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Ummagumma

Score: 1
They really belong together since both are the same feature (custom filtering). Just add Saved Searches to the Eye drop-down menu. It would help to avoid the fragmentation of similar functions scattered in different places in the interface.
Ummagumma

Score: 3
There's plenty of space to the left of the eye icon in Web interface, it could be used to show what exactly is being filtered (e.g. "Neg / Fut / Comp").

Knowing exactly what tasks you don't see is very important.
Ummagumma

Score: 0
Posted by Purveyor:
Good to know, thanks.
For now, I'll stay with Todo and wait for the next version of the Toodledo app.

Here something else to look at: https://www.mylifeorganized.net/
It will do everything you want, but it's a bit expensive and there's no web version.


I know of MLO. It's a bit too much of a system contained all in itself. One of the lessons I've learned the hard way was that relying on a highly customized system that is centered on one product will inevitably result in a massive PITA once that product is no longer available or optimal for my use. So now, all of my workflow - not only task management - is set up to be as tool-independent as possible, and as accessible as possible (so web access is a must). Part of the reason I no longer use Onenote for personal data.

I did run into a small issue with 2Do - when I star a task in 2Do and then unstar it in Toodledo, the 2Do doesn't change. Not a biggie, since I only use the Star in 2Do anyway, because of how it's incorporated in their widget. Before that, I'd reserve the Top priority for "today" items and set up a filter.

If I, for whatever reason, am forced to quit using Toodledo, I will finally try and design a system that works with the "Dumb pack" of Google Task / iOS Reminders / any other system that only allows one date to be associated with tasks. I have some ideas on how to make it happen while still retaining flexibility. But I don't have the time for hoop jumping right now.


This message was edited Jul 22, 2017.
Ummagumma

Posted Jul 21, 2017 in: For when new iOS
Score: 0
Actually, just making the task title font bold in both the list and detail view would be a tremendous improvement already - and something you could probably do in no time.
Ummagumma

Score: 0
Posted by Purveyor:
Appigo Todo has Projects and Checklists but, if I use one of those in the app, there's an annoying special comment in Notes in Toodledo after syncing. That special comment does show up when viewing the task in Todo. I'm wondering how it works in 2Do.


Nothing shows up anywhere. The developer of 2Do seems to have an aversion to using any kind of text tags that would be visible in other apps. (I actually sometimes prefer to have them, even if it means getting some extraneous characters in the Notes field). So far as I can tell, any 2Do-specific features leave no trace whatsoever.


This message was edited Jul 21, 2017.
Ummagumma

Posted Jul 21, 2017 in: Non-relative alarms
Score: 0
Jake,

Can you please add to your long list of things to do the ability to create alarms with user selected date and time, unrelated to the due date.

In my workflow, for example, a due date is reserved for tasks that actually have a deadline. I use start dates as my main trigger to start working on tasks, and I would rather be able to associate an alarm with that.

The best way would be to just add an option for a custom date / time alarm that is not tied to any other task-related dates.
Ummagumma

Posted Jul 21, 2017 in: For when new iOS
Score: 0
Whatever you do, please make the text size user configurable and allow bold font ! It's currently so small on both my iPhone and iPad Mini, I have to squint and have to force myself to use the app. Besides, it makes the task subject to appear visually "lost" among all other information. And please add a "new task" button to the widget.

As much as I like 2Do, I would probably switch to Toodledo app just to get a consistent workflow, but I can't use it now - not everyone has a perfect vision...


This message was edited Jul 21, 2017.
Ummagumma

Score: 0
Posted by Purveyor:
I've looked at practically every task/todo app that exists. :-0

I bought 2Do a few years ago and I looked at it again when you mentioned it in another topic.
I'm not thrilled with the overall look but it's not bad. I don't like swiping left and right to show and hide screens. Seems to be quite finicky on my iPhone.
It has a few more features than Todo (attachments, Smart Lists) but it doesn't have Contexts, which I use.

How is the syncing with Toodledo? It seems that you were having some problems.
How does the syncing handle features that aren't in Toodledo: Actions, Projects, Checklists and Photos?


