Task Coach

The Best Task Manager! Everything is easy, really easy! I recommend!

Over the past 20 or so years, I have used literally dozens of task management and project management programs on both Windows and Mac as well as numerous web-based applications and mobile apps on iPhone, Palm and Windows mobile devices. A few examples of the programs I've used include Things, OmniFocus, TaskPaper, My Life Organized, Shadow Plan, Remember the Milk, Toodledo, Nozbe and many, many others. I am a true task management junkie and I consider myself to be an expert in this software category. TaskCoach is unequivocally the most well-designed, well-supported and useful task management application I have ever used. The problem with most of these apps is that they are too rigid and force you to think in a certain way (the developer's way) in order to manage your tasks. Prior to using TaskCoach, I was using Things, which probably has the most beautiful, elegant user interface I have ever encountered. The sheer beauty of the interface and the obvious attention to the smallest of details was what attracted me to Things. Unfortunately, after using Things for a few months, I began to feel very stressed about the organizational structure the program was forcing me into. Rather than relieving me of the stress of managing numerous complex projects, I felt more disorganized than ever. The whole idea of Areas of Responsibility vs projects vs tasks vs subtasks vs tags became overwhelming. Every time I created a new task, I found myself stressing over the best way to file it. Was it part of a project, or was it a lone task within a certain Area of Responsibility? How should I tag it? What if it was related to more than one project or more than one Area of Responsibility. I found that I was spending more time trying to figure out how to organize my tasks than actually doing the tasks! I ran into similar problems with OmniFocus and various other GTD-based apps I tried. I also became disenchanted with the snail-like pace and general arrogance of the developers of many of these apps. At the other extreme is programs like TaskPaper, which impose almost no organizational structure at all and totally leave it up to the user to design his own system. TaskPaper works like typing on a piece of paper. At first, this seemed very appealing, but after a while, I found that I had a huge list of tasks organized hierarchically, but I had no idea what I should be working on next. At first blush, the idea of a completely free-form organizer is very liberating , but TaskPaper doesn't provide you with any tools to automate your workflow, so you eventually end up with a big mess. TaskCoach is truly a breakthrough application. Like TaskPaper, it imposes no rigid requirements in terms of how you organize your tasks. But unlike TaskPaper, it provides you with a rich and powerful set of tools that enable you to design a workflow that works for how you think, not how the developer thinks. Here are some of the key features that set TaskCoach apart: * Cross Platform - It runs on Windows, Mac, Linux and iPhone. The iPhone app syncs perfectly with any of the desktop versions and it also includes SyncML, which is an open-source technology that allows you to sync with just about anything, including Google Calendar, iCal, Outlook, Web-based services, etc... * Open Source - Speaking of open source, TaskCoach is a completely open source app that won't cost you a penny unless you choose to donate. * Unlimited views and filters - TaskCoach features a tab-based interface that allows you to define the exact sorting and filtering for each tab. I created a tab for "All Tasks", a tab for "Active Tasks" and a "Due Today" tab. These are dynamic views that update automatically, based on the filtering criteria you specify. I start out each day working from the "Due Today" tab. Once I have that cleaned out, then I move to my "Active Tasks" tab. When I'm done working on active tasks for the day, I usually spend a few minutes in "All Tasks" organizing and deciding which tasks should be made active for subsequent days. You can create as many tabs as you like, so you can design a system that works the way you think. Another great feature is that you can define the visible columns independently for each tab. Thus, you only have to include the columns that are relevant to the particular view you define. For instance, my "All Tasks" tab includes a "Start Date" colunn, but my "Due Today" tab excludes this column, since if a task is due today, I really don't care what the original start date may have been. * Subtasks - In TaskCoach, there's no distinction made between projects and tasks. It's completely hierarchical and you can nest as many levels deep as you like, so if you're in a hurry, you can just enter a task at the top level of the hierarchy to get it out of your mind and into the program. Later on, you can move it underneath some other task, or create subtasks underneath it. You're not constantly forced to think about whether an item is a task, a subtask, a project, an area, or some other item type defined by the developer that may or may not make sense to you. Additionally, subtasks can optionally inherit the properties of their parent tasks, such as start/due dates, categories, etc... so you don't have to constantly re-type all the info each time you add a new subtask. For instance, if you have a task that's categorized as a "marketing" task, all of its subtasks can