Agreed! Please add this feature.

I'm sure this is more complicated than it sounds from the backend point of view, but this seems like a really intuitive feature from a user's perspective. Adding my vote for this.

I agree as well. I discovered the static one hour interval for all my events when importing them into iCal this evening.

I agree as well. It would be nice to see the real estimated time instead a constant hour in ical.

Wonderful idea.

Emily has spoken about ways in which this is problematic before:

https://www.rememberthemilk.com/forums/help/1153/
https://www.rememberthemilk.com/forums/help/2655/

And other places, those are just for starters.

Oh yes please - my joy (and inclination not to jump ship when my subscription expires) would be infinite (well, it would last exactly 15minutes in iCal)

I add my vote for this one! (I actually had suggested this recently, and user "ranbarton" pointed me to a whole lot of threads including this one)

One way to resolve the problems would be to make it optional for users that wish to use it. I see two settings:

- Use time estimate for iCal feed? : Yes/No
- Task with time estimate starts or ends at due date? : Starts/Ends

I was coming here to post the exact same idea. It would really improve the connection to iCal, giving RTM much more power in illustrating and quantifying my daily schedule. Massive upvote from me.

When I use gcal to view RTM icalendars, tasks assigned to times are not displayed. Tasks seem only to be displayed if assigned to a day but not to a time on that day. Is this the same or related to the subject of this threas? Is this a limitation of RTM's integration with gcal, or icalendar feeds in general?

Since this is my 1st post and since I'm pretty darn impressed with RTM after a few days testing: a big thank you to the developers!

I also add my vote for this item.
I use iPad app to manage tasks, but also I import iCal feed into iPad calendar to "mix" my tasks with events from other sources - and current due dates behaviour is unacceptable.

At this moment due date implementation is...for appearances' sake. There is now actual reason to set *due* date (and time) as *start* time for the event. There is no actual reason to set default length to 1 hr (why not 10 min or 4 hrs?).

3 years ago Emily explained this issue ( https://www.rememberthemilk.com/forums/help/3246/ ), but it's raised again and again - IMHO this shows that initial RTM Team guesses about user experience with due dates were wrong, and it's time to fix this small bug.
Yes, I think this issue should be considered as bug, not new feature.

There is no comments above with reasons against this issue, only many agree votes. Nobody will regret about 'current' behaviour. And it will take so little time to implement - just use actual estimate time if filled, and subtract instead on add. "1/2 hour, including tea break" as my programmes says :)

Pleeeeease :)

+1

...this is the one and only thing that's blocking me from getting the Pro version. I need to enter a task quickly on my Android phone and have it synced within minutes to my Gmail Calendar; having all the entries with the same 1-hour dull length just makes this whole amazing thing unusable :(

+1 yes, please, change this. As said in another post, it makes RTM amazingly unusable to have every event sheduled for 1 hour in iCal. Its unnecessary...

I understand Emily's logical concerns, but I also voted for this feature. I think that by default, a person would estimate the time it took to complete a task and schedule it to be completed by a certain time using the estimate feature to define when to start working the task in order to complete it on-time. (I do.)

Additionally, if you're scheduling a task that takes more than 4 hours, then you are either 1) a beast when it comes to getting things done because you never break for lunch or other interruptions; 2) enjoy ignoring organizational behavior research that shows that few people can focus on one task for more than a few hours; or 3) haven't accurately defined the task you are trying to do because it's probably more of a mini project composed of multiple tasks, rather than one big task.

I posted this as a separate idea, and the votes were transferred, but my comment was not. I still think this is a MAJOR problem, and I disagree with Emily's two posts (linked above by ranbarton) that it would not work well. The 1-hour decision is a shoddy quick fix. Many people would like to use RTM in this way, ie schedule when they would like to do tasks and how long they will take, then view them on a calendar. If this were fixed, I would renew my Pro contract. Ideally, I would be able to add tasks in gCal/iCal and have them sync to RTM.

Here is my original comment:

Fix "time estimate" concordance in Google Calendar

kslays says:
Currently the "time estimate" is correctly listed for RTM tasks in Google Calendar event descriptions, but the calendar incorrectly displays them all as 1 hour long (in day and week view), no matter the estimate listed.

It would be very helpful if the calendar would display the correct time, eg a 2 hour task due at 7:00 would display as 7:00-9:00 (and, if it's not too much work, perhaps a checkbox if the user wants a two-hour task due at 7 to display as 5:00-7:00). A 30 minute task due at 7:00 would display as 7:00-7:30.

Originally Posted at 1:49pm on May 23, 2011

Just added my vote (well, 2 votes) for this. I would love to be able to use my google calendar as ONLY a visual aid, and not have to add things directly to it :-)

I realize that implementing this poses some challenges (e.g., whether time estimates are scheduled before or after the due time of a task), but the current arrangement could be improved considerably by shortening the duration in the calendar.

