alltag

README

Alltag - the ADHD-friendly issue tracker

I'm not formally diagnosed with ADHD, but everything I've read about it closely matches my personal experiences. Alltag is an issue tracker specially suited for my own needs in order to help me be more productive, and maybe it could also be of interest to others as well.

Alltag departs from other issue trackers in several significant ways:

• I often notice that I don't add new tasks to my issue tracker as they pop up in my head, because I get distracted and forget about it before I get around to entering the task. Alltag makes adding new issues as accessible as possible by requiring only a one-line summary on a new task. All other attributes (due date, priority, recurrence) can be added later during classification. The start page reminds me whenever there is a task awaiting classification.

• Tasks are often tied to locations. Shopping for groceries can only be done in the city. Cleaning the home can only be done, well, at home. And so on. This relationship can be expressed in most issue trackers in some way, e.g. by adding tags to issues. But it requires more clicks than it should. Alltag puts this workflow front and center: "I'm in the city right now. Tell me what needs to be done here."

• Alltag also adds a unique categorization: Tasks are always labeled as either "physical" or "mental". This allows me to switch gears and stay productive when my resources on one side are depleted: "I spent the day hiking and now I'm exhausted. Give me a mental task where I can sit down while doing it." vs. "I spent all day studying and cannot concentrate anymore. Give me a physical task that doesn't require too much thinking."

• I find that having to choose tasks from a large backlog leads to choice paralysis. I work best when someone else just gives me one task to focus on at a time. At work, my manager or a more senior colleague prioritizes my backlog, and then I can just grab tasks from the top of the queue one by one. At home, Alltag does the same for me. The main UI is not a Kanban board or a list. The main UI just asks "Where are you? Do you want a physical or mental task?" Then it gives me the most urgent task fitting that choice, taking into account both due date and priority of all matching tasks. (That's not to say that there is no task list UI. There is, but it's not front and center.)

• (TODO: not implemented yet) In most issue trackers, the workflow focuses on starting with the big picture, then breaking large tasks down into small pieces. This does not really work for me: Large tasks are harder to pick up and work on than small tasks. Alltag helps with this by emphasizing chaining over decomposition: Instead of entering a large task into the tracker, then breaking it down, I enter the smallest-possible first step of the task into the backlog. When that task is done, Alltag offers me to enter the next step as a new task, and so forth.

• In general, the UI is structured around several workflows that are designed to be as simple as possible, with not more than a handful of options on each screen, to avoid the aforementioned choice paralysis. The more detailed UIs are only used for very infrequent tasks like backlog cleanups.

Linear priority interpolation

To choose "the most urgent task" deterministically, Alltag assigns a numerical priority value to each task using the following attributes that all tasks must have:

• an initial priority and final priority of either Low (0), Normal (1), High (2) or Critical (3), where the final priority must be higher than the initial priority,
• a start date (when the task has been entered, or when the task has been spawned by a recurrence rule), and a due date.

Tasks only show up on the UI after the start date. Until the due date, the priority then increases linearly from the initial priority to the final priority. After the due date, the priority continues increasing at the same rate as before, potentially reaching values of above critical.

Running Alltag

Required dependencies

To build:

• Go 1.12+
• sassc

To run:

• PostgreSQL
• optionally, an HTTPS server (see below)
• an LDAP server

Alltag exposes its API and UI via HTTP. I highly recommend you reverse-proxy through a web server like nginx or Apache to add TLS encryption.

If you don't have an LDAP server at hand, may I interest you in another one of my projects? Portunus is a turn-key solution for everyone who just wants an LDAP server with included admin web interface, without having to learn the ins and outs of LDAP.

Building

Build like any other application with a Makefile. (go get is not supported.) The Makefile understands the standard environment variables PREFIX and DESTDIR. For instance:

make && make install PREFIX=/usr/local

Configuration

Once installed, run alltag with root privileges. Configuration is passed to it via the following environment variables:

Variable	Default	Explanation
ALLTAG_DB_URI	(required)	A libpq connection URI that locates the Alltag database. The non-URI "connection string" format is not allowed; it must be a URI.
ALLTAG_LDAP_URI	(required)	Where to reach the LDAP server. The protocol must be either ldap or ldaps. For protocol ldap, StartTLS is required. (If your LDAP does not do TLS, please check back when it can.)
ALLTAG_LDAP_BIND_DN	(required)	The DN of the service user account that Alltag can bind as to search in the directory.
ALLTAG_LDAP_BIND_PASSWORD	(required)	The password for that user account.
ALLTAG_LDAP_SEARCH_BASE_DN	(required)	Where to search for user accounts. This usually refers to a group of users, e.g. ou=users,dc=example,dc=com.
ALLTAG_LDAP_SEARCH_FILTER	(uid=%s)	Which objects to match on when searching for user accounts in LDAP. The placeholder %s will be replaced with the username in question.
ALLTAG_LISTEN_ADDRESS	127.0.0.1:8080	Listen address for the HTTP server exposing Alltag's UI and API.

Once everything is set up, connect to Alltag via HTTP (either directly or through a reverse proxy as suggested above). There is no separate login site. When your browser asks for credentials, enter the name and password for your user account in LDAP.