Due date dependency?

Here’s the problem I’m trying to solve:

I manage a developer user group that meets on the 3rd Thursday of every month. I have a recurring project in OF for all the things I have to do each month (book a presenter, announcements, etc.). Some of these things should happen X number of days before or after the meeting.

What I would like to do is something like a particular action’s due date = (other action’s due date - 1 day), but I don’t see anything like that. Scheduling the action for the 3rd Wednesday or something like that doesn’t work because there will be months when that happens after the 3rd Thursday.

I realize this is probably going to requiring scripting, but I just wanted to check if anybody had other ideas before I go down that path.

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Have you tried adding such a project with a taskpper template?

That’s probably what I’m going to have to do. I just started researching that today. But that’s going to require me to run the template each month, yes? I was trying to avoid that.

Here’s how I use templates with ‘relative dates’:

do you use a mac or an iOS device?

Both.

Decided to go down the project template route. I’ve got a JS script in Scriptable that does the date math & the string replacement on the TaskPaper template. I’m calling that from a Shortcut that then adds the project to OF.

I’ll have to run this every month, but I’ve added that as the last action in the project with a link to the Shortcut, so that will make it easier not to forget.

ooooh… can you share the scripts?

Sure!

Scriptable: https://gist.github.com/billygoat/ae462af4e08d901f1fa983a349b38506
Shortcut: https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/882051af3904492081cfafb4727da114

The script could be way more abstract, and it would be pretty easy to change it if you wanted to keep your template in OF or someplace else. But it solves my problem so I’m happy with it.

Rose Orchard has a wonderful Drafts plugin to use TaskPaper templates. She’s got a great video on this

One can use relative dates. Of course you’ll have to create for each month.

Why do you have to run the script every month? Can’t you just bulk create all the actions for all months for, say, the next ten years, in one go? With suitable defer dates hiding all but the current month would this really be a problem?

Yes.

I mean, maybe not for everybody? But having my OF full of a year or 10 years or whatever of the same project would bug me. It would certainly make reviews a slog. And then if you change something you have to go back & change it in each project, or delete all those projects and recreate them.

I can definitely see how that would be a better option for some people, I just don’t think I’d like it.

Oh, and a 👍 to Rose’s Drafts plugin. It was really helpful when I was working on my script.

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