Tasktop is available as an Eclipse plugin (for developers) and as a standalone application.
It is based on Eclipse. Take the standalone version for testing. Please note that you have to register before you can download a trial copy. Pricing: US$ 60 for the standalone version.

http://www.tasktop.com

Your are organizing your tasks in categories. You activate a task when you start working on it. As soon as you activate a task Tasknote shows you all files, folders and websites associated to the active task in the tree view on the left. Files, folders and websites are associated to the active task as long as you are working with it. When you deactivate the task then the tree view is emptied. When you activate another task then you see only its associated files etc.

It is difficult for me to describe the concept in words. Take a look at the online video: Follow the 'Learn more...' or 'Tour and trial...' links.

Other interesting features:
- Google Calendar or Outlook integration (incl. Sync)
- You can create new files (Word, OpenOffice, text files etc. within Tasktop.
- Tabbed interface
- You can define you standard browser (IE or FF)
- Search

Missing or not perfect at the moment (from my point of view):
- Lotus Notes integration (don't laugh: Lotus Notes is widely used in large companies like IBM or 3M)
- Allowing several workspaces
- Using the same workspace on two different computers (saving the workspace on an USB drive works quite well on my systems)
- Hiearchical tasks
- Printing
- Reports

Take the time to explore Tasktop as it follows a new but very interesting approach. It is available as version 1.0 and the developers are indicating on their website when further releases are coming.

Tasktop is based on Mylyn developed by Mik Kersten. Mik is well-known in the Eclipse/Java community. Further, Tasktop is developed by a team of very skilled professional developers so we can expect they will be in business for some time.

Dominik

Dominik,

Thanks for this; it looks very interesting :-)

alx

Update: my first impression of Tasktop is quite positive albeit not enthusiastic as yet. I don't find the 'task-focused' approach itself as novel as it is presented. The whole idea of 'hoisting' an outline is related to focusing on a specific area of information. I have my project info in UltraRecall; if I hoist on a project, I have immediate access to all my related info while igniring all the rest.

The novelty I find in Tasktop is the 'computer-aided' collection of related information. Rather than having to manually import related documents, links etc as I do in UltraRecall, Tasktop virtually follows me while I'm working on a task, creating links to whatever I search, open or retrieve.

I think only a mid/long-term trial can convince one of the benefits of this automated approach. It does require some discipline. If one forgets to de-activate a task while switching to something irrelevant, one is bound to end up with unrelated content in their task tree.

Tasktop is the second novel PIM kind of software, created and used by a group of professional programmers, that has surfaced in this forum recently. The other is Noah. I find both quite intriguing, offering rather unique tools to partially automate one's organisation. Tasktop is topic-focused, while Noah is time-oriented. I wonder how easy/difficult it would be to have both.

alx

Well, I quite like it - a good task management software is my holy grail. But it doesn't have any support for recurring tasks (what IS so difficult about putting this into software? I can't understand why Kinook, for example, are dragging their feet to improve their support for recurring tasks in Ultra Recall, and why so many other task managers get it so wrong!).

In any case, it's a deal breaker for me, so the wait continues ...

Graham

Alexander Deliyannis wrote:

I think only a mid/long-term trial can convince one of the
benefits of this automated approach. It does require some discipline. If one forgets
to de-activate a task while switching to something irrelevant, one is bound to end up
with unrelated content in their task tree.

My initial response to TopTask is similar to Alexander's. It looks impressive, and I admire the ingenuity. However, if I had the discipline to turn on and off the switch to record my actions for any particular task, I wouldn't need a task manager. (I mean, you should see how often I forget to turn off "magic paste" in Brainstorm, and end up with a bunch of stuff I don't need copied into the program.) Additionally, I think there is advantage in considering which materials to include in your project database.

I did think the calendar feature was appealing - one place to see and manage all your calendars. But then, I don't use more than one calendar. I can't imagine doing so.

Steve Z.

Graham Rhind wrote:

But it doesn't have any support for recurring tasks
...
In any case, it's a deal breaker for me, so the wait
continues ...

I think the meaning of 'task' in Tasktop's context is much closer to 'project' in my own mind. This would also explain the lack of hiearchical tasks as noted by Dominik. Unless one would want to use categories for projects which would be rather useless in my case.

alx

Alexander Deliyannis wrote:

Graham Rhind wrote:
>But it doesn't have any support for recurring tasks
>...
>In
any case, it's a deal breaker for me, so the wait
>continues ...

I think the meaning
of 'task' in Tasktop's context is much closer to 'project' in my own mind. This would
also explain the lack of hiearchical tasks as noted by Dominik. Unless one would want
to use categories for projects which would be rather useless in my case.

alx

Quite possibly, though the lack nesting suggest a basic task list to me. Mik Kerstin has already let me know that he also thinks they should allow for recurring tasks, so perhaps it will be implemented. It's clearly an early release and a work in progress.

