ForumsQuestionsTasks, Notes, Outlines, Lists, ...


Tasks, Notes, Outlines, Lists, ...
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Richard Masters

Posted: Sep 18, 2013
Score: 3 Reference
I find the proliferation of tabs - 'Tasks', 'Notes', 'Outlines', and now 'Lists' - increasingly confusing and of no help to my workflow at all.

Toodledo has been a superb *task* management tool for me over the years with great web interface and cross-platform support with apps on Android and iOS.

I am really not sure how having separated lists of notes, outlines and lists helps with this.

What am I missing?
Salgud

Posted: Sep 18, 2013
Score: 3 Reference
Posted by Richard Masters:
I find the proliferation of tabs - 'Tasks', 'Notes', 'Outlines', and now 'Lists' - increasingly confusing and of no help to my workflow at all.

Toodledo has been a superb *task* management tool for me over the years with great web interface and cross-platform support with apps on Android and iOS.

I am really not sure how having separated lists of notes, outlines and lists helps with this.

What am I missing?


I agree. It seems that TD is becoming a collection of loosely related and not well integrated apps.
Scott

Posted: Sep 18, 2013
Score: 0 Reference
you could just stay on the tasks tab and not use the rest, the lack of integration at this point makes it really easy to ignore the parts you don't need.
Salgud

Posted: Sep 18, 2013
Score: 2 Reference
Posted by Scott:
you could just stay on the tasks tab and not use the rest, the lack of integration at this point makes it really easy to ignore the parts you don't need.


This is true. However, there is a larger issue of where the developer's efforts are going, and how that impacts the future of TD, and, as a power user, whether I want to continue using TD. I fear that task management related features, such as task dependencies, custom fields, and another level of subtasks that many of us have been waiting for a long time have now been moved from the back burners off the back of the stove.

It feels like someone made up a list of competitor's features, and then decided to add them, each separate from the others and the existing task manager functionality.


This message was edited Sep 18, 2013.
alicia.altair

Posted: Sep 18, 2013
Score: 0 Reference
I can understand GTD-inclined folks not using features such as Outlines, but I definitely appreciate these new features. I'm an artist who uses productivity tools not to segment my days into hours or next tasks (I shiver at the thought of that), but my months and weeks into focus projects. Outlines and Lists help me localize my creative chaos.
Richard Masters

Posted: Sep 19, 2013
Score: 3 Reference
I fear that the new business plan is to compete with Evernote, which is a doomed venture and personally I will stay with Evernote. Or it is to remain at the 'simple' note-taking end of the market, but that is already occupied by Simplenote, which does that very nicely.

Toodledo's strength is in its powerful task management features with a very good web front end and really good integration with apps on every platform. If they lose focus on maintaining and improving the customer experience of that core functionality it will be at their long-term cost. And that would be a big loss to us all.
Salgud

Posted: Sep 19, 2013
Score: 0 Reference
Posted by Richard Masters:
I fear that the new business plan is to compete with Evernote, which is a doomed venture and personally I will stay with Evernote. Or it is to remain at the 'simple' note-taking end of the market, but that is already occupied by Simplenote, which does that very nicely.

Toodledo's strength is in its powerful task management features with a very good web front end and really good integration with apps on every platform. If they lose focus on maintaining and improving the customer experience of that core functionality it will be at their long-term cost. And that would be a big loss to us all.


Well said!
Purveyor

Posted: Sep 19, 2013
Score: 0 Reference
Posted by Richard Masters:
I fear that the new business plan is to compete with Evernote, which is a doomed venture and personally I will stay with Evernote.
I think that the plan is the same as always: Introduce as many features as possible and fine-tune those features to the point where many users are happy with them. It doesn't have to satisfy all users or even most users, as long as there are enough new users who are willing to pay to have those features.

Toodledo is pretty strongly entrenched as one of the most popular online task managers. Adding Outlines and Lists broadens the scope. And, for Toodledo, breadth is more important than depth.
marius.eggerud

Posted: Sep 20, 2013
Score: 0 Reference
Posted by Purveyor:
Posted by Richard Masters:
I fear that the new business plan is to compete with Evernote, which is a doomed venture and personally I will stay with Evernote.
I think that the plan is the same as always: Introduce as many features as possible and fine-tune those features to the point where many users are happy with them. It doesn't have to satisfy all users or even most users, as long as there are enough new users who are willing to pay to have those features.

Toodledo is pretty strongly entrenched as one of the most popular online task managers. Adding Outlines and Lists broadens the scope. And, for Toodledo, breadth is more important than depth.


