APIN.COM | In Dingo a Task is an Item

Working with Tasks

Now that we have one client, one project and everything else done, we should be able to create our first item. But before we do that, a tiny explantion is in order.

In Taskhopper, everything was considered a task. Not so in Dingo. In Dingo, we have three objects which we will continue to drill into your head: Clients, Projects and Items.

A client can have many projects, a project can have many items. An item is generally something to do such as a task, but it can also just be something to remember. When an item requires action, it's a task. If it's just some FYI about what happened, when or why, then it's just an item. So by default, we call everything an item.

The Item Entry Screen

Maybe something like this for our first item

Working That One Item

Assuming you are an admin and that you created that task for yourself, your control panel will now look something like this. The boxed areas show what's changed after we created that one item.

To work with that one item, click "Assigned to me" as that's what we would want most taskers to focus on when logged into Dingo.

Auto-Filtering

When you click "Assigned to me" you will briefly see a filter screen appear, then disappear. That's Dingo applying the filter for you. All the items in the list, then conform to that filter.

Let's pretend we have something to say about this item. Click the highlighted text under the Short Description column.

Three Things: Add Comments, Charges or Resources

The most common thing you will be doing with items: Entering comments about them. What you did, what you couldn't do, what might be done by someone else.

To add a comment to this item, click the Add a Comment link

The Charged Comment

If you are from the old days you will recall in Taskhopper this feature we called "timers" which was a way of keeping track of how long you were doing something. Was a good idea, but implementation... not so great. A timer meant that you were doing one thing, for some finite amount of time. You would open it, do some work, then close it. What was bad about this? Either you forgot to open it, close it or most common: You did multiple things at once or did them away from your PC.

In Dingo, those are gone. No more timers. However, we did recognize something about that we wanted to keep. If you add up all the time you spend typing and thinking about what to type, you would realize you lose lots of project time. Therefore, in Dingo you can "charge the time" for a comment. This means from the time you open the comment window until you save it, the timer is running.