Hi Jeffrey,
I would flip this question around...
I think people are already using email to assign tasks to each other,
just not in an explicit way. I agree that there's lots to do with the
UI to make Stamping-to-Address an item something that users will
understand as a way to assign tasks and I too have been thinking in
terms of having flavors of 'to-ness'.
https://bugzilla.osafoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=10931 A way to
specify what attribute you see in the Who and Date columns
For items that start out as emails, we could automatically change the
To: field to become 'Assigned to:' when users stamp those emails as
Tasks.
I think these 2 features would help users 'discover' addressing as a
way of assigning tasks. A way to show/hide the cc and bcc fields
would help too. They scream email to users and help to squash any
inkling that the addressing fields could be used for anything other
than addressing communications.
In the mean time, I think we can continue to encourage users to
explore using the addressing fields in creative ways. Chandler
addressing fields are very different from normal email addressing
fields and I imagine it will take a while for people to find uses for
them beyond addressing messages.
So in short, yes, in agreement with your larger point. But not sure
that we need to fix it in the short-term to get people to experiment
with the Addressing stamp as a way to assign tasks.
Mimi
On Oct 9, 2007, at 10:51 AM, Jeffrey Harris wrote:
Hi Folks,
Recently on the design list Mimi mentioned that we'd like to encourage
users to use the message stamp To field as task-assigned-to. I've
been
trying to sell this to people. After discussing it with folks who
split
up tasks in small work groups constantly and want to track who a
task is
assigned to, I'm beginning to question if the message-stamp is
adequate
for assigning tasks.
First, I don't think it's immediately obvious that a mailed task's To:
field is intended to convey that someone has taken responsibility
for a
task, it might help to just render the To: field's label as
"Assigned-to" instead of as "To" for message-tasks.
Second, what about items that started out as emails? For instance,
suppose a small group of people are jointly coordinating responses to
emails. If email could be marked as tasks and contacts could be added
to a separate assigned-to attribute, I think this would be quite
doable,
as it is now, changing the To: seems really confusing.
Sincerely,
Jeffrey
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