14 DAY TRIAL // Tasks is an unassuming but very useful feature in Gmail. Though it feels that Tasks should be one of Gmail's core components, it's only been around for a year and a half now. It's also a rather spartan feature and, while that's not always a bad thing, the Gmail team is looking at ways of improving it and has been asking for feedback and suggestions.
Now, after several months of votes, Google is ready to start working on the most requested new features for Tasks.
"A few months ago, we asked for your help to make Tasks better by voting on your top feature requests. We were blown away by the number of responses we received, with over 17,000 people participating and an overwhelming 185,000 votes," Google's David Tattersall wrote.
Since October last year, people have been suggesting new features and voting on them. The voting is now closed and Google is listing the top five requests which should become features sooner or later.
· Ability to create repeating tasks · Reminders and notifications · Sharable task lists · Tasks API and synchronization · Visual distinction for overdue tasks Unsurprisingly, all of the suggestions make a lot of sense and should make Tasks closer to a fully fledged task scheduler. The API in particular could prove very interesting. Already, some mobile apps are syncing with Gmail Tasks.
The simplicity of Gmail Tasks should resonate well on mobile devices where bare-bone features are mostly preferred to overwhelming complexity. Repeating tasks along with reminders and notifications should also make Tasks more than a simple to-do list.
The Tasks feature started out in the Labs section and was graduated in 2009. Since then it hasn't evolved much, though it seems it got quite a lot of users. Granted, with hundreds of millions of Gmail users, that's pretty much a given.