Natural language support
When entering to-do's you should be able to enter the item with natural language such as "Meeting with John today at 3pm" or any number of a wide range of ways. The app would know that it needs to be done today at 3pm. Other shortcuts should be supported including the reoccurring items such as "the second Monday of each month".
Natural language is faster to enter items vs selecting each field. After you enter the task with natural language there should be some visual que that tells you the system has recognized the item such as date, time, list, etc.
Todoist supports this and if you want people to change platforms this is a must have feature.
Will Wilson
shared this idea
In our latest iOS & iPadOS update – version 2.5 – we’ve brought smart due dates to the app.
Will be coming to more platforms in the future.
Let us know what you think on Twitter (microsofttodo), Facebook (microsofttodo) or Instagram (@microsoft_todo)
206 comments
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raylapse
commented
I check this post every two months because I believe MS should understand this is the core feature of a to-do app, but I got dispointment every time!!!
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Anonymous
commented
It’s great that you’re rolling out natural language support for date/time but please consider project and possibly tags.
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Bob Jones
commented
Add to iOS in November, still no sign of it for the macOS app. This makes this app a total non-starter compared to something like Todoist. It's pretty sad to see how long this is taking... Plus, the natural language processing in the iOS app is only for singular events, such as "get groceries Friday". But you can't do something like "get groceries first Friday of every month" or "every other week" and have that translate properly. So even where they have implemented it, it's been done so at the most limited level and is still essentially useless.
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Gunduz Mutlu
commented
Three years passed and still very limited feature release?! Are you really interested in delivering a user satisfaction? This became an essential feature for todo apps.
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DmitryT
commented
3 years have passed since it was "planned"...
Marcel is the "best" product manager in the world (no). -
Anonymous
commented
I have moved to To Do from Wunderlist for almost a month, and I still miss this feature hell. Clicking through several steps only to add the due date and reminder is f*cking annoying.
Even this feature on iOS, it is not as good as what Wunderlist did. Type "Do something today 9pm" and then still have to tap to add the due date and reminder? Why you have to be so cumbersome like that. Can we just type?
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Adam Wooderson
commented
This is the #1 reason I used Wunderlist. I can't believe Microsoft To Do doesn't have this built-in to the desktop apps yet. It completely derails the efficient capturing of "to-do's" if you have to move over to a drop-down then open a calendar utility to pick Wednesday of next week. Oy.
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Wes Davidson
commented
Three years, and still waiting…
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Jordan
commented
I know other people are asking for other features, but trust me, they're not as important. (The other features, I mean, not the other people 😉.)
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Chris Moen
commented
Come on guys and gals. I am now getting warned in Wunderlist that you are about to sunset it yet and you still don't have smart due dates working in either desktop or android To Do. I am going to be very disappointed if you force me to change to an inferior product. You seem to have plenty of time to do complicated integrations across other microsoft products but it seems like you neglect some of the core usability things.
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Pathan
commented
All shortcuts on Android are missing. We used to be able to type "Monday" and task would get the next Monday assigned to it.
Wunderlist made use of the free moment.js library to get this done. I am sure it could be converted and implemented easily in Microsoft Todo.
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David
commented
This is so helpful! Please add Portuguese language!!!
https://todoist.com/pt-BR has Natural language support in portuguese for at least 4 years and it is so PERFECT!
Please Microsoft, just copy them.
PT-BR. Please!
P.S: This is a VERY BASIC thing, why is it taking so long?
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Stew
commented
How was this not THE most important feature to copy from wunderlist? It's literally the best thing about the app. I almost threw my computer when it didn't work in TODO.
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Geoff Maddock commented
Suggestions:
- When a date is converted into a time, don't remove that from the test. I found this to be a problem in Wunderlist where I would make a note "Meet on Friday at 9AM with Joe" and it would turn the note into "Meet on with Joe"
- Make this configurable, both per list and globally. I might not want this to happen everywhere. -
Rich
commented
How is it possible that this is not implemented across all platforms? Or at the very least, on Windows? I mean, I'm an O365 E1 Subscriber and yet when I try to add date on my Windows computer, I need to use a dropdown date picker. It works on my iphone, but not on Windows itself. How?
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Jason Poitras
commented
I am a heavy Todoist user. I have been waiting for Microsoft to implement a real To do app for years, and I'm happy to see that the latest version is getting closer now. I've started using 2.11 and really miss all the natural language entry features that Todoist has. I use Todoist on an iPhone, in my web browser and on a Mac laptop. The functionality should be consistent across all platforms.
Looking forward to when more of Todoist features are added to To Do.
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zi
commented
You don't need complex AI algorithm, just a simple rule-set logic is enough for this feature as long as due date can be typed directly.
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zi
commented
Need this on macOS ASAP plz!
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Stuart Lombard
commented
When will macOS be getting this? This feature is the one thing that still keeps me on Wunderlist.
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Anonymous
commented
Jordan, you are 100% justified. Us Wunderlist users don't understand why Microsoft purchased Wunderlist just to rebuild everything from scratch. Even if there was a "Basic Natural Language" feature that could figure out "tomorrow" or "Friday" that would at least hold us over until MS could flex their AI muscle to understand more complex wording (e.g. "repeat the first Saturday of every month")