I was recently looking at Kanban board apps that could display tasks on a calendar for a short project I am working on. After re-reviewing Ora.pm, I decided to give it a spin despite my initial thought that it was mostly like Trello on steroids. So, after opening an account and getting things set up, I was trying out the sample board and wanted to delete a task. I have looked high and low and through their help documentation and it appears that there is no delete command or icon for tasks. I believe that the only option is to archive the board where the task resides, and then you can delete the board from there. This is not unlike Trello which makes it almost impossible to delete boards. I can understand in a multi-user environment that you do not want people deleting things willy nilly, but can't this be handled with a global setting? It seems crazy that if you create something by accident, or do not need a record of it, that it cannot be easily deleted. Did I miss something, or is there some logic to this type of design that merits such tight controls that even a solo user cannot easily delete items?

--Ken

You have it right with Ora, you archive then delete from the Archive section.

It's common for deletions not to really be deletions in modern apps. UX research in apps consistently finds that people constantly accidentally delete tasks, notes and pictures they didn't mean to. There's not much downside for normal apps and normal users for their deletions to be shunted somewhere, and it makes the UI cleaner and more comprehensible for workers who aren't hardcore users.

Apple implements this as well, in a slightly different way: notes in Apple Notes can be 'deleted' but actually are put in a 30-day holding bin (from which they can be undeleted) before the system auto-deletes them, same for iPhone pictures.

You might want to look at ClickUp. It is full-featured project and task manager that can display your project as a Kan Ban board or in a calendar. And it even lets you delete tasks.

satis wrote:

You have it right with Ora, you archive then delete from the Archive
section.

It's common for deletions not to really be deletions in modern apps. UX
research in apps consistently finds that people constantly accidentally
delete tasks, notes and pictures they didn't mean to. There's not much
downside for normal apps and normal users for their deletions to be
shunted somewhere, and it makes the UI cleaner and more comprehensible
for workers who aren't hardcore users.

Apple implements this as well, in a slightly different way: notes in
Apple Notes can be 'deleted' but actually are put in a 30-day holding
bin (from which they can be undeleted) before the system auto-deletes
them, same for iPhone pictures.

Well, I'll give credit to where credit is due. Apple's approach makes great sense. Eliminating the delete command does not.

--Ken

Stephen Zeoli wrote:

You might want to look at ClickUp. It is full-featured project and task
manager that can display your project as a Kan Ban board or in a
calendar. And it even lets you delete tasks.

I have actually been using ClickUp for some time, mostly for managing tasks and information for a number of complex projects at work. I have been using KanbanFlow for simple stuff and love its easy UI. What I wanted to find was something similar, but with the ability to show a calendar or some type of basic timeline. Ora offered it, and I thought I would give it a real trial. I could try and create a stripped down version on ClickUp, but I was hoping for something that did not need to be stripped. I am just surprised that Ora did not offer the ability to delete tasks. It seems like such a basic command.

--Ken

Stephen Zeoli wrote:

You might want to look at ClickUp. It is full-featured project and task
manager that can display your project as a Kan Ban board or in a
calendar. And it even lets you delete tasks.

Two quick updates. First, Ora gave me a link to their new beta which allows deletion of tasks. Nice customer service, but I believe the beta ate one of my sample tasks, so I am going to wait and see how that pans out.

Second, I decided to dig into Clickup and create a simple board to my design. I guess that I am either getting better with setting things up or I had a bit more patience for all of the choices and settings that need to be saved, but I have to admit that I was able to set it up as I wanted. Unfortunately their Android app needs some love, but that may not be as much of an issue right now as I am mostly near my desktop at home with COVID having me WFH.

--Ken

In case this is of interest to anyone, Ora is currently on sale on Appsumo (lifetime deal):
https://appsumo.com/ora/

Alexander Deliyannis wrote:

In case this is of interest to anyone, Ora is currently on sale on
Appsumo (lifetime deal):
https://appsumo.com/ora/

That is a very tempting price.

Thanks for posting, Alexander.

--Ken

Also worth mentioning that TickTick now supports Kanban boards.

TickTick is, yes, Chinese, but supports every platform under the sun and is remarkably powerful (tags, markdown, subtasks, excellent search function, etc. etc.)

A couple of other Mac/iOS based task managers have just introduced kanban, too (actually, Firetask has had them for a while; GoodTask is the latest).

We’re trying to persuade Eduard to introduce kanban to NotePlan. Of course you can run a pseudo-kanban setup in NotePlan by opening multiple windows – not possible in all task managers!

Cheers,
Bill

And Todoist added kanban boards last September.

https://blog.doist.com/kanban-board/

https://todoist.com/help/articles/visualize-your-workflow-with-board-view

Ah, yes, I forgot about Todoist!

satis wrote:

And Todoist added kanban boards last September.

https://blog.doist.com/kanban-board/

https://todoist.com/help/articles/visualize-your-workflow-with-board-view

And I just learned that Workflowy has added kanban functionality, with kanban boards sitting inside outlines.

Even more interesting are aliases they call ‘mirror’ items - and you can mirror kanban items anywhere in the outline as outline items

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CiO0Ody6MfI

Unfortunately the kanban implementation seems to be limited to three columns across. Probably enough for most personal uses but it could be insufficient for some.

satis wrote:

Unfortunately the kanban implementation seems to be limited to three
columns across. Probably enough for most personal uses but it could be
insufficient for some.

I don't think that's the case, at least not with the Pro account. I can't see any limits to the number of columns you can have.

That's good to know. I was going off that video I linked to which defines kanban as having three columns (todo, doing, done) then uses three kanban columns inside outline nodes as an example.

Dynalist is still far ahead in some areas but kanban is a very, very compelling feature that lots of task managers and notetaking apps are building in. (I suppose that's why Trello's recent revamp is differentiating to offer a much stronger corporate focus now.)