The syncing problems were due to me running both the 2Do and Toodledo mobile apps together. They went away once I uninstalled Toodledo apps.

I don't use goals or contexts or actions. I am trying to not lock myself into one system, got burned a few times having to change platforms and apps and then being forced to completely redo my workflow. I posted the workflow I use above. Basically, every system supports Lists (Folders) and Due dates, after that the field is getting narrower and narrower. I only require / use Due date, start date, priority, and Notes. The rest is optional.

I also don't use the attachments, for the same reason. Instead, I copy links to the Google Drive files into Notes field. So I don't know if 2Do attachments can sync over to Toodledo.

What I like about 2Do is their great support for start date, and quick filtering and sorting based on advanced criteria. E.g. it's one of the few apps that allow me to set a start date without due date. So I can set a trigger for a task without creating a fake due / overdue condition. The second feature is the "Focus" button that can be configured independently (and very quickly) for each list separately. Finally, it has an extremely configurable widget. Also, it's all designed in the way that makes manipulating the tasks very quick and intuitive, for me at least.

Actions and contexts could be replicated by Tags, as I said though, I don't use them.

Checklists are supported, actually 2Do has two types - Projects where every subtask has it's own due date (like in Toodledo) and Checklists where they all have the same due date as the master task.

Ideally, I would still prefer to use Toodledo's own app, just to have a consistent way of doing things across all of my devices. But I can't stand the tiny font, I have to squint and I hate using the app.


This message was edited Jul 20, 2017.
Ummagumma

Score: 0
Have you looked at 2Do ? It's what Toodledo's mobile client should have been. Fantastic implementation of smart lists aka saved searches, great configurable widget, quick access to custom filtering that can be set on the fly per list (!), a very basic but useful calendar module for meetings, basically the more I use it the more I realize the developer pretty much thinks like I do. I bought it years ago on sale but didn't really come to appreciate it until now. (I will still check out Appigo just in case).

I've read up on Toodledo yesterday, and I didn't realize until then that it is basically a one-man show. This explains a lot of direction decisions that I couldn't understand. Kudos to Jake, what he has built is very impressive indeed, considering he's up against teams of developers yet has one of the most comprehensive systems on the market. I just hope he has time & inclination to put a lot more attention on mobile clients - this is where the most users are gained / lost, and TD's mobile clients need lots of love.


This message was edited Jul 20, 2017.
Ummagumma

Score: 0
So, here's my method du jour. I tried to design it so that it worked with different services, so I put the Toodledo terminology along with more "common" terminology.

I use just a few major task attributes - Folders (Lists), Start date (Alarm), Due Date, Priority (including Star). Everything else, is optional and not essential.

Folders are basically categories. It's important to also have a Master task list to see all tasks at once.

Start date is my main trigger for a task. This is what makes Toodledo stand out - very few other services have separate start (or Alarm) and due dates. When a task triggers it's Start date, I must look at it. This doesn't necessarily mean "start working on it". It just means I have to take some action - including moving the start date. This is to make sure I don't miss the window of opportunity to work on that task.

Due date is another trigger point, reserved for tasks that have real deadlines. Many of my tasks have only a start date and no due date.

Priorities are to set the order in which I will work on my tasks. The ability to select a group of tasks to work on next - regardless of due date - is what's missing from most task management services. It's central to the way I work. I set the top 3-4 tasks as "Top priority" (I use Star in Toodledo, but only because I use Toodledo). I set the next 4-6 tasks as the next priority level.

A few times a week, I review my master task list, and set the Today and Next tasks. After that, I don't want to see the rest of my tasks except the ones that reached the trigger point. When I am up to my ears in work and behind the clock and the emails keep pouring in, seeing all these tasks in my list only stresses me out. This is where custom filtering comes into play. And this is what makes reminders (alarms, popups etc) so important - to make sure I don't miss a trigger date for a task that's been filtered out. If this wasn't important, I'd keep my task list in Excel.

The final part of this whole system is accessibility. I need to be able to look at my task list / receive alarms anywhere. This is why a decent mobile client that supports my workflow is essential.