And that is why an Android app should be on top of their priority list. It is the only thing keeping my away from using Toodledo as my daily to-do list. I am sure I`m not the only one!
Richard Masters

Posted: Sep 20, 2013
Score: 1 Reference
Here is one small example of the impact of diversification (aka 'spreading resources too thin') in going after new customers at the expense of listening to current paying ones:
http://www.toodledo.com/forums/2/16984/0/wierd-warning-in-chrome-browser.html

This is a relatively small bug but one that is really irritating. It would be so simple to correct but what is Toodledo's attitude to fixing it?
"Thanks for the suggestion. We will think about it"

That does not fill me with confidence for the future maintenance of the task management system that we have all learned to love and depend on.
Scott

Posted: Sep 20, 2013
Score: 1 Reference
Posted by Richard Masters:

This is a relatively small bug but one that is really irritating. It would be so simple to correct but what is Toodledo's attitude to fixing it?
"Thanks for the suggestion. We will think about it"


I don't think it's a bug - it's a valid warning. The option to dismiss gets rid of the larger explanatory text box warning but leaves the small unobtrusive 'warning' at the top to remind that there is a potential issue. I would say they are thinking about if they want to remove a warning to a potentially serious data exposure or if they believe that having the warning stay as long as the issue is present is a better action.
WilcoBis

Posted: Sep 21, 2013
Score: 0 Reference
Posted by Richard Masters:
I find the proliferation of tabs - 'Tasks', 'Notes', 'Outlines', and now 'Lists' - increasingly confusing and of no help to my workflow at all.

...

I am really not sure how having separated lists of notes, outlines and lists helps with this.


I absolutely agree, and add that, mainly for this reason, I happily turned to evernote some months ago. ToodleDo was great, and I loved it, but now a lot of GTD people keep notes in the "cloud", and the new ToodleDo tabs only demonstrate the need for this. Having two or more apps for tasks and notes is not convenient. Evernote is much less task-oriented but has a suberb flexibility that allows GTD to be implemented and to take benefit from the integration with notes.


This message was edited Sep 21, 2013.
Peter Scott

Posted: Sep 21, 2013
Score: 1 Reference
Sadly, I must agree. Sadly, because I will continue using Toodledo and I like its developers, but they appear to have lost their way. I posed a question some days ago: "What do you use outlines for?" and not one person answered. Essentially, outlines add indentation levels to task notes and lists add tables to task notes, and that's it. I can't yet think of a decent use case for either that has anything to do with tasks, which is why I asked.

Whereas I would consider donating money if it accelerated the arrival of more than one level of subtask, and sorting views that attach to custom searches.

I know there's been some development in tasks, like custom searches propagating to iOS, but there's so much more that could be done here - the target I am thinking of is eproductivity - and I don't like seeing the focus diluted.
marius.eggerud

Posted: Sep 22, 2013
Score: 0 Reference
In my opinion both lists and outlines are great additions to Toodledo. I really like it. I really want to use Toodledo as my daily to-do manager, but lack of Android app prevent me from doing so. I'm ready as soon as the app is released.

By the way I use outlines for ideas I want to work on sometime in the future. Gather all of them in their own section is really great.
lynnmcneely

Posted: Oct 22, 2013
Score: 0 Reference
The extra "features" they are adding, while ignoring "task dependency" and "sub-sub-tasks" has caused me to start looking elsewhere.
pjlewis

Posted: Oct 22, 2013
Score: 0 Reference
Firstly I'd like to acknowledge the effort being put in by Jake and the team in making Toodledo such a good product. There are a lot of people depending upon it for their productivity and who are also pationate about the product. We are your best advocates.

The problem is that what appears to us as small problems or changes seem not to be treated with the same level of priority and vigor as chasing new features. It is hard to understand why. It is also hard to understand or be patient when the feature backlog is so opaque and unclear. The lack of consistency between iOS and web interfaces means that new features are rendered useless for a lot of people. The lack of an android app seems to go the same way.

Come on Toodledo. Examine the backlog and prioritise to satisfy your existing customers. It is time to be open and honest. Make your good product into the great product it could be. Please. Before we're no longer pationate or patience runs out.
Jason Bushell

Posted: Oct 23, 2013
Score: 0 Reference
You all need to get out more.
shelbyp

Posted: Oct 24, 2013
Score: 0 Reference
I also agree with the proliferation of tabs and have indicated in the forums that there lacks unity. In particular:

Notes works on folder, no support for tags
outlines and lists: no tags, although keywords

I am already having a hard time to find stuff because of the lack of consistency (I would really like to apply the same set of tags across all tabs). In addition it would be very helpful to have a global search (independent of tab).

Multi-line option in the outline section would essentially make notes redundant.

I am actually starting to like the lists :), but a lack of a clean link to a task or to be able to apply the same tag as in my tasks (or search globally) is making it difficult to integrate cleanly.


This message was edited Oct 24, 2013.
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