problems I experienced in the past. Yea and thanks!

#17

Excellent! Yes, we are seeing the same thing. We believe we have it all fixed. Thanks so much for the confirmation!