Hour-long blocks seem arbitrary and problematic when integrating a list with a calendar. Is there any way the duration could at least be shortened to 5 or 10 (or 0) minutes?

+1000. I need to make my ical public as I use it to let people know my availability for shows. Normally a i do a four show, but it only shows upas 1 hour. This means I cannot use rtm feed for pulic calendar and instead have to enter everything manually. ewww..

Yes, I vote for this feature.

It would be a big step on the way to have a compete overview in iCal. It would give the meetings a greater And trouthfull place in my calender. That is it, what I connekt to RTM.

Needless to say very useful idea. Please add this.

+1

+1

This would be a real integration that would make rtm a fully professional tool!

Yeah - please add that feature as soon as possible. If so RTM perfectly fits my Google Calendar :-)

Yes very keen to see this. The majority of my calendar entries would be better treated as timed todo items. Indeed if I could control the duration of the entry I would use RTM to manage the majority of my calendar.

My suggestion would be as follow. If the user enters a 'due date' they may then prefix a '+' or '-' to the 'time estimate'. This would use be used to indicate if the estimated time applies just before or just after the due date. For example if the due date for an item was tomorrow at 2pm and the time estimate was +30mins then the calendar entry would start at 2pm and end at 2.30pm. Similarly if the time estimate was -30mins then calendar entry would start at 1.30pm and end at 2pm. Finally if the time estimate was just 30min then the calendar entry would start at 2pm and end at 3pm as usual (as an aside it would be good to have a user defined setting for this duration). Note that this still leaves the 'time estimate' as a valid absolute quantity, but just allows a qualifier to describe how it relates to the due date.

I really can't vote for this enough times. It would be so useful to have in terms of setting up "work blocks" on my schedule. Even shortening duration to 10 minutes each would be fine. As it is, with an hour, I just can't have hour long tasks cluttering my calendar

Would love to see that done very soon!

This is exactly what I thought a calendar feed SHOULD HAVE already!!!
No duration info from a calendar feed is logically strange since what's important is no only about the start time of an event, but also the duration of an event.
Please make RTM calendar feed complete!

i'm looking forward to have this!

This one really closes the gap between task management and managing my schedule. This gap makes it happen that too many tasks are being scheduled on a day, reducing the added value of RTM.

For those who just love the feed as it is, it might be a solution to make it an option in the settings area: standard one hour duration or real duration.

Please. Sometimes Calendar view shows more information in less time, which is very useful in GTD.

this is a must have feature. my events look really weird in that 1 hr hard coded value. this means i will have to enter my data twice just to fix my calendar view. not acceptable in 2013.
cheers

Somewhat surprised to see that event duration is not supported in RTM.

I really need it, since RTM doesn't have their own calendar, and I have to use Google calendar instead to check the workload and collisions.

having all tasks 1 hour long is not ilustrative

I don't see the issues that were brought up against this.

If task has no exact time, it is an all day event, like it already is.
If task has no time estimate, make it an hour like it already is.
If task has a exact start time, and a time estimate, how does it not make sense to have a calendar event from the start time to end end time?

Maybe I am not understanding the concern, but I really don't see how a1 hour block is better than having a 6 hour block that doesn't accurately reflect that you wanted to work on it for 6 hours over the next few days...

I add my vote for this because my calendar looks ridiculous with 10 15-30 min tasks all taking up an hour each.

+1

+1

Agreed, this would help matters.

+1

Does anyone know if there is ANY calendar that works with RTM to show the appropriate length?

Please, please :)

+1

I built a quick & dirty solution, if anyone is interested. Of course, a native implementation would be far more convenient.

https://gist.github.com/tkan/ea5c447530162b2a48c93515ac2eb5e7

Cheers

+1

+1

+1

+1

OMG, 10 years old feature request! Happy birthday Idea #5050!

Such a bummer that I can't leverage this functionality to block off important times in my calendar.

Tried the python script above but couldn't get it working.

In case someone is stumbling over the clunky Python script, here's a tiny web service making it a bit easier:

https://tka.eu.pythonanywhere.com/

Cheers & maybe Bob the monkey will feel encouraged to include it in the main app

Wow. It's really disappointing that this is such an old issue.

Agreed, this should work out of the box.

+1

11 years and this hasn't been resolved. Filling in the duration has no value when seeing these on a calendar. A zero minute event would be preferable to a 1 hour event.

Understanding there are issues / objections to using duration...

Why would start-time not work for this?

Start time - when the event is starting
Due time - when the event is ending

+1 for start time + estimate.

I have no clue why this isn't the way it should be yet. +1

14 years. Please, if there is a time estimate and a start or due time, please set the duration to match the time estimate. It will make it easier to plan around it.