Kanban board as an agenda view

Kanban board as an agenda view

[eeli]

Hello,

I was inspired by this post[1], that describes a workflow that uses
links and a table to organize tasks in columns like on a Kanban
board[2].

I started thinking if this kind of visualization could be done
automatically by implementing a view like the agenda, that would use
`org-todo-keywords' as column headings and layout TODO items from
`org-agenda-files' into a columnar view.

Is there any prior work on this, or is anyone willing to implement it?
If not, could you kindly point me to the right direction, so I can start
hacking?

[1]:
http://jr0cket.co.uk/2016/09/Kanban-board-Emacs-Org-mode-to-get-work-done.html
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban_board

Eeli

Re: Kanban board as an agenda view

[Heikki Lehvaslaiho]

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Hi Eeli,

I started thinking along the same lines after reading the article and
thought to use it as a task to learn org table manipulation commands.

Unfortunately, I also found that my emacs has a problem that messes up
basic table cell copy or cut commands. See my post 'Cask-initialize messes
up org table manipulation commands' to this mailing list a few days ago. I
started planning and implementing an org-kanban-mode but stopped when I hit
this problem. I still have not solved it.

My idea was to have org-kanban as a minor mode that works on org mode
buffers. A defvar gives a default set of TODO keywords and the user can
configure any words into her own setup. Command org-kanban-write-keywords
writes the keywords to a '#+SEQ_TODO:' line at the top of the buffer and
makes sure there are no other '#+SEQ_TODO:' lines. This makes the keywords
buffer local and easy to modify. A function generates a named table with
current todo keywords. The user then fills up the table with tasks. A house
keeping function creates links of the task names, makes sure that there is
maximum one task on each line, and creates link targets with the correct
todo keyword. Ideally, there should be a function to update the table is
the keywords are changed, but that could be messy.

The org-kanban-mode also overrides the org table key bindings of M-<right>
and M-<left> to move cell contents, i.e. tasks, left and right. The
move-cell functions would also update the todo status of the lined header.

I have about 100 lines of code implementing some of the plan above that I
am happy to share. if you are interested, I could, for example, put the
code in a shared and GPL'd github repo, and you could take it from there.

Let me know,


     -Heikki

Heikki Lehväslaiho - skype:heikki_lehvaslaiho cell: +358 40 850 6640
http://about.me/heikki

On 27 September 2016 at 10:27, <eeli@fea.st> wrote:

> Hello,
>
> I was inspired by this post[1], that describes a workflow that uses
> links and a table to organize tasks in columns like on a Kanban
> board[2].
>
> I started thinking if this kind of visualization could be done
> automatically by implementing a view like the agenda, that would use
> `org-todo-keywords' as column headings and layout TODO items from
> `org-agenda-files' into a columnar view.
>
> Is there any prior work on this, or is anyone willing to implement it?
> If not, could you kindly point me to the right direction, so I can start
> hacking?
>
> [1]:
> http://jr0cket.co.uk/2016/09/Kanban-board-Emacs-Org-mode-
> to-get-work-done.html
> [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban_board
>
> Eeli
>
>

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Re: Kanban board as an agenda view

[Adam Porter]

eeli@fea.st writes:

> I started thinking if this kind of visualization could be done
> automatically by implementing a view like the agenda, that would use
> `org-todo-keywords' as column headings and layout TODO items from
> `org-agenda-files' into a columnar view.
>
> Is there any prior work on this, or is anyone willing to implement it?
> If not, could you kindly point me to the right direction, so I can start
> hacking?

A simple way to emulate this would be to create multiple vertical
windows within a frame, and load a custom agenda view into each one,
with desired TODO keywords in each.

However, I just realized that Org does not seem to allow more than one
agenda view to be open simultaneously, I guess because of its use of
global state.  Maybe it would be possible to hack something up using
org-agenda-append-agenda to "append" into a different frame...