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Create Task with Reference forces current user as responsible

I'm using the Create Task With Reference call, with the Ruby client library.

https://developers.podio.com/doc/tasks/create-task-with-reference-22420

 

What I'm seeing is that if I don't provide the :responsible attribute, or if it is set to nil, the API creates the task successfully, but assigns the current authenticated user as a the responsible person for the task.

I've tested this with both OAuth and Username/Password auth.

Sample ruby code, not including auth:

##########

task = {:text=>"test task", :due_time=>nil, :due_date=>nil, :responsible=>nil}

spaceid = 622151

response = Podio::Task.create_with_ref("space", spaceid, task)

puts response.first[:responsible]["name"]

##########

The output is my name: "Matthew Anderson".

 

In my opinion, this isn't expected or desired behavior from the API. If I don't specify a responsible person, either by omitting the value from my task hash, or by specifying nil, then it should not assign a person to the task.

Thoughts?

Matt Anderson Answered

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Hi Matthew,

It may not seem logical if you are just looking at the API. However, if you use Podio you'll see that Podio has no concept of a task without a responsible person. You must select a person responsible for each task.

The API could of course throw an error if you don't specify a responsible, but in this case we see it as a convenient shortcut. This way you don't have to look up your own user id to create a task for the currently active user.

Does that make sense?

/Andreas

Andreas Haugstrup Pedersen 0 votes
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Now I understand this shortcut for inputting the current user.  Maybe a one-line of documentation on that method?  Makes sense.

Mine is a unique use case - tasks created for spaces where users will go in and claim them for themselves.  

While I know this is an edge case, I would argue that tasks should be able to be created on a space with no responsible person, for flexibility in this case.   However, if you want to cater to the majority of use cases, and force data quality around tasks, I would completely understand. 

For now, I'm getting around it by using the API to add the task, then immediately updating assignee to nil :)

As long as that workaround exists, I'm satisfied.

 

Happy New Year!  I'm looking forward to 2013, I'm sure we'll be talking more.

Matt Anderson 0 votes
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I actually have the same usecase as Matt: A group of people are assigned a group of tasks, and when someone in the group lacks something to do, they just grab the top task and assign to themselves. Any chance this can be made possible from within Podio as well?

Johny Woller Skovdal 0 votes
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