357502 - Not possible to create task with "All day" dates (no times)

Status: NEW

(Calendar :: Tasks, defect, P3)

Description

[David Tenser [:djst]]

The "All Day" checkbox is not available in the New Task dialog. This forces the user to enter times when they are not relevant. This makes maintaining e.g. project deadlines unnecessarily complicated.

Use Case: Matthew uses a calendar to keep track of project deadlines. Many of the deadlines span over several days, sometimes even weeks. In order to have a graphical overview of the deadlines, he has checked the [View > Tasks in View] menu item. However, because Tasks require times to be set for the Date and Due Date fields, the whole calendar's main area is literally filled with large blocks of deadline tasks. Because of this, Matthew has no choice but to create events instead of tasks for the deadlines.

Comment 1

[David Tenser [:djst]]

Attachment: Not a nice way to show a project period/deadline

The attached screenshot shows what I mean. Instead of being a one-line entry at the top of the calendar view, it's filling up the entire calendar area. 

Also, the text is repeated on each day, making it look like separate items.

Comment 2

[Stefan Sitter [:ssitter]]

Provoking question: If you have a defined start and end date for a task why don't create an event instead? Why do you need a task? 
That question goes hand in hand with the running discussion 'What are tasks? What are events?' [http://groups.google.com/group/mozilla.dev.apps.calendar/browse_thread/thread/efe4339a0022ef6f/801d81203b2f1a06#801d81203b2f1a06] 
Maybe you want to contribute to this discussion?

Comment 3

[David Tenser [:djst]]

(In reply to comment #2)
> Provoking question: If you have a defined start and end date for a task why
> don't create an event instead? Why do you need a task? 
> That question goes hand in hand with the running discussion 'What are tasks?
> What are events?'

Thanks for asking. :) To me, the answer is simple: A task is something that needs to _get done_, and an event is something that is going to _happen_. Tasks has the benefit of showing up as nice checkboxes in the sidebar, where you can sort tasks by priority, etc. 

Of course, tasks should probably be improved in more fundamental ways in order to really get useful. For example, there should be a visual indicator how close you are to the deadline, it should be easier to modify the progress (perhaps a progress bar embedded in the task list item which you could click in to modify?), the alarm should be relative to the deadline (Due Date), not the start date (Date), and so on. 

All in all, there are many things that make Tasks such in Mozilla Calendar, but at least I can motivate why this bug should be fixed. :)

Comment 4

[David Tenser [:djst]]

s/such/suck

Comment 5

[mozilla]

This is the same as task #281214
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=281214

I believe this is a very important feature and find it very annoying that a time must be set.

Virtually every other program that I've used that has tasks allows you to create tasks due on a particular date without having to set a time - for many, if not most, this is the default action, while adding a specific time is option.

Tasks are generally due by a specific date whereas events happen at a specific time.

Comment 7

[Christophe Humbert]

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.1) Gecko/20090715 Lightning/1.0pre Thunderbird/3.0b3

Steps to reproduce
1. Create A new task
2. Delete the time 
3. Save and Close

This is working but the task appears with a due date AND Time (the time being the hour you have created the task)

Comment 8

[Felix Möller]

Still there with Thunderbird 9 and Lightning 1.1.

Comment 9

[laurenthaas]

Still there with Thunderbird 38.2.0 and Lightning 4.02...

Comment 10

[tristan.kairou]

Still there with Thunderbird 38.5.1 and Lightning 4.0.5.2

Comment 11

[Tim Ruffing]

An additional symptom is this bug is that Thunderbird does not handle incoming all-day tasks properly:

1. Thunderbird receives a task created by another application (via CalDAV-Sync in my case) with an all-day due date.
2. Thunderbird correctly interprets the due time as "All Day (floating)".
3. However, if the task is opened in the edit dialog, 
 - the due time is shown as 0:00
 - Options -> Show timezones is not ticked
 - If I tick it, then "Local Time" appears next to the due date (but in gray/deactivated?!).
3. By setting a (non-floating) start time now, I can create a task with floating due time but non-floating start time. This is forbidden by RFC 5545.

So this bug is not only a feature request but a real defect.

In the end, I somehow ended up with a task where both the due time and the start time were non-floating but the due time is before the start time due to different timezones. This is forbidden by RFC 5545 as well. It broke my synchronization with DAVDroid on Android, which correctly rejected the task.