I must also compliment their technical service, which have been sweating hard for some hours to identify a problem with Tasktop on my machine.

Graham

Dominik Holenstein wrote:

saving the workspace on an USB drive works quite well on my systems

How exactly do you do that? I found no way to configure where Tasktop saves its files (which I find very unhelpful actually).

TIA
alx

Alx,

Go to Window -> Preferences... -> Mylyn -> Task List -> Click on Task Data (Advanced) then click on 'Browse' at Data directory to choose your perferred drive and folder.

Not really a nice place for such an important setting.


Regarding repeating tasks:
I don't date them. I just keep them in the category. Not perfect but enough for the moment.


Support:
the support is great and I got a immediate reply on an email I sent with my wishlist.

Dominik



Alexander Deliyannis wrote:

Dominik Holenstein wrote:
>saving the workspace on an USB drive works quite well on
my systems

How exactly do you do that? I found no way to configure where Tasktop saves
its files (which I find very unhelpful actually).

TIA
alx

I thought I'd post an update on my experience with Tasktop as I've been using it for the last couple of months or so, since the Summer 2008 version (1.20) was released.

The killer feature that acted as an incentive for me to integrate it in my workflow was the automatic time recording / reporting integrated in the program. Read more about it here: http://tasktop.com/blog/?p=33

The concept of a task-focused workspace is brilliant. Tasktop can provide a place to do many things from --especially if one works a lot within a browser- while recording addresses visited and files opened during the time a task was active. The internal browser uses most of IE's plug-ins that I have installed, e.g. Surfulater and Evernote, and now offers (limited) OLE support that works fine with MS Office applications.

Several enhancements have been made since Tasktop was first discussed here, including multi-level tasks. In fact, I found that Tasktop does many of the things I wished it would do, though this wasn't quite apparent to me at first.

The program's support is top class, even for users like me who don't have the patience to RTFM. In fact, the developers are currently doing a round of phone calls to users to discuss their experience with Tasktop. I wish more companies would do this kind of thing.

The main issues I still have with Tasktop are:
(a) it's a memory hog and rather slow in my year-old machine; I would attribute both of these to its use of Java
(b) it's clearly aimed at software developers as can be seen by the kind of external connectors contemplated: https://tasktop.com/support/survey/integrations.php

The developers are aware of both of the above; from our phone discussion it is clear that they are working on the speed / performance issues (indeed v.1.20 should be better than its predecessors) and they are looking into ways that the program's target public can be expanded.

That's it for the moment
Alexander

I'm also still using Tasktop, and agree entirely about the level and quality of the support.

The integration of the browser with the tasks is a real boon (I don't use the context files feature very much because it doesn't fit with my own work pattern).

My criticisms of the program focus on its weakness as a task manager. It needs to be able to handle all tasks, not just those requiring browsing/file contexts, so that users don't have to use two or more programs for task management. The whole task setup is based on assumptions made by the developers which don't fit in with how their users may be. For example, the user can't specify the default schedule date of a new task (in one edition it defaulted to "today", in the current incarnation it defaults to "this week", so if the user isn't awake enough to change that it causes the task to "disappear" to an unexpected place). On Sunday the day folders run out and don't reappear until Monday, because the developers assume we all work Monday to Friday and cannot conceive that we don't; so one can no longer see the tasks one needs to do the next day. I hope these irritants can be ironed out, because it really could be a real winner. At the current time the weaknesses in the task management are pushing me back towards Zoot, which has the flexibility that the developers are wary about putting into Tasktop.

In my telephone call with Tasktop I pointed them to this group, so hopefully they will read, and act upon, ann comments posted!

Graham

Hi Graham,

Graham Rhind wrote:

On Sunday the day folders run out and don't
reappear until Monday, because the developers assume we all work Monday to Friday and
cannot conceive that we don't; so one can no longer see the tasks one needs to do the next
day.

You obviously use the Focus on Workweek mode for your task list. For my part I have chosen to ignore this kind of auto-hiding of potentially important tasks. I have simply gathered my tasks within certain categories (work, family, personal etc.) and maintain the category relevant to my situation expanded. I am still weary of letting the computer decide what is important or not, that's why I never quite got automatic schedulers such as TimeTo.

Your note on Tasktop being limited to what one can do through a browser is right on spot. Tasktop especially can't deal with whatever one does within an external program such as the all-encompassing PIMs we discuss here. For example, to Tasktop an UltraRecall database is a single file, even though it may represent the totality of one's project information.

In theory, one should be able to create hyperlinks to specific records within such a database if the PIM supports these and UltraRecall, Surfulater, Evernote (2) and several others do. In fact I have tested this kind of linking from Tasktop to databases and it works, though it's not as easy as I'd like it to.

