Skip to content
Day Planner

Your first plan

You’ve just finished Try it with Docker Compose and have Day Planner running. This walkthrough takes you from a fresh account to a scheduled week: a space, a project, a handful of tasks, and a look at where the scheduler puts them.

1. Sign in

Section titled “1. Sign in”

Open the URL from the quick start (http://localhost:8303) and sign in with the admin account you created. Day Planner opens on Today.

2. Create a space

Section titled “2. Create a space”

Spaces split your work into areas such as Work and Personal. First-run setup made you two; add one more for the walkthrough.

  1. Open Settings.
  2. Enter “Life admin” in Create space and select Create.

The new space appears in the sidebar, and the Tasks page can filter by it. To rename or delete a space later, see Spaces, projects and tasks.

3. Create a project

Section titled “3. Create a project”

Projects gather the tasks that work towards one outcome.

  1. Open Projects.
  2. Type “Japan trip”, choose “Life admin” as the space, and select Create.

The Projects page lists each project with its space and task count.

4. Add a few tasks

Section titled “4. Add a few tasks”

The Tasks page has a quick-add box. To set a detail first, type a / command and its value — /due friday, /est 45, /project Japan trip — and press Enter; it becomes a chip and clears the box. Then type the task title and press Enter. Press / in an empty box to see the list of commands.

Add these three tasks:

Task Type in quick-add
Renew passport /due friday, /est 45, /priority high, /project Japan trip, then Renew passport
Book flights /due next week, /est 30, /project Japan trip, then Book flights
Write blog post /due tomorrow, /est 90, /priority medium, then Write blog post

Due dates can be any phrase the date parser understands, such as “friday”, “tomorrow” or “next week”. Spaces, projects and tasks lists every quick-add command. Give each task a time estimate: the scheduler can only place work that has one.

5. Check your working hours

Section titled “5. Check your working hours”

First-run setup saved your hours as a schedule preference named “Working” — Monday to Friday, 09:00 to 17:00 unless you changed them. Day Planner schedules only tasks that have auto-schedule on and a time estimate, in your timezone. A task with a schedule preference of its own is placed inside that preference’s windows; a task with none falls back to Monday to Friday, 09:00 to 17:00. Every task is auto-scheduled unless you clear its Auto-schedule checkbox in the task dialog.

To change the hours later, update the Working preference through the schedule preferences API. To give some tasks their own windows, see Scheduling and working hours.

6. Run the scheduler

Section titled “6. Run the scheduler”

Day Planner schedules on demand: adding or editing a task never re-plans by itself, so trigger a run. Each run re-plans the next 14 days for your auto-scheduled tasks.

Trigger a run

Section titled “Trigger a run”

Ask your connected agent to run the scheduler, or send one request with an API key:

Terminal window
curl -X POST -H "x-api-key: dp_change-me" https://tasks.example.com/api/planner

The run replaces only the time blocks it created and nobody has moved. Hand-placed blocks, blocks you have dragged into place, locked and already-started blocks all stay and count as busy time, as do blocks belonging to a task you have switched to manual scheduling. Connect an agent covers the agent setup and API keys covers keys.

Read the result

Section titled “Read the result”

The response counts the blocks it created and what it couldn’t fit:

{
  "ok": true,
  "timezone": "Australia/Sydney",
  "tasksScheduled": 8,
  "tasksAtRisk": 1,
  "tasksUnscheduled": 1,
  "atRiskTaskIds": ["2f6f4a4e-1f44-4f6f-9c3a-1d3a2f6b0f1e"],
  "unscheduledTaskIds": ["9c1a3f2d-3b4c-4c5d-8e7f-0a1b2c3d4e5f"]
}

tasksAtRisk lists tasks that are overdue or won’t finish before their due date; tasksUnscheduled lists tasks whose remaining work didn’t fit inside the 14 days. A task with a due date that doesn’t fit lands in both lists. For how each block is chosen, see How the scheduler places work.

7. Look at Today and Week

Section titled “7. Look at Today and Week”

Today shows four counters (Completed today, Due today, Pending, Overdue), the day’s schedule as time blocks, and two tidy-up lists: Needs scheduling, which hints at what a task is missing (a time estimate, for example) or that there’s no free slot, and Needs space, which lists tasks with neither a space nor a project.

Week shows Monday to Sunday: the time blocks planned for each day with their times, plus the tasks due during the week.

8. Complete a task

Section titled “8. Complete a task”

On the Tasks page, select the circle next to “Renew passport”, or open the task and set its status to completed. The task leaves the list, Today counts it under “Completed today”, and its actual time is recorded from the estimate.

See also

Section titled “See also”