Comment 12

[juliangrasshoff]

Isn't the all-day condition just aktivate if the event has just the fomat of

DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:YYYYMMDD
DTEND;VALUE=DATE:YYYYMMDD

rather than

DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:YYYYMMDDHHMMSS
DTEND;VALUE=DATE:YYYYMMDDHHMMSS

So why can't lighting read the time for task if it were for events?

Comment 13

[Paul Morris [:pmorris]]

Thanks for working on this Max.

Comment 14

[mu88]

I've came across this issue a couple of times. If someone gives me a bit of advice, I can imagine to work on this issue.

Comment 15

[Joe Fidler]

I routinely attempt to use Thunderbird (most recently 91) to manage tasks and find that the lack of this feature is a real problem for time management. Not all tasks are time specific.

Additionally this feature would bring Thunderbird into line with how Google Calendar, Nextcloud, Gnome Evolution and recently iOS Apple Reminders, handle this.

When creating tasks on these applications, it is either optional to assign a time-of-day or they offer an "All Day" task check-box.

Comment 19

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

Attachment: Screenshot 2: Edit Event vs. Edit Task dialogs: missing all day checkbox for tasks

Screenshot from recent duplicate bug 1780985 nicely shows the missing all day checkbox for tasks - imo there's really no reason for this design deficit, more so as other calendar clients have this.

Alex (in view of 4 duplicates, many me-too's and strong arguments below), this looks like a low-hanging fruit which should be pretty easy to fix after all these years of waiting.

(In reply to Joe Fidler from comment #15)

I routinely attempt to use Thunderbird (most recently 91) to manage tasks and find that the lack of this feature is a real problem for time management. Not all tasks are time specific.

Additionally this feature would bring Thunderbird into line with how Google Calendar, Nextcloud, Gnome Evolution and recently iOS Apple Reminders, handle this.

When creating tasks on these applications, it is either optional to assign a time-of-day or they offer an "All Day" task check-box.

Comment 20

[Alessandro Castellani [:aleca]]

The Calendar is getting a full UI refresh, but we will focus on events more than tasks as this section is not part of the 114 roadmap.
If we're smart and we can make everything modular and reusable, tasks will definitely inherit the same feature of events where it makes sense.

I wouldn't set any severity to this, and P3 sounds correct if any community member wants to try to submit a quick patch to fix this temporarily, but I wouldn't put any core resources on this for this cycle.

Comment 21

[taosa]

Yes, this is a bit ridiculous. If I add a new task it adds a random time (being the time of the day when I create it). The default behaviour should be all-day tasks, or tasks due at 23:59 unless a certain time is set by the user.

Comment 23

[Wolfgang Klein]

I'd like to add some information to this bug, that has been annoying me for years now:

There is a way to make the "all day" button visible again with this userchrome:

#event-grid-allday-row {
display: table-row !important;
}
#event-all-day {
display: block !important;
}

This will make the all-day-button re-appear in the "new task" dialog.

But beware! In order to create an "all day" task in TB, you need to keep a strict order of operation:

1. In the month view, right click on the appropriate day and choose "new task"
2. Notice the date, that this dialogue now shows you, is wrong! It's set one day ahead! (This seems to be another bug!)
3. Fill in the title of the task
4. Check "all day".
5. NOW change the date to the right date.

If you set the correct date BEFORE you checked "all day", is will not be an "all day" task after saving! (Is this yet another bug or related to the first one?)

Furthermore, I found out that there is a significant difference in the way "all day" tasks are stored by TB in contrast to any other calendar app. Every other calendar app I use mark an "all day" event this way:

DUE;VALUE=DATE:20230423

Using this notification, every calendar app shows such a task as "all day", without a due time. I testes several Android apps, Evolution, an iPhone calendar and some web calendars. All calendar apps were synchronized via CalDAV.

And this is how TB marks such a task:

DUE;TZID=Europe/Berlin:20230423T000000

Such a task created in TB will be shown as due on midnight on that day in any other calendar app. Which is not only completely wrong, but it will also set up an alarm at midnight on mobile devices, which is very disturbing.

Since TB is the only app I know how uses the second method, I don't think that all the other apps are doing it wrong.