automatically be categorized as "marketing" as well. And if you change the categories of a task, those changes are automatically applied to all its subtasks. * Hierarchical categories - This is a HUGE feature that is sorely lacking in most of the other task management apps. Most of these apps use a flat tag structure, which seems simple at first, but you end up with a long list of tags and you're constantly having to think about which tags are relevant to which tasks. With hierarchical categories, you can organize your categories in a tree structure, just like you organize your tasks. Going back to the "marketing" example, I have a category called "marketing" and various subcategories such as "seo", "email", "ppc", etc... If I apply the "seo" category to a task, it will appear in views that are specific to "seo", but will also appear in views that are specific to the parent "marketing" category. * Notes - Most task management apps allow you to include a detailed description of the task, but TaskCoach takes this a step further by allowing you to attach a separate hierarchy of notes to each task. Additionally, you can create a tab for notes that are independent of any particular task, so TaskCoach can also be used as a general purpose outliner / knowledge base. * Recurring Tasks - Many apps support basic recurring tasks, but TaskCoach considers recurrence to be a property of the task, just like any other property. This means any subtasks or sub-subtasks, will automatically inherit the recurrence of the parent task. Thus, you can create entire recurring hierarchies of tasks. * Task Dependencies - For me, this is one of the holy grails of task management. If a task cannot be started until a prior task has been completed, I want the option of filtering it from my view. Why should I be distracted by a task that's impossible to work on until something else has been done? OmniFocus kind of supports this by allowing you to define a project as "sequential", rather than parallel, meaning that each task within the project must be completed in a certain sequence. However, in my mind, this is not true task dependency because it only allows for dependencies within a given project, rather than allowing a task to be dependent on another arbitrary task that may or may not be in the same "project". Task dependencies have not yet been implemented in the release version, but the 1.20 branch of the development version contains this feature and it works beautifully. * Extremely rapid development pace - With most competing apps, you might wait months for the developer to add a single new feature. TaskCoach has been releasing an updated version with new features every few weeks and the developer posts updates to the development version usually every day and sometimes multiple times throughout the day. The developer is also extremely responsive to feedback from users and has implemented many features at the request of users. TaskCoach uses the UserVoice feedback system that allows users to vote on new features, allowing the developer to prioritize based on what the majority of users are requesting. Some people actually consider this to be a negative because they believe it leads to feature-bloat, but this developer puts a lot of thought into how best to implement requested features without cluttering the user interface. In conclusion, I would say that TaskCoach has literally changed my life. For the first time ever, I feel like I'm in control of my task list rather than the other way around. My productivity has gone way up and my stress level has come way down. I am extremely grateful to the developer for creating such an innovative and useful app, which is why I took the time to write this review. I hope that others can benefit from my years of trial and error and start using TaskCoach to change their lives as well. Lest I be accused of being some sort of shill for the developer, let me make it clear that nothing could be further from the truth. As great as I think this app is, there's much that could be improved about it. A few features I would love to see implemented include: * True Cloud Sync - It's great that TaskCoach supports SyncML, but SyncML is a relatively simple sync standard that doesn't support many of the category/hierarchical features of TaskCoach. I'd like to see an actual TaskCoach server application that could be installed on a Linux box and would allow for syncing over the Internet. The iPhone sync works great, but you have to be on your local network to initiate a sync with the desktop veresion. When I'm in the field and I update tasks on my iPhone, I'd like to be able to immediately sync those changes to the server and have those changes automatically show up in the desktop version when I get home. Better yet, TaskCoach should automatically do a mini-sync, each time you add, modify or delete a task on the iPhone and vice versa. * Multi User Support - This is probably the biggest shortcoming of TaskCoach. I'd love to be able to delegate tasks to other team members and have TaskCoach automatically notify the team members, update their TaskCoach trees, and allow me to monitor delegated tasks seperately from own tasks. * Prettier interface - I know it probably sounds a little petty to bring this up, but the TaskCoach user interface looks like something out of the 80's. I think a lot of users wouldn't even give it a chance because the UI looks so primitive and ugly.

very good project, thanks!Good,good,good.+1