Toodledo has all the basic components, but as I said, many limitations.


This message was edited Jul 19, 2017.
Ummagumma

Score: 0
Posted by Purveyor:
Have you read Mark Foster's thoughts on task management?
http://markforster.squarespace.com/


I just did :)

It may work for many people, and some elements are in agreement with what I am doing, like setting a daily goal of tasks to work on first and next.

However, there are some areas where his approach won't work for me. He makes no allowance for sudden intererence / change of plans, which in a typical job is a norm rather than an exception. He doesn't seem to have any special handling for tasks that have a deadline and require long time to complete, especially when there's a fair amount of them overlapping and conflicting with one another. The whole idea behind using a service like Toodledo is to handle these kinds of tasks. His approach would be best served with something like iOS Reminders or Google Tasks, simple and straightforward list.


This message was edited Jul 19, 2017.
Ummagumma

Score: 1
Posted by boydston01:
It sounds to me like you may need an app more akin to a full blown project management solution.


No, I disagree. There's really very little additional features that I'd want to have, just being able to use existing ones better. I don't need all of the power of MS Project for this.
Ummagumma

Score: 0
Posted by frindley:


I may well be mis-imagining your use of Toodledo but I don't find the subtasks a problem in this way. Assuming I have assigned the tasks/subtasks to a date, then they are only ever visible to me when I'm viewing that particular date and the rest of the time I don't see them unless I choose.

I find I spend most of my time in Toodledo viewing specific days in the Dates/Calendar view, sorting by context, then folder. (I use the Inline view for subtasks because that's by far the cleanest and doesn't mess with my preferred sorting hierarchy.) And in fact one of the reasons I'm totally wedded to Toodledo, despite some of the flaws you mention, is the feature of estimated task Length with Total Lengths (and Total Timers). No other tasks app allows me to assess so easily how much work I'm planning for myself on any given day and to then adjust things accordingly.

The other feature I quite like is that I can see a task (which technically is almost always a subtask, since I have only three parent tasks per project) and then click to view the parent task/companion subtasks, at which point it will bring up tasks that might be scheduled for other days. That allows me access the bigger picture very easily when I need to, while ensuring that most of the time I'm only seeing the tasks for the chosen day.

I'll do bigger planning/initial due date assignments using the Folder view, reviewing everything for a particular publication project (folder), but for the most part I find the Dates/Calendar single-day view the most useful.



So, here's my typical use scenario.

I have a presentation to prepare for August 2nd . It will require pulling together some information, making a few phone calls, and perhaps setting up a meeting or two. So I need to start working on it no later than next Wednesday.

I have several proposals that are due anywhere from a week from now to late August. I need to start working on some of them this week, at the very least, and make sure I start getting them out of the way within a couple weeks.

I also have a number of tasks, some of them with due dates, some without. I think I currently have about 30 - 40 active work-related tasks, and that's with me keeping any high-level "goal setting" type of tasks in mindmaps. Some of these due dates are "hard", i.e. deadlines that I have no control over. Others are "soft", set by me to meet a particular goal.

Just going by the date won't do me much good, I also need to take into consideration the amount of time I have, the meetings and conference calls that take a good chunk out of that time, inevitably getting sidetracked, and making sure that tasks with no set due date still get done. Start and due dates are just one part of equation.

I am trying to plan my work 2-3 days ahead, at least. Obviously adjusting for last minute changes. I handpick 3-4 tasks to work on today and apply star to them, and another 4-6 to work on next and apply top priority. Not necessarily in their due date order. I may start working on something that is not due for another two weeks, just to get going and get some progress, and postpone some other task due in a few days, knowing I will have time to finish it in advance.

Once I get really busy, I don't have time to massage my task list. I don't even want to see most of my tasks unless I really have to. It's distracting. I use saved searches to only concentrate on my handpicked task list. But I don't want to get so busy I lose track and all of a sudden I've missed my trigger point for a task that was hidden.

And this is why being able to roll subtasks into parent tasks and have them automatically show up on start or due date would be so useful.


