This would go a long way in letting many of us move completely away from Trello, Asana, Etc. into Airtable. I know there are workarounds (link to another table’s list containing the tasks), but that quickly becomes overly cumbersome. Would love to have simple checklist as a field option!
[SOLVED] Simple checklist within fields
+483 people like this
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+10Claude_Schneide wrote:
Came here because I was looking for a solution - we’ve used Axosoft up until now for project management, and it does a great job of having sub-issues which you can expand/collapse from the parent issue.
I found a workaround in Airtable that works really well for us - may be hard to explain, but here goes:
- The primary field in our table is called “Sub-Task” - this is the granular level task that needs working on.
- I then have a field next to it called “Parent Task”. This is an optional field, as I’ll explain below.
- I then Group By “Parent Task”, which has the effect of separating out all Parent Tasks into their own section. Any sub-tasks that don’t have a parent task are just collected together in their own “Empty” group.
- Each parent task’s Group can then be expanded/collapsed to view all sub-tasks. And it shows a count of how many sub-tasks there are in each parent task, which is handy.
- You can then group further by Category or Person (set this grouping before Parent Task), so you could see all “Features” tasks as one group, and inside that would be all Parent Tasks, and then expand each parent task to view sub-tasks.
- I added a “Completed” checkbox for each sub-task, and then set the Group summary for the Completed field as “Percent Checked” - this shows us % progress for the parent task (and any Grouping above/below that), even when collapsed.
- Finally, I created a couple of duplicate views, so I can see “All tasks, grouped by Category” (e.g. marketing vs. Features vs. Business), then one for “Tasks per person”, one for “What each person is currently working on” (Group by “Assigned To”, then Group by “Parent Task”, Filter where Progress = “In Progress”), and “My current tasks” (Filter where Progress = “In Progress”, Assigned to = me).
Another benefit is that any single task can easily be turned into a task with sub-tasks, simply by typing something into the “Parent Task” field. Airtable automatically moves it to its own group, where you can then add lots of new rows and type each sub-issue into the “Sub-Task” field.
Added bonus - you can create lots of sub-tasks really quickly. Type all of your sub-tasks into a plain text document, one task on each row - copy to clipboard. Then click in a blank Sub-Task field, and paste. It will ask if you want to Expand the Group by default - that option then creates a separate sub-task for each line of your pasted text.
Thus, the workflow to create a parent task with 10 sub-tasks is super-easy:
- create a new row, and type something as the Parent Task name
- grab 10 plain text lines and paste them into the Sub-Task field.
- Done.
I’ve only just set this up, so will have to see how this works over the long run, but straight away it feels like I have a way of managing my tasks, people, and progress, better than any other tool.
Here’s an example of how it looks:
Unlike Axosoft, which I chose because it’s powerful, the UI in Airtable is easier to use, and seems more flexible, especially with different field types and Views.
Hope that helps anyone trying to manage sub-tasks too!
Parent-child records are a useful workaround for some cases (we actually do this a lot), but not for most cases where I want a simple checklist. Case in point: our checklists are typically templates that get used over and over (each month, each release cycle, etc.). The heavyweight parent-child approach is hard to use as a template. A simple checklist (e.g., in a rich text field) can be saved as single row/record and simply duplicated to create a new instance to work on.
This is probably the only thing my team is missing in Airtable atm. For now we’re using a very simple solution of lists with emojis like :record_button: (unchecked) and :white_check_mark: (checked), which is a bit sub optimal.
Bump +1 on this as well.
Followup: going along the emoji idea, what about giving a markdown textbox? but ideally would be able to get a completion count
I did a little work around using the link table function. I’m in a manufacturing environment and we have a checklist when we switch out parts. I created a table that will represent my checklist with all of the steps that I want my associates to complete. Each field represents a check. Of course I changed the format of each field to the check-mark function.
I linked this “checklist” by part number to my actual table that my associates use.
When I click on the part number that links to the check list, it expands and my associates can update accordingly
I would have posted more screen shots but I can only post one since I am a new user
David_Mina wrote:
I did a little work around using the link table function. I’m in a manufacturing environment and we have a checklist when we switch out parts. I created a table that will represent my checklist with all of the steps that I want my associates to complete. Each field represents a check. Of course I changed the format of each field to the check-mark function.
I linked this “checklist” by part number to my actual table that my associates use.
When I click on the part number that links to the check list, it expands and my associates can update accordingly
I would have posted more screen shots but I can only post one since I am a new user
Hi David,
This workaround may work for us! How do you link the checklist to the desired record?
Nickie
Yup same here first impressions were promising but not having the capability of subtasks or checklist within a field kinda defeats standard project task tracking which is important for me. Smartsheets has this feature but they are too pricey for small teams and single users.
If this was implemented it would solve all my todo lists issues. I could replace trello with the view, the tags are there with other reocrds and it has export. PLEASE give us this. its the one feature stopping air table from beating most specialized apps.
