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Task managers - what should they be able to do?
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Posted by Graham Rhind
Apr 5, 2008 at 10:43 AM
I’d like to add another entry to my original “important” requirements list: a system-wide hot key for adding new tasks (a la Ctrl-Z in Zoot)
Graham
Posted by Alexander Deliyannis
Apr 5, 2008 at 11:13 AM
Jack Crawford wrote:
>Just to get back to Graham’s original post and comprehensive list.
>My only refinement would be to move email syncing from important to critical.
I would personally choose more general terms for a task manager’s essential interconnection, including e-mail, like supporting drag-n-drop and/or copy/pasting of links from other programs. Nowadays, many of the programs we discuss here provide URLs (links) to their contents. Programs such as Zoot, Surfulater, Evernote, Outlook etc.
This means that one can easily link to all the content related to a specific task, wherever that content may be. Syncing IMHO would add quite a lot of redundancy to a program that obviously isn’t conceived to handle e-mail (or whatever). On the other hand, one may want to have an all-round solution, though I personally prefer the specialised software approach.
I do understand that sometimes it’s good to have all the information locally (a related e-mail after all may just be a small note) so, ideally, the task manager should provide an option to link to or to copy the required information (as long as the original program supports both options as well).
On a different theme, my own personal highlight would be hierarchical task management, i.e. not just one level of categorisation/tagging but many. This is one of my issues with the program I currently work with, Tasktop.
Last but not least, I would require filtering (by whatever column value) and some kind of hoisting in order to maintain focus.
alx
Posted by Alexander Deliyannis
Apr 5, 2008 at 11:15 AM
Daly de Gagne wrote:
>Graham, I like the web-based program given with my signature.
Which program are you referring to exactly?
alx
Posted by Jack Crawford
Apr 6, 2008 at 12:27 AM
Alexander Deliyannis wrote:
>Jack Crawford wrote:
>>My only refinement would be to move email syncing from important to
>critical.
>
>I would personally choose more general terms for a task manager’s
>essential interconnection, including e-mail, like supporting drag-n-drop and/or
>copy/pasting of links from other programs. Nowadays, many of the programs we discuss
>here provide URLs (links) to their contents. Programs such as Zoot, Surfulater,
>Evernote, Outlook etc.
I agree Alex. A poor choice of words on my part. I meant email connectivity rather than syncing. My point simply was that there are many task managers out there that do not offer email import or some other email link.
As to my earlier missing post, I had a system failure when I tried to send it. I don’t know whether it was a website issue or a problem at my end. I didn’t keep the contents so I would be grateful if someone can repost - assuming that it is considered of interest. :-)
Jack
Posted by Alexander Deliyannis
Apr 6, 2008 at 07:14 AM
[re-posted here from RSS on behalf of Jack]
>Graham Rhind wrote:
>I only started using Outlook with version 2007 (I’m no expert with it!) and I think it’s the new flagging system in that version that gives >no option to copy the e-mail instead of flagging it as a todo. See http://blogs.msdn.com/melissamacbeth/archive/2006/10/26/don-t-delete-mark-it-complete.aspx
>It would be nice if there was a way around it.
Hi Graham
I just tested this and I get a different result on my Outlook 2007 SP1. Flagging an email (i.e. follow-up) places a task in the To-do Bar. Trying to delete the task there does give the message about deleting the email as well. However, marking it complete in the To-do Bar (right click | follow-up | mark complete) causes the task to disappear. It does not appear at all in my tasks folder. The original email remains where it was, but now with the header changed to indicate that there had been a follow-up now completed. Was the problem fixed in SP1?
If this still doesn’t work, I would use the old 2003 techniques: drag & drop the email onto the task folder to create a new task, or open a blank new task and insert item (the relevant email).
I agree it’s important to be able to link emails and tasks (as well as emails and calendar items).
Hope this helps somehow.
Jack