Last but not least, I tried working with Tiddlywiki from within the Tasktop browser and it works fine, as I imagine many other wikis will. If I didn't work with Brainstorm as my main note taking application, I would have a separate Tiddlywiki file for each of my projects (listed as tasks within Tasktop) and would do most of my work from there. In fact, I might even do that for new projects, if I find a powerful enough browser-based wiki.

Alexander

Alexander Deliyannis wrote:

You obviously use the Focus on Workweek mode for your task list.

No I don't, which makes the annoyance more irritating. Tasktop admit it was designed that way - they have good support but aren't very open to the way other people work - a common problem amongst designers of task managers - and they are technical 9 to 5 Monday to Fridayers. Which shows.

Graham

Great to see this discussion, and thank you Alexander Deliyannis for bringing it to my attention by posting on my blog. I replied many of the points that have come up on this thread, see: http://tasktop.com/blog/?p=39#comment-29159

Graham: You will be able to set the default scheduled date in the fall release of Tasktop. To see additional bins, such as Next Week, when in the Scheduled presentation, just unfocus the Task List. Also, note that as far as I know nobody in the Tasktop office has ever worked a typical 9 to 5 workday ;) And we do take these kinds of flexibility concerns very seriously.

The trickiness is always between adding so much flexibility that a UI becomes too cumbersome (e.g., Microsoft Project) or erring too far on the side of simplicity, as with many of the very basic task managers that don't scale to thousands of tasks. Also, note that since we make the Task List an inbox, we need to gracefully support users working with thousands of tasks (I' have ten thousand tasks in mine).

So we've been trying to carefully mix flexibility with usability. The scheduling facilities have been particularly tricky in that respect. For example, like other tools, on Mylyn (the open source underpinnings of Tasktop) we used to use hard dates for scheduling, since there was considerable demand for that at the start. This resulted in too much manaual management of dates, and we ended up taking this feature away from the estimated hundreds of thousands of Mylyn users, which has been a very clear benefit: http://tasktop.com/blog/?p=21

On the flipside, for a long time we pushed back against the need for subtasks, with similar arguments to the Microsoft Outlook team's who again decided to exclude that highly-demanded feature from Outlook 2007 (i.e., complexity and the presence of similar mechanism that can be used for groupings). But we had enough feedback on why this was necessary to allow arbitrary nesting of subtasks.

Dialogues like this one help us prioritize those features, especially when use cases are listed along with the requests, since the notion of focus that we have introduced changes the game by automating manual filtering and sorting activities. So please make sure to let us know on one of the Tasktop community channels if this thread grows again and it's time for us to take another pass through your feature requests :)

Graham: You will be able to set the default scheduled date in the fall release of Tasktop. To see additional bins, such as >Next Week, when in the Scheduled presentation, just unfocus the Task List. Also, note that as far as I know nobody in the >Tasktop office has ever worked a typical 9 to 5 workday ;) And we do take these kinds of flexibility concerns very seriously

Hi Mik,

You missed my point with this one. On Sunday I don't want to see Next Week. I want to see Monday. Again, I never work in focus mode.

In the meantime I've admitted defeat on trying to get Tasktop to work for me as a task manager. I'm using it now only to group related webpages in different "tasks" (such as all e-mail pages, all news webpages, all blogs that I regularly view etc.) so that I don't need to keep all web pages I use open in tabs in my browser.

Graham

Graham Rhind wrote:

You missed my point with this one. On Sunday I don't want to see Next Week.
I want to see Monday. Again, I never work in focus mode.

Ah, thanks for clarifying. Although this has not been a common request, we've heard this from a few others. W should be able to add it as long as we can come up with a scheme that does not overly clutter the Task List. What would you like to see, all of the days broken out for the next week? That would put us at a max of 7 (this week) + 7 (next) week + 3 (future, unscheduled) with a total of 17 containers. We originally worried that was too much information, but given that it's now easy to focus that view, for those who want to declutter it, it might be feasible.

In the meantime I've admitted defeat on trying to get Tasktop to work for me as a
task manager. I'm using it now only to group related webpages in different "tasks"
(such as all e-mail pages, all news webpages, all blogs that I regularly view etc.) so
that I don't need to keep all web pages I use open in tabs in my browser.

If there are shortcomings other than those discuseed above, it would be great to hear more about them in our bugs or forums: http://www.outlinersoftware.com/topics/reply/657 Other than that, It would be great if you could give task management another try when the upcoming fall release comes out, since that will address some of the shortcomings you listed.

Mik Kersten wrote:

What would you like to see, all of the days broken out for
the next week? That would put us at a max of 7 (this week) + 7 (next) week + 3 (future,
unscheduled) with a total of 17 containers.

That would work for me. You might also consider just having 7 days ahead - in the current incarnation the days ahead "drop off" the list as you go through the week, so that by Sunday there are none left. However, I like my software to work the way I need it to, so I prefer any software to give such choices to the user.

Incidentally, as with all my comments, this has been (many moons ago) requested via the Tasktop bug/enhancement request system.

Graham