Julian_Kirkness wrote:
I’ve already commented on this once but I thought I would add some comments further…
Personally, I would vote against adding a special task list field type to Airtable (or any other relational database for that matter) as it is too inflexible and generally bad practice. For me, the correct way to implement this in a database is to use a tasks table as @Hashim_Warren says above. The problem is that Airtable’s UI implementation makes this cumbersome (it’s a bit better in Expanded view).
A better solution, and one that would be far more general purpose would be for Airtable to implement a better solution in their UI for using child tables - and importantly, to also enforce referential integrity properly - for example, to make sure that one to many relationships are enforced no matter how a record is entered and provide for Cascade Delete to remove child records when the ‘parent’ is deleted.
This isn’t top of my priority list but it’s up there - having said that Airtable is a great product to use!
Not all of us are databasing experts though - a checklist field is way easier in terms of UX for the average person. I don’t want to deal with organizing child tables. I just want to break down a task into more manageable subtasks.
+3+1 This would be massive for us. Without this it’s very hard to use airtable for complex project management when there are objectives, goals, tasks and sub-tasks… and then if you do that across different time periods it becomes too complicated and messy. At the moment Asana, Clickup, Todoist etc are superior just because of this feature.
+3This would be a great feature, I’m new to AirTable and have just realized this becomes a limitation when collaborating others.
The workarounds mentioned are doable but are just that, workarounds. They’re clunky,time consuming to setup, manage, and difficult maintain long term. Plus, they don’t/ca’t work with the “Board” view.
I feel like 3 more features and AirTables would put these programs to rest (which is crazy to say since I’ve loved each of them for different reasons over the years):
- Trello: Checklists + progress bar
- Sheets: =hyperlink(A1, A2) formula
- Asana/Trello: Markdown support
Seriously, :drooling_face: :drooling_face: :drooling_face: :drooling_face: :drooling_face:
Completely agree. This feature needs to happen immediately. Otherwise people like me switch between Airtable and others with checklist like Meistertask, Trello, Asana… what have you. It should be dead easy to add this right?
Btw, the option to add checklist inside a long text field would surely be an a step in the right direction. But the real solution would be a separate checklist field where we can create a list of subtasks and tick the ones that are completed.
+1I really need this feature.
Whenever I bug the Airtable staff about it, they tell me its on the “long term roadmap”. I don’t know why this feature wasn’t made on week 1. It is so logical and necessary for so many workflows.
I would upvote this request 1000 times if I could. We have a common task for nearly every project that comes through our doors and it’s the same 6 or 7 “steps” every single time. It would be fantastic to just have a single task with a single column of checkboxes to indicate which steps are complete. The last time I brought this up elsewhere, it was suggested I use Zapier to automate the creation of a bunch of common tasks.
Airtable does almost everything we need without ANY 3rd party integration, it’s literally this one thing - the absence of a simple checklist that does not need any relational reference anywhere else for commons tasks and TODO development lists within a task. Personally, I really dislike Zapier, I especially dislike the idea of relying on the 3rd party service for a key part of my company’s project management process. I hate that it feels really fragile, as if anyone changes any of the criteria or values that might trigger a Zap to function the whole thing breaks and it’s not realistic that I lock ALL of my team out of the admin access of Airtable where key people can add columns and change some of that stuff. If tomorrow Zapier decided they’d had enough and closed up shop the whole house of cards will fall, unlikely as that seems I think if you talked to anyone in web development they could recite at least one story of a 3rd party API they relied on being shut down and making life complete hell.
I liked the idea of emojis. I created a formula that concatenates name of task and whether task is completed or not into the main field that is used in project. that way i get a list of linked fields with emojis saying completed or not. Only quirk is when you edit it, the first field is a non editable formula but i can live with that.
Claude_Schneide wrote:
Came here because I was looking for a solution - we’ve used Axosoft up until now for project management, and it does a great job of having sub-issues which you can expand/collapse from the parent issue.
I found a workaround in Airtable that works really well for us - may be hard to explain, but here goes:
- The primary field in our table is called “Sub-Task” - this is the granular level task that needs working on.
- I then have a field next to it called “Parent Task”. This is an optional field, as I’ll explain below.
- I then Group By “Parent Task”, which has the effect of separating out all Parent Tasks into their own section. Any sub-tasks that don’t have a parent task are just collected together in their own “Empty” group.
- Each parent task’s Group can then be expanded/collapsed to view all sub-tasks. And it shows a count of how many sub-tasks there are in each parent task, which is handy.
- You can then group further by Category or Person (set this grouping before Parent Task), so you could see all “Features” tasks as one group, and inside that would be all Parent Tasks, and then expand each parent task to view sub-tasks.
- I added a “Completed” checkbox for each sub-task, and then set the Group summary for the Completed field as “Percent Checked” - this shows us % progress for the parent task (and any Grouping above/below that), even when collapsed.
