Troubleshooting the AI Planner

If you are encountering difficulties with the AI Planner or wondering why certain tasks have not been scheduled in your Frames, these are the most common reasons why certain were excluded from your Frames or no tasks were scheduled at all. In every instance, we share the quick fix to get things working as you would expect.

Issue 1: No tasks are scheduled

A few issues may prevent the AI Planner from scheduling your tasks. Here are the most common:

1. You don’t have any Frames. Morgen’s AI Planner recommends tasks to be scheduled during the work sessions you’ve created using Frames. If you don’t yet have any Frames set up in your calendar, no tasks can be planned for you.

Learn more about how to create the template for your ideal week using Frames in this guide. You will then be all set to start using the AI Planner.

2. Frames aren’t visible. If you have more than one calendar connected to Morgen, you will add each Frame to a specific calendar. Our AI Planner schedules tasks in visible Frames only. So if you are looking at your work calendar but have your Frame created in your personal calendar, no tasks will be scheduled.

Make sure whichever calendar(s) you want to generate plans for are visible when using the AI Planner. You can learn how to quickly choose which calendars are visible in this guide about calendar sets‍.

3. There’s no time available. If you have other tasks, events, or blockers scheduled at the same time as your Frames, the AI Planner is unable to find time to add any tasks.

You can move your Frame to another time or remove those conflicts to open up time for scheduling tasks.

Issue 2: Important tasks were missed

In the AI Planner menu, you may see a list of tasks that are time-sensitive but not scheduled. These are tasks that are overdue or due soon.

Here are the most common reasons these tasks were not scheduled:

1. Insufficient available time. Because of a combination of criteria, other tasks were prioritized first and filled the time available in your Frames.

In this case, you can:

• add another Frame
• increase the duration of an existing Frame to accommodate more tasks
• reprioritize scheduled tasks by removing an already scheduled task to open more time (while in the AI Planner mode, right-click on the task that you want to remove > select Ignore task)
• manually drag the task into your calendar, be it into a Frame to reshuffle other scheduled tasks (must be in AI Planner mode for tasks to reshuffle) or anywhere in your calendar when you have time

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Also, keep in mind, that if you have your AI Planner preferences set to inflate all task time estimates by 20% (which we recommend to anyone new to time blocking), the time available needs to also include that extra time, along with the breaks scheduled by the planner.

2. Task duration exceeds available time. If you have tasks that are estimated to take a long time, they may not fit in a single work session within a Frame. For instance, a 6-hour task will never fit into a 4-hour Frame.

If you have tasks that will take more than 2 hours (assuming you have Frames that are at least 2 hours), we recommend that you allow task splitting in the AI Planner settings. You can choose how long a task must be before it is split and the minimum length of each work session. The AI Planner may then recommend multiple work sessions in order to complete the task.

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3. Excluded based on filter parameters. The filters on your Frames may have excluded these tasks from being identified and scheduled. For instance, if you have a filter that specifies only tasks assigned to you, tasks that don’t meet that criteria will be excluded.

This might be a good signal that your filters are too restrictive. Alternatively, if this is more likely a one-off exclusion, you can drag the task into your calendar to schedule time for it and leave your filters as is.

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4.  Issue related to visible calendars. When in AI Planner mode, only Frames in calendars that are currently visible will be planned. Tasks related to a Frame in another calendar may have been missed if you ran the planner without the target calendar visible. You can learn how to quickly choose which calendars are visible in this guide about calendar sets.

Alternatively, if you had multiple calendars visible while in the AI Planner, the planner will only schedule tasks based on your availability across all visible calendars. If you have an event in another calendar that overlaps a Frame in another calendar, the AI Planner won’t recommend a task at that time knowing you have a scheduling conflict.

5. Missing metadata. The AI Planner relies on the information included in your tasks. For instance, tasks with nearing due dates will be prioritized over those with more distant due dates or with no due dates at all. Similarly, priority levels will be taken into account, so if some tasks don’t include a priority, the AI Planner will deprioritize scheduling that task.

6. They are subtasks. The AI Planner currently does not schedule subtasks. We are reviewing how best to handle subtasks in future iterations.

Issue 3: My task integration doesn’t allow for time estimates

The AI Planner schedules tasks based on the time estimates provided in your tasks. Some task integrations, such as Linear and Obsidian, don’t have a time estimate property. Instead, you can add a duration tag to any task by simply adding [Xm] or [Xh] to the task title or notes in the task source. For example, Morgen can interpret [30m] and [2h], and apply that estimate when time blocking your tasks.

If tasks don’t have a time estimate, they will be set to a default duration. You can set your default duration in the AI Planner preferences (click the AI Planner button in the upper right corner > select Open preferences…), which will be applied to all tasks without an estimate.

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Additionally, you can adjust the default estimates within a planning session by changing the selection in the AI Planner menu.

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Issue 4: Old and irrelevant tasks are being prioritized over new tasks

If you have a number of old tasks in your task lists that are no longer relevant, you may want to take a moment to close those out. You can do so by simply marking them as complete in Morgen.

Because the AI Planner takes into account due dates when prioritizing and ordering tasks within your schedule, old and overdue tasks may be prioritized over new tasks that are of greater importance.

You can remove these tasks within the task panel on the left side of your desktop app or by closing them in the task source.

If you encounter other unexpected issues with the AI Planner, please email us at connect@morgen.so for support or share on our Discord for amazing community troubleshooting.