Todoist Template Transformer - Transform Tasks to 'X' Days From Now
Transform Todoist templates to start on a specific date
Table of Contents
Todoist Templates is a simple way to create tasks for any of your recurring activities. Be it blogging, cooking, or any of your activities. With Todoist Templates, you can turn any project into a checklist that you can easily duplicate later. I have been using Todoist for a long time and find it useful to keep track of tasks (both personal and at work)
Problem
I plan my tasks for the upcoming week on Sunday morning. I pull in tasks for the upcoming week, and some of these tasks are template based. For e.g. for writing a blog post, I have the below template
TYPE,CONTENT,PRIORITY,INDENT,AUTHOR,RESPONSIBLE,DATE,DATE_LANG,TIMEZONE
task,Blog: BlogTopic,4,1,Rahul (3565260),,,en,Australia/Melbourne
task,BlogTopic: Draft Body,4,2,Rahul (3565260),,today,en,Australia/Melbourne
task,BlogTopic: Refine Body,4,2,Rahul (3565260),,today,en,Australia/Melbourne
task,BlogTopic: Intro and Conclusion,4,2,Rahul (3565260),,tomorrow,en,Australia/Melbourne
task,"BlogTopic: Images, Proof Read and Publish",4,2,Rahul (3565260),,tomorrow,en,Australia/Melbourne
The dates on the template are relative to the day that you import the template in Todoist. So if I pull in the template on a Sunday, the tasks will start on Sunday. This is not something that I want; I want them to start on a Monday. Alternatively, I can update the template to start from tomorrow. Even in that case, I will always have to know the exact start day relative to the day that I intend to pull in. I usually plan for the tasks on a Sunday but still, like the flexibility to pull in tasks any day of the week.
Todoist Template Transformer
The Todoist Template Transformer takes in a date and template path and adjusts all tasks in the template to start relative to the passed in date. In the above example, if I want to blog on Wednesday, I will input the Wednesday date and the template file path. The first two tasks will start on Wednesday and the third and fourth on Thursday. Running the transformer on a Sunday (07-May-2017) with the next Wednesday (10-May-2017) below is the new template
TodoistTemplateTransformer.exe -startDate "10-May-2017" -templateFile "Blog Template.csv"
TYPE,CONTENT,PRIORITY,INDENT,AUTHOR,RESPONSIBLE,DATE,DATE_LANG,TIMEZONE
task,Blog: BlogTopic,4,1,Rahul (3565260),,,en,Australia/Melbourne
task,BlogTopic: Draft Body,4,2,Rahul (3565260),,in 3 days,en,Australia/Melbourne
task,BlogTopic: Refine Body,4,2,Rahul (3565260),,in 3 days,en,Australia/Melbourne
task,BlogTopic: Intro and Conclusion,4,2,Rahul (3565260),,in 4 days,en,Australia/Melbourne
task,"BlogTopic: Images, Proof Read and Publish",4,2,Rahul (3565260),,in 4 days,en,Australia/Melbourne
This utility is written in FSharp the source code is available here if you are interested. I am still in the initial stages of learning FSharp, so if you have any suggestions to improve the code, please raise a Pull Request or drop in a comment.
Rahul Nath Newsletter
Join the newsletter to receive the latest updates in your inbox.