Here is a new one that hasn't been mentioned on our forum before:

http://www.watership-planner.com/

I haven't tried it yet, but it looks potentially interesting as a task manager. I found out about this on the TimeTo Yahoo group, and the poster noted that Watership doesn't automatically forward uncompleted items to the next day the way TimeTo does.

Chris

This looks quite interesting - a third Windows dynamic scheduler to add to Above&Beyond and Time To, more developed than the former and better-looking, less complex and more informative perhaps than the latter. Sadly on a cursory examination it appears not to be sync-able with Outlook.

I'm giving it a try now, but it will take a while to manually enter all my tasks.

In the meantime I wanted to add to the list of dynamic planners: TaskLine, which is an Outlook addin that dynamically schedules your outlook tasks and puts them into your Outlook calendar, working around any scheduled appointments. It basically runs my life for me -- but I'm always on the lookout for something better.

The developer has let me know that Outlook syncing is planned.

Graham

Graham - thanks!

dan - doh! I'd forgotten TaskLine despite owning a licence for it several years ago. In the end, although it was competent, I abandoned it because it refused to work with some other Outlook sync-ers I also owned. Palm conduits? Can't remember. I see it's updated to version 3 this month, and says it now works with various add-ins, including David Allen's GTD.

Hi, I just looked at Watership planner after seeing the post on vertical monitor orientation. I didn't expect such a polished, functional solution... WOW!

The developer has rewritten the interface since 2008, and Outlook sync for calender items has been added. Through some email with the developer, he explained how to manually sync Outlook tasks, and mentioned that he is creating Outlook buttons to open a mail/task inside Watership. I decided that trying to keep tasks in sync with Outlook to sync to Ultra Recall is simply a waste of time!

The planner provides:
Task manager
Project planner (tied to tasks if desired) - Entire project and milestone progress is shown
Calendar with automated scheduling - Daily and weekly overviews
Personal development - goal planning
Time tracker with comprehensive statistics

The ease of use of these modules and the strong linking of features is a huge strength. I haven't tested enough for a full review, but I highly recommend this one to be demoed. I was very negative about software that micromanages time, ie. Achieve planner appeared too time consuming and cluttered to use. Watership streamlines the process, and is very intuitive. It also seems to make tracking personal goals and productivity very easy. Everything is customizable, such as views and color coding of various contexts.

I was previously holding on to using Ultra Recall linked to Outlook task folders for task managment and scheduling. Now I realize that a great program like this will enhance productivity greatly, and I feel relieved to abandon trying to keep everything archived in UR. Watership is being activity developed, with many new features rolling out. The only negative is a lack of good documentation, which hopefully will improve as well. A license is also $90 (including 1 year of upgrades, never expires), but you get what you pay for.

In short, this program is something that should appeal to our "community", and has very strong features and ease of use. I strongly urge everyone to try it!

Best, /Pavi



Graham Rhind wrote:

The developer has let me know that Outlook syncing is planned.

Graham

Thanks Pavi. It's a bit weird that the developer didn't think to inform his registered users of the updates - no wonder so much software ends up defunct!

Pavi,

How do you manually sync Outlook tasks?

I recently downloaded the new version of WP and was disappointed that it syncs Outlook calendar items but not outlook tasks. Also, am I correct in recalling that notes attached to a task can only be plain text, not rich text? If it had rich text and if I could sync outlook tasks, I would give it another (3rd or 4th) look.

Hi,

It seems I misread the mail. He stated that there are two ways to solve this, which could then be implemented. He also said the reason for not syncing tasks is due to mismatches in the fields used. I originally wanted to sync Tasks, since through Outlook I can sync with Ultra Recall and my Android phone. However, now I realize that trying to keep everything synced on my phone all the time is not productive. As far as archiving, he mentions that the SQL database is located under \AppData\Roaming and can be exported to CSV, etc. using other tools.

I don't see any way to add RTF to tasks, but it might be possible. I personally don't want to do this, as all my files/work is stored in Ultra Recall. I was attaching everything to project folders and tasks in UR, but it was very time consuming and I am hoping to break from that.

I will notify the developer of this thread as he is more qualified to respond.

Best, /Pavi

dan7000 wrote:

Pavi,

How do you manually sync Outlook tasks?

I recently downloaded the new
version of WP and was disappointed that it syncs Outlook calendar items but not
outlook tasks. Also, am I correct in recalling that notes attached to a task can only be
plain text, not rich text? If it had rich text and if I could sync outlook tasks, I would
give it another (3rd or 4th) look.