Looking for software that checks next actions against projects

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tominperu

Registered
One of the things to do during the weekly review is to check that all current projects have at least one next action.

I use Outlook and have already found the instructions at http://home.comcast.net/~whkratz/id3.htm, with how to turn Contacts into Projects each with associated next actions assigned to them. This is an excellent and highly recommended improvement but it is still far from ideal.

To check each project for next actions one has to laboriously open each Project and then open Activities....and for some reason Outlook is soooo slow.

It would be great to have a piece of "to do list" software that can give you a project list with each project's next actions listed alongside. Projects that don't have any next action linked to them would also have to be listed. Also, the next actions that are not linked to any project should be listed. It would make the weekly review so much quicker. This can't be hard to construct so why has no one produced such a software.... or have they?

Does anyone have any info or experience on this matter? Cheers :-?
 
mcogilvie

mcogilvie

Registered
tominperu said:
I use Outlook and have already found the instructions at http://home.comcast.net/~whkratz/id3.htm, with how to turn Contacts into Projects each with associated next actions assigned to them. This is an excellent and highly recommended improvement but it is still far from ideal.

To check each project for next actions one has to laboriously open each Project and then open Activities....and for some reason Outlook is soooo slow.
Click to expand...

I don't use Outlook anymore, but as an alternative, you can use an extra field to store project names, and then look at your tasks in a collapsible list using that field. That does make one aspect of the weekly review easier. I taught my wife to do this using one of the fields that KeySuite syncs, so she has her projects on both her work and home PC as well as her palm.

Life Balance, which runs on pc/mac/palm platforms (windows mobile coming) will do what you want, but requires different practices than Outlook to make GTD work.
 
T

tominperu

Registered
Thanks for your response. Actually I now realise I have done that already, but thanks for clarifying it can be done already in Outlook.

As you realise, one still has to click though all the projects to make sure that each project has a next action. What would be ideal would be a complete project list with a sublist of all next actions for each project, with also a list of unassigned next actions. Then hopefully one could drag and drop next actions onto projects as necessary.

If that is the case with Life Balance that is fantastic. I will look for that and check it out.
 
mcogilvie

mcogilvie

Registered
tominperu said:
Thanks for your response. Actually I now realise I have done that already, but thanks for clarifying it can be done already in Outlook.

As you realise, one still has to click though all the projects to make sure that each project has a next action. What would be ideal would be a complete project list with a sublist of all next actions for each project, with also a list of unassigned next actions. Then hopefully one could drag and drop next actions onto projects as necessary.

If that is the case with Life Balance that is fantastic. I will look for that and check it out.
Click to expand...

You can do that with either Outlook or Life Balance, actually, but the technques are different.
 
T

tominperu

Registered
But how in Outlook? Does anyone have some instructions?

I had the trial Outlook Add-In for a month. Maybe I missed something but I couldn't find how to get a complete list of projects with each project's next actions also listed alongside. Is this really the case? If it was possible it certainly wasn't clear how (Tell me if I'm being really thick!).

I tried out the trial Life Balance today and liked it and it was immediately obvious how it worked. It also has some nice other features that aren't in Outlook. Now I need to save to pay for it!
 
T

tominperu

Registered
mmm... I have now looked at the presentation on the Outlook Add In on this site. On the presentation it shows a project list as I would like.

I still say either the add-in wasn't working with my version of Outlook or how to get that view wasn't clearly signposted.

Hope other users have more luck.
 
C

CosmoGTD

Guest
You can't really do it with Outlook, and that's why they added that function to the GTD Add-in for Outlook. I think the newest versions of Outlook have more robust Project Management abilities, but Outlook 2000 can't really do what you want.

With the Add-in, once you have all your Tasks entered, you go in Outlook to View/ Active Tasks By Project (GTD). One click and its all there.

Here is some info from the GTD Outlook add-in Help file.
--------------------------

Create views for you to easily manage your Tasks

The Getting Things Done Outlook Add-In provides four views to help you manage your Tasks:

Ÿ Active Tasks By Action (GTD). This view shows you your Tasks grouped by Action. It shows you the Complete icon, the Subject, Notes, Due Date, and Project for the Task. Only items that are not complete are shown. It looks like the following image:

Ÿ Active Tasks By Project (GTD). This view shows you your Tasks grouped by Project. It shows you the Complete icon, the Subject, Notes, Due Date, and Action for the Task. Only items that are not complete are shown. It looks like the following image:

Ÿ Completed Tasks By Action (GTD). This view is identical to the Active Tasks by Action (GTD) view, except that only completed items are shown.

Ÿ Completed Tasks By Project (GTD). This view is identical to the Active Tasks by Project (GTD) view, except that only completed items are shown.

For details on how to install the Getting Things Done Outlook Add-In views, see the Helpful Views Topic.

Since the Tasks are the separate items on the list, the Active views will have these components and characteristics:

Ÿ The box on the left can be checked off when the item is completed, and the item will disappear off the list.

Ÿ The Subject will contain the list item.

Ÿ The Notes field will let you know whether there are additional comments attached to the item. (If there are, you will know to open up the Task for more details. If not, no need to bother.)

Ÿ The Due Date field will show you that information, if relevant.

Ÿ The Project or Action field will show you the corresponding Project for the Next Action item or the Next Action for the Project item.

Similarly, the items on the list (Tasks) that are complete may be viewed by switching views to one of the Completed Tasks views.

We recommend displaying the Advanced toolbar and using the Current View droplist to quickly change views. You can do this by right clicking in a blank area of the toolbars area and selecting Advanced or by choosing View/Toolbars/Advanced.
 
T

tominperu

Registered
Thanks a lot!