This message was edited Jul 19, 2017.
Ummagumma

Score: 0
Posted by frindley:
if your needs require numerous top level tasks (as opposed to my system of just three tasks with many subtasks under these) then it likely won't work for you. But perhaps it might work for someone else who stumbles on this thread.


Well, that's the problem. Can I fit everything under 4-5 top level tasks ? Sure, but it's going to look ugly, and copying them all to a new project every time will still be a chore.

I am re-thinking the use of subtasks, anyway. When I signed up for a paid plan, I had this misunderstanding that the subtasks could be hidden away / collapsed inside the main task until they hit their trigger point (start or due date). (*) This is not the case. So breaking my tasks into clusters of main and subtasks only ends up in me having to do more clicking to go through it all. I understand that the subtasks are very useful to some people as a way to visually organize their task hierarchy, but I need them to hide things out of the way and keep my task list manageable.

(*) I subscribed for two years because I've been using Toodledo Free on and off for years, and wanted to contribute something, so I'd subscribe anyway.

I keep oscillating between Toodledo and Outlook as my main task systems. The problem with Outlook is that there's few iOS task clients that sync with it, and allow the use of extra fields like Start time, and sync these extra fields to Outlook. E.g. 2Do has the extra fields but they don't sync to Outlook tasks. PlanBe and Calengoo have the Start Date and sync it to Outlook tasks but have very basic task management features. Informant removed Start field from Reminders and has become very expensive.

The advantage of Outlook is of course that it can be set up to work any which way you want - with the exception of subtasks - and using templated tasks or doing any kind of mass manipulation of tasks is a breeze. And of course it's saved filters are every bit as powerful as Toodledo's.

I did try gSyncit but it couldn't even install on my work laptop, and the developer was of little help.

Anyway...


This message was edited Jul 19, 2017.
Ummagumma

Score: 1
Posted by Purveyor:

It seems that, despite your pseudo-apology, you want to continue your harsh criticism but you need to justify it because you are being honest.
:-(


I may just stop the criticism and move on to another platform, which is what many seem to be doing. I've had a bit of time to kill in an airport and looked at the profiles of all the people in a feature request thread from 5 years ago. I'd say 90% of them are no loner active users.

Task management is a very saturated field. Compared to most other players, Toodledo comes rather short in the ease of use / simplicity or looks areas. (Sorry, even with redesign). It's mobile offerings are a mixed bag, at best. It's core strength is in the added task management features. The ability of users to utilize these added features is currently limited. The biggest limitations - in my subjective opinion - are in the way the subtasks work, in the way the templates work, and in the design of mobile apps (especially the tiny little font that can't be changed, and the widget that is completely non-configurable and doesn't show the information I need).

So the question is, what is it that Toodledo offers that sets it apart from Todoist / Anydo / Ticktick / Google Tasks / iOS Reminders / Outlook.com tasks / Microsoft Todo / Omni / etc ? And what in particular would make an average user - who apparently, per Toodledo's own Jake, isn't particularly "advanced" - pay for a yearly subscription ? I have no idea what Toodledo's user retention rate is, and what it's conversion rate is from free to paid, but I have a sneaking suspicion it's not very high.

They already have a very capable set of features. But they need to allow users to unlock these features to get the best advantage of them. Having subtasks that can only be either completely hidden or lost, or always on screen, instead of intelligently popping up on start / due dates, is a limitation. Having a custom search that needs to be manually updated every time a user creates a new folder, and can't use name wildcards, is a limitation. Having no ability to copy a number of tasks from one folder to another, and thus no way to set up a custom template folder, is a limitation.

Toodledo has a very competitive set of features that all other services don't offer in one package. It was clearly created by someone with a deep understanding of task management. But every limitation takes away some of that competitiveness.


This message was edited Jul 19, 2017.
Ummagumma

Score: 0
Jake,

First, I want to apologize if my criticism of TD sounds harsh, this is certainly not my intent. I know can be very direct sometimes.

Second, here's the problem:

"You are clearly a Toodledo Power User. The limitation that you are bumping up against is not something that 99.9% of our users encounter."

