Hello! 
I’m not sure if this already exists, but I’d love to be able to use Flat to help me with recurring tasks. For instance, things I need to do once a week or on a particular day.
Is this sort of workflow already possible? If not, is it something that could come in the future?
Thank you!
Great suggestion! It’s not natively supported in Flat yet, but it’s definitely something we’d like to add in the future.
Meantime, I’d like to offer you some workarounds tailored to your use case. Can you give me a sense of (a) how many such tasks you have, (b) some specific examples and their frequency, and (c) whether or not you’re a software developer and comfortable using Flat’s GraphQL API?
Thanks for the reply @AndrewK !
Around 10 such tasks, with frequencies including weekly, fortnightly, monthly and quarterly. Some are periodic email reports that need writing, or recurrent maintenance tasks like backups or checking for security announcements/updates.
I’d love to be able to centralize these into Flat, so that everything is in one place.
I am, and I’ve seen your API, but I’m more interested in a low friction out-of-the-box experience that just does things for me so that I can focus on being productive (rather than using my time tweaking productivity tools!).
Hopefully that gives some useful context for you!
Thanks for the context!
I thought of a few options/workarounds that may be useful to you. I’m happy to dive into any of these in more detail, if you like.
Option 1: Zapier
Flat has an integration with Zapier that supports creating topics, and Zapier lets you schedule triggers at arbitrary frequencies. So, you could create recurring triggers in Zapier, each at their own frequency, as a means to create recurring topics in Flat. I believe this would be possible entirely within Zapier’s free plan, too.
Option 2: GraphQL API
Just mentioning it again here for completeness. You could use a hosted cron or lambda service to schedule the API invocations and get something set up rather quickly. Granted, it’s not an out-of-the-box solution, and I completely understand you’re looking for something low friction.
Option 3: Manual/semi-manual process
The idea here is that you yourself act as the recurring task scheduler, but in a way that feels natural. Let’s use a weekly item as an example. You could create a template topic for that item that includes a checklist for whatever it entails. Each week, you duplicate the template topic to create the actual topic for that week. Importantly, in the template (and thereby in each actual topic), there’s a checklist with an item like “Schedule for next week”. That way, in order to complete this week, you’re reminded to create next week’s. You’d do that simply be duplicating the template topic again. The obvious downside is that it’s fallible if you forget, and you’re creating next week’s topic ahead of time, not necessarily only when the week actually starts.
Really helpful reply, thanks so much for taking the time, it’s appreciated
While I’m sure either Zapier or your API could help me implement a solution, I guess I’d still have friction if I want to add new recurring tasks or modify frequencies of existing ones etc. Granted, it wouldn’t be that difficult, but it’d still be a lot more friction than being able to do so from within Flat, like Trello’s Card Repeater Power-Up.
Why didn’t I think of this! It’s actually a smart workaround, and the most likely one of the three that I’d go for. I guess I’d need an extra column for templates though, or at least somewhere for them to live. There’s a bit of extra clicking and a bit of extra visual clutter, so it’s not ideal, I might give it a go anyway and see how it feels.
Trello has loads of features but it’s way too cluttered for me with millions of buttons everywhere argghhh! Flat’s interface on the other hand is so inviting and clean, so I’m eagerly awaiting new features that will be coming to Flat in the future.
Glad it’s helpful!
Yes, you could create an extra column for the templates. Alternatively, you could have a completely separate workspace just for the templates. Any time you duplicate a template to create the actual topic, you can move that topic using the ellipsis menu or using Quick edit. (This works because you can move topics between public workspaces.)
This is pure Genius!