Perhaps I was being a bit thick! I remember I wasn't so familiar with Views in Outlook when I tried the Add-In, so I missed it. Thanks for the clarification. I may try the trial Add in again and take my pick, if they let me a second time!

I realise the Outlook Add-in certainly helps with emails although I'm not actually unindated with those.

If anyone knows a simple open source "to do list" software that can do what I want let me know. I live in a Third World country and have little income.

Good to know its there to buy if I need it though. I've got some quick answers on this forum so thanks to all...
 
V

Vadim

Guest
You can try TaoNotes

tominperu said:
Thanks for your response. Actually I now realise I have done that already, but thanks for clarifying it can be done already in Outlook.

As you realise, one still has to click though all the projects to make sure that each project has a next action. What would be ideal would be a complete project list with a sublist of all next actions for each project, with also a list of unassigned next actions. Then hopefully one could drag and drop next actions onto projects as necessary.

Dear Tominperu! You can give a try for my application TaoNotes. It does exactly what you want it seems.... but better check it by yourself
TaoNotes page

best regards, Vadim
Click to expand...
 
D

DMW

Guest
You may find Julia's method useful. This shows the NA in both their context and their Project. When the task is completed, it is removed from both lists.

See Julia's post here.

HTH

DW
 
T

tominperu

Registered
Julia's method no - Any opinions on Achieve Planner of TaoNotes?

I previously came up with this myself, but it doesn't solve the problem.

Yes, with this method one can easily see which next actions are grouped together into which projects, but it doesn't make it any easier to check each project has a next action - which of course is a crucial part of the weekly review. If there isn't a next action for a project, the project simply doesn't appear as a project category!

One can compare a complete project list with the project categories but this is a terribly tedious method (unless one has very few projects). Preferable to this is the method of turning Contacts into Project as explained in http://home.comcast.net/~whkratz/id3.htm. But as I mentioned in my initial post, this is also somewhat laborious.

Since my last post, I have tried to use the Trial Outlook Add-in again. It doesn't seem to load properly as I get no Active Tasks by Project List view at all. I have tried Life Balance but can't get used to its rather inflexible and automated prioritisation system.

I've also tried to use Tao Notes but it has seemed rather complex and until now I haven't had the time to play around with it to see how it works.

Achieve Planner (http://www.effexis.com/achieve/planner.htm) may work but I haven't had time to download it yet, let alone try out the trial.

If anyone has tried out either of the above and has an opinion, (especially related to the problem of my initial post) I am interested to know. I'd rather get another's opinion before I invest too much time in trying to work them out myself.

I'm still using the Contacts as Projects method for now. It's rather sluggish but I suppose it saves me US$50 - US$ 80, which is what it seems I’d have to pay for any other solutions.
 
K

kglade

Registered
I use the add-in and use task views to see what I want. I don't know why yours did not work. The view Active Tasks by Project will show only the project master task if there are no next actions assigned to that project. The view Next Actions by Project will show next actions that have no project, too. By configuring views, you can get almost any information you want to see.

As to the price of the tools, only you can determine what is an acceptable cost. I found the the add-in to save me many hours of thinking about how to set up a trusted system. For me, that was worth it. I wanted to spend my time GMTD [Getting My Things Done, all rights reserved :)], not setting up my system. I have heard good things about the white paper for outlook, but never tried it myself. It is lower priced but results in a system that has a little less automation.

Ken
 
E

ext555

Registered
If you live in outlook at work , the cost of the add-in is well worth it , just for the steps it saves you . Like Ken said , they've pretty much set up a " trusted system " for you [especially with the update from last october ]. I've tried doing without the add in just to see how much it really was helping me . I can honestly say it's much easier to follow the gtd process using the add in with outlook .

It helps you get to that place David refers to as " grooved on automatic " .
 
A

Arjuna

Guest
I haven't fully set up my GTD sytem yet (so I may be way off here!) - I use a program called Agenda at Once - it sounds like it does what you want.

You can drag and drop actions into projects and they show as linked.
You can drag and drop projects/sub projects/actions into the calendar and they show as 'scheduled'

(in AAO they have a 'to-do' pane - I am referring to this when I say 'projects)

Because I don't have much on the 'hard landscape' of my calendar, I keep my list of NA's on the day in question (ignoring the 'time')

I can easily see if each project has a NA simply by expanding each project and checking that it has a 'scheduled' icon.
(the 'to-do' list IS my projects list, with sub-projects and actions nested within them)

It's prolly easier to understand if you have a look!

They do a 15 day free trial and it's $30us to buy.
http://www.datalandsoftware.com/agenda/index.html
 
T

tominperu

Registered
AgendaAtOnce

Thanks!

Interesting. With Agendaatonce it seems you can have a look at the next actions for each project one by one. In this way, its on a par with Outlook Contacts as Projects method but a little faster.

It doesn't have categories for contexts as such but I guess you use the Assignees categories (putting @home, @calls etc) for this

It still doesn't produce a full list of projects with all next actions against them so I can very quickly check that each project has a next action. This is what I'm looking for.

I will definitely consider using it though. Good things are its nice a simple. Minuses are: its benefits over Outlook are small so maybe not worth the hassle and learning effort of transfering. Outlook also has some advantages like for instance the more customisable view facility. I have got used to Outlook and have developed a method for using it which may not work with Agenda.

However, Thanks again! Good price! Recommend others taking a look.
 
K

kewms

Registered
Create an Outlook category for each project. View your tasks sorted by category, with all categories collapsed. This is your project list. Note that the list includes the number of items in each category. If this number is one (you'll want to create a task for the project itself), then the project has no NAs.

Katherine
 
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