Task List Feature in Visual Studio

Introduction

This is my first .NET article in C# Corner. This is all about the Task List window that is helpful in managing comments. Most of us are not aware of this feature. That's why I decided to write an article on this feature of the Visual Studio framework.

Task List

Task List is nothing but an integrated to-do list within the Visual Studio framework. We can use the Task List feature of the Visual Studio framework to create 3 types of tasks.

1. Comments
2. Shortcuts
3. User Tasks

To view the Task List window, select the Task List entry as shown in Fig 1.



Figure 1: How to open Task List window

All the three tasks are listed in the dropdown of the Task List window (Fig 2).



Figure 2: Task List window with category list

1. Comments

Comments are the tasks that we want to do in the code. Suppose we want to create a function that returns the addition of two integers. And this task remains uncompleted because of some other task. We can add a comment using TODO and later do this task. (As given in Fig 3):



Figure 3: Comments Task List window with TODO comment

Here TODO is nothing but an identifier and any comment that starts with TODO is listed in the Comment window of the Task List. TODO is one of the identifiers that is in Visual Studio by default. We can create an identifier of our own. Click "Tools" -> "Options". In the Options dialog, select "Environment" -> "Task List". Enter the name of the identifier in the name box and click add. We can set the priority of an identifier by selecting the priority dropdown list.



Figure 4: How to add user defined identifier

After creating the Test1 identifier, we can use it in our code as shown in Fig 5. It is added in the comments Task List window. If we double-click the comments task, we can jump to the line of code where we place the comment.



Figure 5: User defined identifier example in Comments

2. Shortcuts

Shortcut tasks are nothing but links to the line of code within the project. They are similar to bookmarks. We can jump to the line of code by clicking the shortcut task of the Task List window.

To add a shortcut task, just click Ctrl+E, T or go to "Edit" -> "Bookmarks" then click the "Add Task List" shortcut.

When we complete a specific shortcut task, we just check the checkbox associated with the task. This is only for our information.



Figure 6: Shortcut symbol and Shortcut window

3. User Tasks

User Tasks are the tasks that the user wants to do. It's either personal or project related that he/she wants to list. The User Tasks are directly entered in the Task List window. We need to click a button near the category dropdown list to add a new User Task as shown in Figure 6.

If we completed a specific User Task, just check the checkbox associated with the task.



Figure 7: User Tasks window

Summary

This article is for entry-level programmers who are unfamiliar with the Task List feature of the Visual Studio .NET Framework.