January 5, 2005

Tasks Pro

I've been evaluating Tasks Pro as I still haven't found a time/project/todo tracking package that does everything I want. Given enough time and money, I'd just write one myself. Unfortunately time and money are the two things I have the least of right now, so an off-the-shelf solution is looking likely.

I was already predisposed toward the software as I've been reading Alex's blog for many months, and I respect his path toward being self-employed. But I have to say, first impressions are very favourable even without any bias. Tasks Pro is that most rare of things: a self-evident application. It's mostly obvious what I need to do and how to do it, and the application aids rather than hinders as I set about adding my mammoth list of to-do items.
There are a few points that trouble me:

  • It would be nice to be able to assign a task to multiple people, though I guess that doesn't always make a lot of sense.
  • It would also be nice if the task IDs were completely transparent: they shouldn't be visible in the task list, and they shouldn't be needed when referring to the parent of a given task.
  • Inheritance of multiple groups seems a little flakey for sub-tasks.
  • Finally, iCal integration makes individual tasks turn up on the day they are due, not for the period within which they exist (so a week-long task shows up at the end of the week, for example, rather than the whole week).

I'll get round to posting these to the Tasks Pro forum when I've spent more time with the application.
Real selling points have to be the fact that there is iCal integration, and also RSS integration. Seeing your TODO list show up in NetNewsWire is a great reminder that you should be working, not reading blogs ;-)
Anyway, now I can see my TODO list, I'd better get on with work.

Posted by savs at January 5, 2005 5:00 PM
Comments

I look forward to the forum discussion, but I wanted to answer a few of your points here:

- In version 1.5 you can notify multiple people when creating a task (but only one can own it).

- Transparent task IDs has been tossed around, the drawback is that the app then requires UI (a picker) to set the 'parent' value - something that is kind of slow in a web app. Perhaps this is a future preference. I can see how it would seem more user friendly on initial usage if I hid the parent IDs entirely.

- If task group inheritence isn't working in 1.5, I want to know about it. It doesn't exist in versions prior to 1.5.

- The date range change in the iCalendar would be a very easy mod, I'd be happy to help you make it.

Cheers.

Posted by: Alex at January 10, 2005 5:59 AM