[SOLVED] Simple checklist within fields

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!

yes, a well thought out checklist feature would be aweseome. But I understand that this is not as easy as it seems to fit to the basic metholigy of airtable. Still I hope you find the right fit to make checklists with airtable easier!

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!

It looks like this is solved (or nearly solved) with the addition of rich text editing, which I believe is now in beta. I have access to it and can confirm that checklists are present.

Tried to post screen grabs but Airtable forum won’t let me.

Julian-
I’m with you on the need for an intuitive UI for one-to-many relationships…thanks for upvoting my feature request (Split-screen master-detail record view).

I also like your idea about a checklist format for a multi-select list, but this doesn’t replace the need for a simple checklist within fields, because I want different records in the same table to have different checklists.

Also, for the benefit of anyone from Airtable that might review this, I want to reiterate that a rich-text table would be awesome, because I could have additional information for each checklist item (e.g., brief notes for each). I have a bunch of real-world use cases. For example, test steps within a testcase record (with step number, checkmark, expected results, actual results for each step). Each testcase is either done or not done, but the tester needs to track the steps. Similar idea for administrative tasks: the task is either done or not done, but some tasks have several small steps I want to check off and make notes on.