- Finally, I created a couple of duplicate views, so I can see “All tasks, grouped by Category” (e.g. marketing vs. Features vs. Business), then one for “Tasks per person”, one for “What each person is currently working on” (Group by “Assigned To”, then Group by “Parent Task”, Filter where Progress = “In Progress”), and “My current tasks” (Filter where Progress = “In Progress”, Assigned to = me).
Another benefit is that any single task can easily be turned into a task with sub-tasks, simply by typing something into the “Parent Task” field. Airtable automatically moves it to its own group, where you can then add lots of new rows and type each sub-issue into the “Sub-Task” field.
Added bonus - you can create lots of sub-tasks really quickly. Type all of your sub-tasks into a plain text document, one task on each row - copy to clipboard. Then click in a blank Sub-Task field, and paste. It will ask if you want to Expand the Group by default - that option then creates a separate sub-task for each line of your pasted text.
Thus, the workflow to create a parent task with 10 sub-tasks is super-easy:
- create a new row, and type something as the Parent Task name
- grab 10 plain text lines and paste them into the Sub-Task field.
- Done.
I’ve only just set this up, so will have to see how this works over the long run, but straight away it feels like I have a way of managing my tasks, people, and progress, better than any other tool.
Here’s an example of how it looks:
Unlike Axosoft, which I chose because it’s powerful, the UI in Airtable is easier to use, and seems more flexible, especially with different field types and Views.
Hope that helps anyone trying to manage sub-tasks too!
Thank you! This worked great for me.
Julian_Kirkness wrote:
I’ve written a couple of blog posts which may help you with this subject - one with Airtable creating subtasks automatically and the other linking to Process Street which is a great app for standardising processes with repeatable tasks (and integrates well with Airtable):
Using Airtable / Zapier to create checklists:
http://software.kirknessassociates.com/blog_files/3071ed2bbea12791bdd3eab57ff09fcd-20.html
Using Airtable and Process Street:
http://software.kirknessassociates.com/blog_files/11a79a74e2d3f3672f5d0c40fa251ff4-24.html
@Julian_Kirkness I used your “Using Airtable / Zapier to create checklists” process to create our to-do’s/tasks for constant recurring events. Thank you it was super easy to follow! Since Zapier is only communicates one way, have you created this same process using Integromat? My understanding of Integromat is that it will allow communication to go both ways and if changes are made to the airtable base then Integromat would trigger again and make the correct task updates in Airtable. Is that correct? I have been trying to build the same process in Integromat but can’t figure out where or how the javascript would run for the array of objects. Any thoughts or expertise? Thanks!!
+4Jocelyn_Roberts wrote:
@Julian_Kirkness I used your “Using Airtable / Zapier to create checklists” process to create our to-do’s/tasks for constant recurring events. Thank you it was super easy to follow! Since Zapier is only communicates one way, have you created this same process using Integromat? My understanding of Integromat is that it will allow communication to go both ways and if changes are made to the airtable base then Integromat would trigger again and make the correct task updates in Airtable. Is that correct? I have been trying to build the same process in Integromat but can’t figure out where or how the javascript would run for the array of objects. Any thoughts or expertise? Thanks!!
Hi @Jocelyn_Robertson, you wouldn’t need any Javascript to do this is Integromat - it handles multiple records intrinsically. What you could do is query the Checklist Items table following for the value in the triggering project table and this would return all of the records (you need to set the ‘Maximum Number of Returned Records’ to a high enough value).
With Integromat, when more than one record is returned in this way then every subsequent step is processed for each record.
+4Jocelyn_Roberts wrote:
@Julian_Kirkness I used your “Using Airtable / Zapier to create checklists” process to create our to-do’s/tasks for constant recurring events. Thank you it was super easy to follow! Since Zapier is only communicates one way, have you created this same process using Integromat? My understanding of Integromat is that it will allow communication to go both ways and if changes are made to the airtable base then Integromat would trigger again and make the correct task updates in Airtable. Is that correct? I have been trying to build the same process in Integromat but can’t figure out where or how the javascript would run for the array of objects. Any thoughts or expertise? Thanks!!
Hi @Jocelyn_Robertson
Following your question, I decided to do another version of my blog post but using Integromat instead of Zapier. I hope you find it useful:
Julian_Kirkness wrote:
Hi @Jocelyn_Robertson
Following your question, I decided to do another version of my blog post but using Integromat instead of Zapier. I hope you find it useful:
Thanks @Julian_Kirkness! I just used your resource to build the flow! Once again very helpful and easy to follow. I am now working on building a flow that will update my tasks if there is a date change to the original scheduled date.
I’m also trying to move completely away from Trello. I use Airtable to keep track of applicants – their application is an Airtable form and from there, I keep all application materials in Airtable and track their overall status. However, I use Trello in this process as well because I can set up a card for each applicant that summarizes their basic info and provides a step-by-step checklist so I can clearly see what they have done/need to do. I would love it if there was a way to incorporate this into Airtable.
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