Working with statechart tasks Copy link to clipboard
While you are busily developing a statechart, it is quite common that you have ideas about what else you could or should do to improve the statechart. However, in order to not get side-tracked, you decide to do it later. Examples are to write a proper documentation for a state, to refine a transition whose final specification you don’t have yet, etc.
For all these and other purposes you can define
tasks in all places in your statechart where a comment is allowed. A task is a special comment comprising the words
FIXME or
TODO. Adding one of these words to a comment is called “tagging” the comment as a task.
The nice thing is that you don’t have to remember all the places you took a note and defined a task. itemis CREATE lists all of your tasks in the tasks view. Figure "Tasks defined by tags in the statechart showing up in the tasks view" is showing an example with various tasks being defined in a transition, in a state’s behavior, in a state’s documentation, and in the statecharts definition section.
Tasks defined by tags in the statechart showing up in the tasks view
In the example, state B has been selected in the statechart editor (top), so that the tasks defined in the state’s behavior and in its documentation are shown in the properties view (middle).
Task have a priority. While
TODO stamps a task as being of normal priority,
FIXME indicates a high-priority task.
By default, tasks are ordered by priority in the tasks view (bottom), and high-priority tasks are accentuated by a red exclamation mark. However, you can change the sorting order and other settings using the view’s menu. Click on the little triangle on the right-hand side of the task view’s title to open the view menu.
Double-clicking on a task in the tasks view navigates to the location where the task is defined. If needed, the corresponding statechart diagram is opened. The graphical element holding the task definition is highlighted.
Note
The tasks view is updated only when the statechart is saved.