Visualize relations between tasks in Kanban style

Feature Discussion
1

I’ve seen similar requests for especially the Grantt chart/view (Better task visualization dependency), but this is about the Kanban view:

It would be amazing to have basic dependencies being reflected in the view.
Like, if a task is marked as parent of another task - or one task depends (blocks is is blocked by) another task: indicate it accordingly. It doesn’t have to be fancy, but just show the basic relations. E.g. via an arrow. Or grouping. Or whatever.

Asked differently: What are the relations about if not being shown / visualized in any view right now? Incentive to actually set such does not appear to make any immediate sense to me. What do relations do / affect at the very moment?

Thanks a lot!

1 Like
2

I can’t think of any proper design involving arrow/groupping on Kanban view.

I also strugle often to understand the bigger picture when particularly looking at one task out of whole hierarchy. And those tasks on same hierarchy are often named similarly given the shared general topic they cover so it’s very easy to get lost in the weeds.

What I suggest is having right-click button “Visualize Relations” that would open up a pop-up with read-only diagram showing particular task’s relations recursively.

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This was achived with a Mermaid.js library with just couple of lines of code that I think won’t be a problem to generate and display on pop-up.

graph TD;
    %% Core Task
    A["Plan Vacation"] -->|Blocking| B["Book Flight"];
    A -->|Blocking| C["Reserve Hotel"];
    
    %% Precedence and Blocking
    B -->|Precedes| D["Check-in Online"];
    C -->|Blocked by| E["Confirm Travel Dates"];
    F["Pack Luggage"] -.->|Related| B;
    G["Buy Travel Insurance"] -->|Follows| A;

    %% Software Development Flow
    H["Develop Feature X"] -->|Blocking| I["Code Review"];
    I -->|Blocked by| J["Write Unit Tests"];
    J -->|Precedes| K["Merge to Main Branch"];
    L["Fix Bug Y"] -.->|Duplicate| M["Reported Issue #123"];

    %% Content Creation Flow
    N["Write Blog Post"] -->|Copied from| O["Research Notes"];
    P["Translate Blog Post"] -->|Copied to| N;

    %% Parent-Subtask Relationship
    Q["Complete Project"] -->|Parent| R["Write Documentation"];
    Q -->|Parent| S["Final Testing"];
    R -->|Subtask| T["Review Docs"];
    S -->|Subtask| U["Run Test Suite"];

    %% Cross-Domain Dependencies (Bringing Everything Together)
    K -->|Blocking| Q;
    D -.->|Related| N;
    P -->|Precedes| H;
    L -->|Blocked by| S;
3

I can’t think of any proper design involving arrow/groupping on Kanban view.

Maybe I’m just too naive here, but:

  • grouping: showing cards in a nested way, children inside parents inside grandparents?
  • dependencies: simple arrows, either with text-tags or color/pattern indicating it e.g. being a dependency - and direction indicating which depends on which.
1 Like
4

At first, a big +1 from me! I also thought about such functionality.

A possible way could also to have just an icon on the task with a number and color, which then is the same on the related ones, for example. :thinking:
Just to see, that they are related.

I do also see a possibility with Mermaid.js but only as an advanced option. It makes only sense when you really have a task with many subtask or of course related tasks. Which is probably not always the case. :man_shrugging:

For smaller kanban boards, it would be enough to have overview with one sight over the board via symbols as said for example.

Just my thought to this. :blush:

5

Talking about arrows.
What if tasks are not on the same Kanban board?
What if related task is hidden down in bucket because it was not scrolled to yet?

6

What if tasks are not on the same Kanban board?

Indicate that - e.g. arrow going into infinity / fading out. Or not supporting that.

What if related task is hidden down in bucket because it was not scrolled to yet?

I don’t know enough about “orders” of cards. Right now it feels arbitrary. The order of creation or how they got moved. Set priority or any other attribute doesn’t make a difference. So, e.g. sort by relation (if desired / by default / if “show relations” got activated) ?

1 Like
7

I just migrated back to Vikunja after learning that it has task relations now, so first of all, thanks for that, if not rather late.

However, after using other kanbans - yeah, the absence of any indication on task relations is really confusing. I can understand how arrows are a questionable design choice. I can also understand that grouping might be hard to pull off - grouping of child tasks in ClickUp was really frustrating.

But can we please have a small red (blocked) or yellow (blocking) icon on a card with a number indicating how many other tasks the card is blocking / being blocked by? It’s something so small and yet so defining of a user experience for me. I trust it would be a huge improvement for others as well.

Please find an example of what I’m talking about in the ClickUp screenshot below. The left task is blocking the right one. And the right one is also being blocked by an additional task that is off-screen. We can’t see exactly which task blocks what (and that’s okay, imo). But we can clearly see that the right task has 2 blockers. We can also see that the left task blocks 1 other task, so it should be prioritised.

Any chance of us having this someday?

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