From EcoReality

Contents 1 Tasks Extension 1.1 Basic Use 1.2 Listing Tasks 1.3 Advanced Listing

Tasks Extension

I've installed an extension to MediaWiki that is used for tracking tasks. It has some serious shortcomings, but hey, it was simple to install, easy to use, and free -- until we come up with something better.

Basic Use

To use it, you can place the following pair of tags anywhere in your wiki page:

<tasks>
...
</tasks>

In between those tags -- where the "..." is -- can go any number of task specifications, one per line. A task specification consists of:

1. a "state" or priority
2. a description
3. a user

You can also "hide" tasks from the main list by opening with the tag argument hidden:

<tasks hidden>
...
</tasks>

If you only have one task to enter, it and the open/close tags can go all on one line, like:

<tasks>[x] Take out the garbage (Jan Steinman)</tasks>

In this example:

• the "[x]" is the task state, in this case, indicating a task that is marked as completed,
• "Take out the garbage" is the text description of the task, and
• "(Jan Steinman)" is the full wiki user name of the person responsible for the task.

The "state" flag can be any of the following:

• "[!]" -- a task marked as urgent
• "[1]" -- priority ONE check box
• "[2]" -- priority TWO check box
• "[3]" -- priority THREE check box
• "[x]" -- a task marked as completed
• "[ ]" -- an empty check box

Listing Tasks

All this would be pretty boring and useless, except that all tasks from throughout the wiki are gathered onto one page, with links back to the originating page. This makes it much more useful, as we once attempted to maintain such a list manually, and it never really got kept properly!

You can go to the page Special:Tasks to see this wiki-wide list of tasks.

Advanced Listing

You can do some simple filtering via wiki links. Simply put a slash ("/") after Special:Tasks, but inside double square brackets, followed by one of the following keyword/value pairs:

status 

show only tasks of this value or higher

owner 

show only tasks assigned to this user

limit 

show only this many tasks

hidden 

show tasks that are normally hidden

Here are some example filters, followed by the code needed to put them on a page:

Carol Wagner's tasks 

[[Special:Tasks/owner=Carol Wagner|Carol Wagner's tasks]]

Priority 3 or higher tasks 

[[Special:Tasks/status=3|Priority 3 or higher tasks]]

Hidden tasks 

[[Special:Tasks/hidden=true|Hidden tasks]]

More info about this extension is on the WikiMedia site.