Quite honestly, this surprises me very much. I don't consider myself a power user at all (a real power user would probably use a custom tailored system at work, tied with Project).

If the majority of your users don't need fairly straightforward features like automatically showing due or starting subtasks when the date is triggered, or being able to reuse a folder of templated tasks with few simple clicks, then you're honestly catering to the wrong audience. They would be better off using a simplified, straightforward, eye-candy mobile-friendly system like Todoist / Any.Do / Ticktick / ToDo. (And I suspect that's where many TD users eventually end up...)

Toodledo's unique strength is in things all these systems don't provide - start date, advance filtering, etc. Except, as I said earlier, all these potentially powerful features are being held back by design limitations that - honestly - don't always make sense. But then I am not a programmer...


This message was edited Jul 18, 2017.
Ummagumma

Score: 0
I saw it, thanks. The problem is that every parent / children combo must be copied separately. E.g. I started a project template and right now I have 25 tasks in it, grouped under 5 parent items. To use that template in a new project, I have to perform clone / assign new folder operation 5 times.

And this was just a test to see how it works. In my complete project checklist template, I would likely end up with at least a dozen or so parent tasks, perhaps more, all with multiple subtasks, and at least as many "orphaned" individual tasks. All of which must be individually duplicated and reassigned. This is just too much work.

If I use CSV import, I run into a different set of issues. First, it's a clunky approach, especially on the mobile. Second, the subtask structure is lost on import, so I end up with a disorganized pile of individual tasks. The bottom line is, the concept of a preset task templates is great, but the implementation doesn't really work well for anything outside a simple reusable checklist.

It's the same thing with the way subtasks are working in general. The whole idea of having them - for me at least - is to minimize the amount of information on the screen, hiding tasks until their start or due dates. Except this is not how it works in Toodledo. If I hide them, they will remain hidden even on due date. If I keep the parent / child tasks expanded, then it takes away the main reason to use them in first place. 2Do handles it better - the subtask stays hidden until it's triggered by date.

Anyway, this is why I am so frustrated with TD sometimes. They have the best system for handling complex tasks, they support all of the necessary feature enablers, yet they have so many built in limitations, these features can't be well utilized.
Ummagumma

Score: 0
Jake,

I've been using Toodledo long enough to know that this basically means a polite "get lost". :)

The inability to create and easily reuse task project folder templates really undermines the added value of premium functionality (subtasks). If a typical project structure can't be quickly applied to new projects, it makes subtasks all that much less interesting. One would think Toodledo would try to make premium subscriptions more appealing to potential users by supporting some pretty common use scenarios...


This message was edited Jul 17, 2017.
Ummagumma

Score: 0
But that's my point, exactly.

It's currently impossible to duplicate a folder, it's impossible to preserve parent / child relationship on CSV export, it's impossible to batch-duplicate multiple tasks and move to another folder, it's impossible to use wildcards / "Contains" in Advanced searchbes on folders, it's impossible to have a specific tag automatically applied to items in specific folders, and the XML route requires a lot of manual labor.

With all these limitations, it's pretty hard to utilize Toodledo to it's full advantage. Like creating a templated folder for project tasks and reusing it one project after another.

And I don't think that this has anything to do with any programming language restrictions - years ago I used an outliner program called ListPro that would do CSV export / import while maintaining the multiple-level outline structure. And I really fail to see the reason for not being able to batch duplicate / move a list of tasks, or for not being able to use "Contains" type search for folders. Must be the built-in design limitations.
Ummagumma

Score: 0
One of the reasons I started using subtasks is so that I could create a standard template for a typical project and start using it for all new projects.

Finally got around to this and boy, do these guys make it impossible !

Can't duplicate a folder.

Can't copy multiple tasks to another folder.

Can't export tasks as an editable CSV file and preserve parent / child structure.

Can't create a new work project folder and automatically have it show in my saved searches based on wildcards. Every freaking new folder must be manually added.

Can't have an automatic category assigned per folder. So no workaround here, too.

Toodledo starts to feel more and more like a great new power tool without handles and with a bad fuse.
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