On Oct 11, 2007, at 10:30 AM, Jeffrey Harris wrote:

Hi Mimi,

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.

Sounds good, is there a bug to track this overall concept of spiffing up
task + mail?  Or maybe we don't have a clear enough plan yet.

Yes there is, it was assigned to me, but I closed it as FIXED because we wrapped up the discussion threads on the list and logged all the bugs that came out of the discussion.

Bug#10149 Revisit WHO column and Addressing Stamp
http://bugzilla.osafoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=10149

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.

The From: field also doesn't have an obvious analog in a task-centric
world.  Maybe we could relabel From: -> Assigned-by:?

How about this:  If a message also has the task stamp, we
- rename To -> assigned-to,
- rename From -> assigned-by,

Do you think this is necessary? Seems like if To --> Assigned to:, then From is sort of obvious. I've always felt there's something vaguely fascist about 'Report/Assigner for Tasks and Organizer for Events'.

What about Owner for Tasks? I think that's more egalitarian and faithful to the kind of work dynamics we're espousing. At OSAF we always talk about task owners, not assignees. Assignees implies hierarchy. But perhaps owner isn't universal enough.

- hide assigned-by if it matches assigned-to

Not sure about this. I'm toying with the idea of getting rid of the From: field altogether. For example, I went and 'assigned' all the Strategy collection tasks based on what Katie had already entered in the Title field. But I wasn't really the Assigner of those tasks. Maybe we can leave the From: field blank by default for newly created items and hide it unless the user fills something in? I will log a bug to track this.

- hide any other messaging fields that are empty
- add a [More/Less] button to show all the hidden fields

I think these 2 are covered in the expando-addressing fields bug...

Also, now that we're pursuing task management, I've noticed various
problems with the mail stamp in the dashboard:

- In the Chandler Evangelism collection, everyone's tasks show up as
being from me (filed bug 11027)
- The draft icon for task-messages seems inappropriate and distracting;
I'm never planning on sending emails about the task, it's just an
assigned task.

Yea, it may make more sense to denote items that have been 'sent' than to call out items in 'draft' mode. Such is the wonders of moving from an email-centric world to a sharing-centric world!!

https://bugzilla.osafoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=11030


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