What does it do? 

The Taskcenter is designed to be a place to manage all kind of tasks. It is especially useful for editors to have a central place of common activities in the TYPO3 backend. The tasks need to be implemented by other extensions, for example the system extension sys_actions & impexp.

Screenshots 

This is a view of the BE module's main screen. 5 different tasks are implemented in this example.

Current state 

The extension has been part of TYPO3 Core for a very long time but never received much love. It may become more healthy if maintained as third party extension and has been extracted for this reason.

Hide tasks 

It is possible to hide tasks from users by using the following TSconfig (User TSconfig):

taskcenter {
        <extension-key>.<task-class>= 0
}

Be aware that the parts between the < and > need to be replace by the actual extension key and class name.

Creating the task class 

This is the heart of a task. It is the code that actually does what the task is supposed to do. A task is represented by a PHP class that implements the interface \TYPO3\CMS\Taskcenter\TaskInterface:

namespace Foo\Bar\Task;
class DoSomething implements \TYPO3\CMS\Taskcenter\TaskInterface {
  public function getTask() {
            ...
  }
  public function getOverview() {
            ...
 }
}

The 2 mentioned method must be implemented!

getTask()

The function getTask() is expected to perform the task logic and returns the content of the task.

getOverview()

The function getOverview() creates an optional menu of items or description which is rendered in the menu of tasks.

Autoloading 

The Taskcenter expects all task classes to be available with the TYPO3 autoloader. They thus must be declared in the ext\_autoload.php file of the extension that provides these classes. Again the ext\_autoload.php file of sys_action can be used as an example.

Declaring the task class 

As a last step, the task class must be declared so the Taskcenter knows of its existence. The declaration must be placed in the ext_tables.php file of the extension that provides the task. Let's look at the declaration of sys_action as an example:

$GLOBALS['TYPO3_CONF_VARS']['SC_OPTIONS']['taskcenter']['sys_action']['tx_sysaction_task'] = array(
	'title' => 'LLL:EXT:sys_action/Resources/Private/Language/locallang_tca.xlf:sys_action',
	'description' => 'LLL:EXT:sys_action/Resources/Private/Language/locallang_csh_sysaction.xlf:.description',
	'icon' => 'EXT:sys_action/Resources/Public/Images/x-sys_action.png'
);

The registration is made in the array $GLOBALS['TYPO3_CONF_VARS']['SC_OPTIONS']['taskcenter']. A key is then used that corresponds to the task class (in bold above). Then come 3 parameters:

• title : the name of the task. May use localized labels.
• description : a text describing the task. It is displayed in the information screen of the BE module. May use localized labels.
• icon : Path to an icon for the task.

License 

The extension is published under GPL v2+, all included third-party libraries are published under their respective licenses.

Authors 

Many contributors have been working on this area while this functionality was part of the TYPO3 Core. This package is now maintained by a loose group of TYPO3 enthusiasts inside the TYPO3 Community. Feel free to contact Benni Mack for any questions regarding "taskcenter".