tasklist

Show all tasks for a note and any associated tasks elsewhere in vault. A note can represent an entire project (or person, or anything), which can have tasks in other pages, subnotes, or subprojects.

What you get

• A single place with all the tasks related to a note consolidated from the entire vault, with highly customized automatic inclusion or exclusion of tasks from your entire vault.

Install

Requirements

• dataview plug-in
• Not required, but highly recommended, tasks plug-in.
• meta-bind plugin required for easy toggle of “Include Tagged Pages”, but not necessary.

Files

• Copy tasklist.js into your vault
  • I suggest you put it in a folder named scripts or wherever you like.
• Optional, but this is my preferred usage: Copy Tasks.md into your vault.
  • Open it, and drag its tab to the right pane (sidebar).
  • Pin it in the sidebar by right-clicking (Ctrl-click on macOS) on its icon and select Pin. Also select Reading View mode.
  • If you want the right-hand sidebar render to be smaller, install smaller_class.css as an Obsidian CSS snippet.
    • This will then always show the tasks related to the note in the main panel.

Usage

Simplest usage

Include a dataviewjs code-block in the note like so, and it’ll show you the tasks associated with the current note.

```dataviewjs
await dv.view("tasklist");
```

Or, you can use the provided Tasks.md file, and pin it on the right-hand sidebar in Reading View mode. That will show all tasks (and associated tasks from the vault) for any note you are on, and keep easy access.

Conventions

You must adhere to these conventions for this to work:

• aliases within the note’s properties should be:
  • first, the note's identifier tag. e.g. #projects/myproject
  • second, string(s) that identify the note, e.g. My Project
  • Frontmatter ("Properties") example: aliases: ["#projects/myproject", "My Project", "other additional", "aliases ok"], where the first alias is the tag that identifies this project or person. (tag can also not be first, but that may break other things)
• Tasks from across the vault (in any note) containing any of the aliases will be included
  • - [ ] Call so-and-so #projects/myproject
  • - [ ] Call so-and-so for My Project
• All tasks in any note containing the tag or alias will be included, unless that note contains the tag #ignoretasks or #multiproject. If the page is tagged #multiproject, then only tasks containing the project’s tag in the task itself will be included.
• Tasks can have standard formatting, with the following feature:
  • Any of the following "priority" emojis will affect the sorting: 🔺,⏫,🔼,(no emoji=no priority),🔽,⏬.
• If a task contains multiple aliases, using a tag in the tasks will supercede the non-tag aliases, and only be shown in the tasklist for that tag. (This helps if you have aliases that are too generic and catch many undesired tasks).

Including or excluding tasks

Optional frontmatter properties (or inline fields) or parameters: includeTasksFrom, children, excludeTasksFrom, excludeTasksWith, and avoidFolders.

• includeTasksFrom <note>[,...] can used in addition to or instead of children <note>[,...] and they function the same (but can be toggled independently with parameters tasksFromIncludedPages and tasksFromChildrenPages)
  • Will include all tasks from these notes.
  • syntax in frontmatter (note outer brackets and links in quotes): includeTasksFrom: ["[[link1]]","[[link2]]"]
  • syntax inline (note double :, and no outer brackets or quotes): includeTasksFrom:: [[link1]],[[link2]]
• excludeTasksFrom <note>[,...]
  • Same syntax as above. Will exclude all tasks from these notes, unless they are specifically tagged with our project’s tag.
• excludeTasksWith <str>[,...]
  • Will exclude any tasks matching one or more of these strings.
  • syntax in frontmatter (note outer brackets): excludeTasksWith: ["str1","str2"]
  • syntax inline (note double :, and no outer brackets): excludeTasksWith:: "str1","str2"
• avoidFolders <folder>[,...]
  • Will exclude all notes (and their tasks) from this list of folders.
• Notes with tag #ignoretasks will prevent any task on that page to be listed.
• Notes with tag #multiproject will hide all its tasks, except those tagged with our tag.

Usage with customization parameters

Include a dataviewjs code-block in the note (with all options, all optional):

```dataviewjs
await dv.view("tasklist", {thePage: "Optional page name", tasksFromThisPage:true, taggedTasksFromAnywhere:true, tasksFromTaggedPages:true, tasksFromIncludedPages:true, tasksFromChildrenPages:true, ifTaskTaggedThenOnlyIfOurTag:true, avoidFolders:[], includeSection:true, summary:true});
```

Customization

All parameters are optional (defaults to current page, and all the rest of the params to true if not included)

• thePage: name of the note to use as source of information to collect tasks, if omitted, defaults to current page.
• tasksFromThisPage: if true, include tasks from the thePage itself
• taggedTasksFromAnywhere: if true, include tasks from all other pages, where the task's text matches any of the aliases of thePage, which ought to include a tag, and also could include any string
• tasksFromTaggedPages: if true, bring in all tasks from any page that contains thePage's associated tag (the first alias with #), unless they contain either #multiproject or #ignoretasks tags.
  • Note!! If any task on a page is marked with our tag, it will bring in ALL tasks from that page (unless the note contains either #multiproject or #ignoretasks tags).
• tasksFromIncludedPages: if true, look at includeTasksFrom field, and pull tasks in from those pages.
• ifTaskTaggedThenOnlyIfOurTag: if true, will only include a task if a) it contains our tag, or b) contains no tag, and matches one of our aliases. This allows us to filter out tasks that may match our non-tag alias by accident.
  • For example, say I have the following task: - [ ] Call George Clooney #project/MyBigMovie and "George" is an alias to a page I keep about my brother, who’s name is George. When looking at my brother’s tasks, I don't want to see the tasks having to do with "George Clooney", so I tag the George Clooney tasks with a tag for that project #project/MyBigMovie, and it will no longer show up in my brother's tasklist because he has a different tag (e.g. #family/brother).
  • In other words, ifTaskTaggedThenOnlyIfOurTag is true, if a task has been found which matches a non-tag alias (simple words) of thePage, it will be ignored if it contains a tag that isn't thePage's tag.
• includeSection: if true, will group tasks by section, as well as by file
• summary: if true, show "From (Page): 25 tasks" or "No available tasks." summary line (e.g. turn off (set to false) when doing concatenating task lists from various files)
• Optional frontmatter properties (or inline fields) or parameters: includeTasksFrom, children, excludeTasksFrom, excludeTasksWith, and avoidFolders. See [[#Including or excluding tasks]], above.
• Respects tasks dependencies (blocking) if you are using the Tasks plug-in. See their documentation. That is, will hide tasks that are dependent on an uncompleted task.

Known Issues

• If any page has a task with a tag, even if completed, then all tasks on that page will be seen when tasksFromTaggedPages=True in a query from the "master" page of that tag. The desired result would be that only that task be recognized as tagged, not the whole page (and thus every task). This can be mitigated by using the #multiproject tag (to hide tasks not tagged with “our” tag) or even #ignoretasks (to ignore all the tasks) on the note with the tasks.
  • If someone can let me know how to differentiate between a tag for the whole page, versus a tag simply on tasks on that page, please message me.
• Sometimes, the Tasks.md page momentarily looses track of the page you are on. If so, then click in the note you want to use, and invoke the command Dataview: Force refresh all views and blocks. I suggest you map Cmd-R to the command.
• Dataview refreshes automatically every time you update a file (even as you type), and this can be annoying and loose your view on the current file. The Dataview author is aware of this limitation, and is working on an major rewrite (datacore). To mitigate this: use Tasks.md in the sidebar, or create a header above the tasklist code-block in the current note, and fold the header collapsed until needed.